- I was born in Windsor Castle.
Queen Victoria herself was present at my birth.
- [Interviewer] Was she?
- Everyone thought I was a slow child.
- [Interviewer] Slow?
In which sense? Walking?
- No, dear.
(coughing)
Slow in here.
- Right.
- I was born deaf.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
But otherwise perfectly normal.
- Well, I thought so.
But obviously, others didn't because
then I was diagnosed with schizophrenia
and sent to an asylum.
- A mental asylum?
- Yes.
I was treated by Sigmund Freud.
He was not a kind man.
(suspenseful music)
- Go on.
- [Alice] I was there for just over two years
and I managed to escape
(clock ticking)
and went back to Athens. (typewriter clicking)
(phone ringing)
(suspenseful music)
(speaking in foreign language)
(clock ticking)
- [Alice] Amen.
- Bubbikins.
(Philip clearing throat)
- It is a common staple of mother-in-law jokes
that having one come to stay is a nightmare,
but having this mother-in-law to stay
can only be a blessing.
- Oh.
- For Princess Alice is that rarest of creatures,
a member of a royal family that has suffered
more than the rest of us, worked harder than the rest of us,
and created more good than the rest of us.
Congenitally deaf, she was consistently misunderstood,
marginalized, and underestimated.
Doctors inflicted untold horrors on her,
x-raying her womb to bring on menopause
and reduce her libido
and electroshock treatment to treat her hysteria,
but instead of business, Princess Alice dedicated
her life to charity work, public service,
and campaigning for social justice,
often at great personal risk.
Well, it goes on and on, it's,
it's a love letter.