Lady Pamela Hicks, who has died aged 97, was the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and her oldest surviving descendant. The link came through her father, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, which made her additionally first cousin to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, and she was also the great-niece of the last empress of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna.
As a child Pamela was sufficiently aristocratic to be a playmate of Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, and her sister, Princess Margaret, and she was close enough to the royal family to serve for a time as lady-in-waiting to the young queen.
