In 1866 the Queen opened Parliament in person for the first time since the death of the Prince Consort, and there was a great assemblage to hail her reappearance when she entered, not by the State, but by the Peers' entrance. There were none of the flourishes of trumpets which had formerly announced her arrival--solemn silence prevailed. She did not wear the robes of state, they were merely laid upon the throne. Her Majesty was accompanied by the Princesses Helena and Louise. When the Queen was seated on the throne the Prince of Wales took his seat on her right, while the Princesses stood on her left. Behind the Queen was the Duchess of Wellington, as mistress of the robes, and a lady in waiting. Her Majesty's dress was dark purple velvet bordered with ermine; she wore a tiara of diamonds with a white gauze veil falling down behind. The speech, which in one passage announced the coming marriage of Princess Helena and Prince Christian (who sat near the end of one of the ambassadors' benches) was read by the Lord Chancellor. The Parliament granted to Prince Alfred an annuity of fifteen thousand pounds--voted in turn to each of his younger brothers on their coming of age--and to Princess Helena a dowry of thirty thousand and an annuity of six thousand pounds, similar to what had been granted to Princess Alice and was to be voted to Princess Louise. In March the Queen instituted the "Albert Medal," as a decoration for those who had saved life from shipwreck and from peril at sea, and for the first time during five-years revisited the camp at Aldershot and reviewed the troops. She was accompanied by Princess Helena and the Princess Hohenlohe, who was on a visit to England. Queen Amélie died at Claremont on the 24th of March, aged eighty-three years. On the 25th of May Prince Alfred was created Earl of Ulster, Earl of Kent, and Duke of Edinburgh. The Princess Mary of Cambridge was married to the Prince of Teck on the 12th of June, in the presence of the Queen, in the parish church of Kew, where the bride had been confirmed, "among her own people." Parliament granted her an annuity of five thousand pounds. Another marriage, that of Princess Helena, was celebrated in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, on the 7th of July. The bridegroom was supported by Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Edward of Saxe- Weimar. The bride entered between her Majesty and the Prince of Wales. The usual eight noble bridesmaids followed. Prince Christian was in his thirty-sixth, Princess Helena in her twenty-first year. Their home has been first at Frogmore and afterwards at Cumberland Lodge. While the German war which had Schleswig-Holstein for a bone of contention was still only threatening, the Crown Princess of Prussia lost a fine child, Prince Sigismund.