India Hicks is the granddaughter of Lord Mountbatten, an uncle of Prince Philip (his mother's younger brother) and a favourite 'uncle' of Prince Charles. He was blown up by the Irish Republican Army when on holiday with his family in Ireland. A grandson was also killed, and his elder daughter, now Countess Mountbatten, was seriously injured. So she is close to the British Royal Family.
The Mountbattens were originally 'Battenbergs' - descendants of Alexander of Hesse, who had a morganatic marriage with Julia von Hauke. Queen Victoria was very liberal on royal status and didn't hold with the strict German views on equal status marriages. She was perfectly happy for Alexander's eldest son, Louis, to marry her granddaughter, Victoria of Hesse-Darmstadt (who was a daughter of QV's second daughter, Pss Alice, who married into the Hesse-Darmstadt family, and another of whose daughters was Pss Alix, who married Nicholas II of Russia). It was the younger son of this marriage, Pr Louis of Battenberg, who became Lord Louis Mountbatten after becoming naturalised British following the First World War. Later he was enobled as Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
