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The Kaiser, the Tsar and King George V: Cousins at War
2024-10-10 15:50:37 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE
Queen Victoria had 42 grandchildren who were scattered across Europe and embedded in many of the continent's monarchies. This meant that World War I was ultimately a family affair.
As many people who have studied their family tree know, the more you look into your family tree, the more surprises you are likely to discover. You may notice surprising connections between distant branches of your tree and learn the unexpected ways that individuals—perhaps from different backgrounds and living in different places—shared the same bloodline.
A dramatic example of what we are saying is the Royal Family and the strange constellation of connections after the First World War. Britain may have been gripped by anti-German fever, with Rudyard Kipling warning that 'The Hun is at the gate', but what is often forgotten is that the British monarch at the time, George V, was a first cousin of Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm . Both were grandsons of Queen Victoria.
George V's father, Edward VII, was Victoria's eldest son. He had become king after his mother's death in 1901, ruling for just nine years until he himself died in 1910, when George V took over. George's mother, by the way, was Alexandra of Denmark – a significant fact to which we shall return.
The German Kaiser, meanwhile, was Queen Victoria's nephew by her daughter, also named Victoria, who had married Frederick III of Germany. In fact, William's connections to the British Royal Family were much more than a matter of genetics. As a child, he was dressed in Highland garb for the wedding of his uncle Bertie (aka Edward VII) to Alexandra of Denmark. As a teenager, he was awarded the Order of the Garter by Queen Victoria, and would even be present at her deathbed.
Many chroniclers of this period are fascinated by William's difficult relationship with his British connections, particularly noting his animosity towards Uncle Bertie – whom William called "the old peacock" and even "a Satan". In the words of historian David Fromkin, "the half-German side of him was at war with the half-English side." Indeed, the Kaiser's militaristic ambitions on the European stage may have been fueled in part by what Miranda Carter, author of Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires, and the Road to World War I, calls his 'teenage vulnerability and the almost Oedipal desire to defeat the British.
The third royal actor in World War I, Czar Nicholas II of Russia, also had a very personal interest in the events. He was another first cousin of George V, whose mother, Alexandra of Denmark, was the sister of the Tsar's mother, Dagmar of Denmark. As well as being closely related, George V and Nicholas II were remarkably similar and had formed a strong friendship in their younger years. The Tsar's ties to the British royals were further strengthened when he married Queen Victoria's favorite niece, Princess Alix of Hesse (who would die with her and the children when the Tsar's family was massacred by communist revolutionaries in 1918).
As for William and Nicholas – they were also related, being distant cousins through the Russian and Prussian royal houses. They communicated by telegram and letter before the First World War, calling each other "Willie" and "Nicky" and seemed increasingly worried about the possibility of conflict between their nations. “To avoid such a disaster as a European war,” the Tsar wrote to the Kaiser in 1914, “I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do all you can to stop your allies from going too far .”
Of course, the conflict broke out. Just over a year after the wedding of the Kaiser's daughter, Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia – a splendid occasion in which George, Nicholas and William were together for the last time – the cousins were at war, with Britain and Russia allied against Germany.
The unprecedented carnage of the Great War – mechanized, brutal – disproved the idea that close family ties between royal families would prevent nations from descending into bloodshed. Queen Victoria was considered the grandmother of Europe and, as royal historian Theo Aronson writes, "there was hardly a continental court that did not boast at least one of her relations". But none of this mattered, for the various alliances of states would ultimately condemn them all to war. / bota.al
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