ter need, perplexity
and sorrow. "It came," she herself in a letter had testified, "as all
great messages come, at an hour of dire grief and inner conflict and
distress, so the seed sank deeply."

Eldest daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, who was the second son of that
Queen to whom Baha'u'llah had, in a significant Tablet, addressed words of
commendation; granddaughter of Czar Alexander II to whom an Epistle had
been revealed by that same Pen; related by both birth and marriage to
Europe's most prominent families; born in the Anglican Faith; closely
associated through her marriage with the Greek Orthodox Church, the state
religion of her adopted country; herself an accomplished authoress;
possessed of a charming and radiant personality; highly talented,
clear-visioned, daring and ardent by nature; keenly devoted to all
enterprises of a humanitarian character, she, alone among her
sister-queens, alone among all those of royal birth or station, was moved
to spontaneously acclaim the greatness of the Message of Baha'u'llah, to
proclaim His Fatherhood, as well as the Prophethood of Muhammad, to
commend the Baha'i teachings to all men and women, and to extol their
potency, sublimity and beauty.

Through the fearless acknowledgment of her belief to her own kith and kin,
and particularly to her youngest daughter; through three successive
encomiums that constitute her greatest and abiding legacy to posterity;
through three additional appreciations penned by her as her contribution
to Baha'i publications; through several letters written to friends and
associates, as well as those addressed to her guide and spiritual mother;
through various tokens expressive of faith and gratitude for the
glad-tidings that had been brought to her through the orders for Baha'i
books placed by her and her youngest daughter; and lastly through her
frustrated pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the express purpose of paying
homage at the graves of the Founders of the Faith--through such acts as
these this illustrious queen may well deserve to rank as the first of
those royal supporters of the Cause of God who are to arise in the future,
and each of whom, in the words of Baha'u'llah Himself, is to be acclaimed
as "the very eye of mankind, the luminous ornament on the brow of
creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the whole world."

"Some of those of my caste," she, in a personal letter, has significantly
testified, "wonder at and disapprove my co