Royals' greatest secret THE CURSE OF PRINCESS ALICE

Her name is synonymous with heartbreak and unimaginable pain

- Judy Kean

It happens every time a member of the royal family announces they're pregnant. There's a frenzy with people trying to guess what the baby will be called, and when it comes to girls names, there's one that always seems to emerge as a favourite: Alice.

Yet it hasn't been bestowed as a first name on a royal baby girl for nearly 140 years - and the reason for that may be because the very first princess given the name was considered to be cursed.

Princess Alice Maud Mary, the third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was born into great privilege but her life was beset by tragedy. And sadly, many of her descendants also endured terrible trauma, with three of them being assassinated.

Alice was a surprise choice of name for Victoria's second daughter, who was born on April 25, 1843. The name had been around since the 12th century but had never been given to a royal before. Alice was close to her older siblings, firstborn Princess Victoria, and Prince Bertie, who went on to become King Edward VII, and often helped to look after her six younger siblings (Victoria and Albert had nine children in all).

Kind and compassionate by nature, Alice developed an interest in nursing from an early age. At 11, she visited London hospitals to meet soldiers injured in the Crimean War, and became a devotee of nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale. When her father Albert fell ill with fatal typhoid fever in 1861, it was Alice who nursed him in the last weeks of his life.