Nd Duke Of Connaught And Strathearn Alastair

Personal

Vocation

Notable

British royalty, a great-grandson of Queen Victoria through his father and great-great-grandson of Victoria through his mother. Alastair was an only child. His father was Prince Arthur of Connaught, the only son of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. His mother was Princess Arthur of Connaught (before her marriage Princess Alexandra, 2nd Duchess of Fife), the eldest daughter of Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife and Louise, Princess Royal. As a great grandchild of Queen Victoria through the male line, Alastair was styled His Highness Prince Alastair of Connaught from birth. In January 1935, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys (2nd Dragoons), his father's regiment, based in Egypt from 1936. In 1939, he was assigned to Ottawa as aide-de-camp to his kinsman The Earl of Athlone, then Governor General of Canada, the post his own grandfather had held during the First World War. He succeeded his grandfather as Duke of Connaught and Earl of Sussex in 1942 and died, aged 28, in Ottawa "on active service" on 26 April 1943 in unusual circumstances, having fallen out of a window when drunk and perishing of hypothermia overnight. Link to Wikipedia biography