Prince Francis, Duke of Teck

A carte-de-visite portrait of the handsome Prince Francis of Teck, who in 1866 married Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, popularly known as ‘Fat Mary’ on account of her girth.

Despite her influence among the Central European principalities, it still took Queen Victoria almost a decade to find a suitable match for her generously proportioned cousin, and she was almost forced to concede to her Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, who had opined that 'no German Prince will venture so vast an undertaking'. In the end, at the age of thirty, Mary married the impecunious but handsome Prince of Teck.

Photographed by Hills and Saunders of Eton and Oxford.