Princess Alice, the Duchess of Gloucester, whose death Friday at age 102 was announced by Buckingham Palace, was the last of the queen’s aunts and the mother of Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

For more than half a century, she was an integral part of all royal occasions and, though never well known to the general public, was for many years one of the hardest-working members of the royal family. Her delicate beauty, restrained elegance, and faultless conduct won the affection of all with whom she came into contact.

Princess Alice was born Lady Alice Christabel Montagu-Douglas-Scott on Christmas Day 1901, the fifth of eight children of the Earl of Dalkeith – son and heir of the 6th Duke of Buccleuch and 8th of Queensberry – and his wife Margaret, a daughter of the 4th Earl of Bradford.

Princess Alice remembered a time when the British aristocracy lived far more sumptuously than kings or presidents do today. Her grandparents held court at their castle, sallying forth on occasions of supreme importance in the Buccleuch state coach, the horses in silver harness, the attendants in wigs and livery.

On holidays, a train would be hired to transport the household and its eight tons of luggage. Christmas dinner in the 1920s meant feeding 150 pounds of turkey to 220 mouths. When news of the second nurse’s engagement to the groom of the chambers reached the nursery on one of these occasions, the housekeeper’s only comment to nanny was: “Where ever can they have met?”

But while all these holidays and houses provided their own particular enchantments – including a spirited attempt to defenestrate a governess – Lady Alice’s love of the outdoors and of Scotland made her prefer Langholm, a shooting lodge on the moors, to all her other homes.

At Langholm she indulged her passion for wild country, fishing, and foxhunting – a sport she was later to look back on with special gratitude when finding herself obliged, and able, to deal with the more vexatious aspects of public life.

Her debut at a royal ball was spent, for the most part, hiding miserably behind a pillar. Formal occasions were never to be her idea of fun. She neither smoked nor drank, and far preferred outdoor life to London entertainment.

After several years traveling in Africa and India, Lady Alice was summoned home in 1935 because of her father’s worsening health and now, aged 34 and having fully satisfied her taste for adventure, she at last found herself ready to marry. Her long friendship with Prince Henry blossomed into love, and the betrothal met with the warmest approval of the king and queen. A crowd of more than a million lined the London streets on a raw November day to wave the couple off on their honeymoon. To a pre-war generation the bride would always be remembered by the fittingly romantic epithet she earned on that ride to the station – the “Winter Princess.”

With the abdication of the king, Princess Alice and Prince Henry undertook an ever-increasing number of public duties, which World War II further augmented. During the war, she visited every corner of the kingdom, service all the more remarkable for being conducted at a time when she had the private responsibility of a young family.

Events took a new turn for the duchess in 1944 when she and the infant princes accompanied the duke to Australia, where he served as governor-general for three years. The country at that time was still relatively undeveloped: The capital was a place of bare essentials, the roads were mostly unpaved and the governor-general’s official residences were infested with rats, spiders, and silverfish. They stayed for two years.

In 1965, driving back from Sir Winston’s Churchill’s funeral, the duke and duchess suffered a serious accident. She was badly cut; but it was the duke, superficially unharmed, who never seemed quite to recover from this accident, and by 1968 successive strokes had reduced him to a helpless invalid.

In 1971, her son Prince William was killed while piloting his aircraft in an air race. The duke died in 1974.

Never was the nobility of Princess Alice more apparent that in the manner with which she continued her official duties in the face of these tragedies.

In 2001 she attended a parade for her 100th birthday flanked by her former bridesmaids, the queen and Princess Margaret.