'I rather dread the next days as you can imagine,' she wrote to her aunt just before starting for France, 'it will all be rather difficult and unusual.' Although she did not, of course, share her Aunt Augusta's* persistent view of France as a regicide nation, Queen Mary was very much aware that this was her first state visit as Queen of England to a foreign republic. Some of her mother's greatest friends had been the Princes and Princesses of the exiled house of Orleans, and Queen Mary herself has always known and liked the Empress Eugenie.
J . Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary (1959), 483
* Princess Augusta, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, 1822-1916
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