Princess Alice of the United Kingdom papers to and from her government ministers, while the Queen secluded herself from all public life. Alice was aided in this task by her younger sister Princess Louise. Although Princess Helena, Louise's elder sister, would normally have been selected to assist, her inability to go long without crying was held against her. Alice's matrimonial plans were begun in 1860 by her mother. Queen Victoria had expressed her wish that her children should marry for love, but this did not mean that her choice of suitors would necessarily be extended to anybody outside the royal houses of Europe. Raising a British
Beatrice of Portugal the mind of the Castilian monarch; in 1390, celebrating Cortes in Guadalajara, he proposed to his Council his abdication to dedicate himself completely to Portugal. His death on 9 October 1390, generated a power struggle to constitute the regency, so the Portugal issue was postponed with the renewal of the truce in 1393. Throughout these struggles, they preserved the dispositions King John I had made in his testament, written at Celorico da Beira in 1385, that provided for the economic maintenance of the household of the now-Dowager Queen Beatrice, on which depended the Portuguese exiles who had followed her to