Christ Church was the smartest Oxbridge college, where the Prince of Walesbecame an undergraduate in 1859, and Queen Victoria visited the Liddells inthe Deanery in 1860. Not long after Through the Looking-Glass, Alice wasbriefly involved with Prince Leopold (who’d attended her sister Lorina’swedding in 1874 and had been photographed by Dodgson), so that the royalscenario that pervades both stories reflects on her own social status, as wellas on the romance conventions of fairy tales and the games of cards and chessshe is caught up in.