Alice was so snobbish and removed that later in her life people would say she’d rather be driven around the city for hours than condescend to speak to her chauffeur to give him the exact address for where she was headed. Alva, by contrast, was brilliant, witty, cunning, and utterly ruthless. Her daughter, Consuelo, would later write that her mother was a “born dictator.” There could be little doubt that Alva would triumph; the only question was: how and when? William
