The girl and the monarch
Lucia Elizabeth (Betsy) Balcombe was born in 1802, the second child of William Balcombe, an official of the Honourable East India Company, and his wife Jane, who were living with their family in a cottage called The Briars, on the remote Atlantic Ocean island of St. Helena. Betsy and her older sister were educated in England, but in 1814 they returned to St Helena to rejoin their parents and younger brothers. After Napoleon's abdication in 1814, the allied powers had taken a liberal line on his exile and Napoleon was living like a monarch on the island of Elba,...

The girl and the monarch
Lucia Elizabeth (Betsy) Balcombe was born in 1802, the second child of William Balcombe, an official of the Honourable East India Company, and his wife Jane, who were living with their family in a cottage called The Briars, on the remote Atlantic Ocean island of St. Helena. Betsy and her older sister were educated in England, but in 1814 they returned to St Helena to rejoin their parents and younger brothers. After Napoleon's abdication in 1814, the allied powers had taken a liberal line on his exile and Napoleon was living like a monarch on the island of Elba,...