Back in March, TikToker Andreane (@andreaneoftheisland) visited Brighton for the first time with her sister. She was really excited to go to the Brighton Museum because there was an exhibition about Edward Burne-Jones. She came for the art but ended up accidentally solving a 100-year-old mystery.
At the museum, they came across some Fabergé art pieces on display and learned that they were discovered in the storage rooms of the museum by an antiques expert in the U.K. named Geoffrey Munn.
The pictures depicted two mysterious women. A sign next to the pictures said that experts have been unable to identify the two women despite extensive research. It also urged the public to email the museum with any suggestions as to who the women might be.
So, Andreane decided to take on the case. That evening, she managed to figure out who the first woman was within four hours.
She studied the woman’s hair and clothes to determine when the photo was taken. She then estimated when she was born and when she got married.
Andreane went through the records of high-profile, upper-class weddings in the 1880s and eventually found her. Her name was Marie de Rothschild, and she was the wife of Leopold.
It took a lot more work to identify the other woman. Over the next few days, she used forensic techniques she read about on the internet and compared many different faces from royalty and the upper class.
She discovered that the second woman was Sophia of Prussia, Queen of Greece, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Sophia loved to vacation in Sussex every year.
Even though these two women were from a royal lineage, they were easily forgotten about in history.
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Overall, Andreane is glad that she was able to identify the women, and she is eager to continue solving more historical mysteries. Several TikTok users in the comments section praised her for her work.
“Even Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra, some of the most famous women in history, have been reduced in people’s minds to mere caricatures. It’s so easy for women to be forgotten. You did wonderful work!” exclaimed one user.
“Considering those families are so well-known, and there are so many Rothschilds in the U.K., you would’ve thought someone in that family would’ve seen that and went, oh, isn’t that my something family member?” questioned another.
“Crazy that a museum couldn’t figure out who two of the most prominent women of the time were. Congratulations on your success, and thank you for taking your time to give a name to those faces,” stated a third.
“This is fantastic that you did this, but kind of sad that no one took the time to find what seems to be a relatively easy-to-find answer; these were not unknown women,” someone else weighed in.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
