: “Queen Victoria is the Grandmama of Europe. Three Royal Cousins: George, Nicholas and Wilhelm.”

Practical value of the work

This work is about three European rulers who were all caught up in World War I. But what makes it interesting that  focuses not on their politics, but on their relationships - the three men were cousins, all descended from England's Queen Victoria. George V of England, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany were roughly contemporaries and all knew each other very well. They didn't exactly grow up together, but there was a lot of visiting back and forth, a lot of correspondence, and a lot of family drama to go around.

How different everything could have been if Kaiser Wilhelm, or Willie as the family called him, had been raised differently. Caught between his Prussian grandfather and king and his English mother and grandmother, Queen Victoria, he was always in the middle of the tension. King George V of Great Britain was first cousin through his mother to Tsar Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, and first cousin through his father to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser of Germany. In fact, by the time he was 31 his grandmother Queen Victoria had ensured that he was related by blood or marriage to every royal family in Europe. The allied King George and Czar Nicholas were not only first cousins (their Danish mothers were sisters) but they looked so much alike that people frequently mistook one for the other. Nicholas' wife was also a first cousin to George (on his father's side) and Kaiser Wilhelm bore the same close relationship to both. He was also related twice over to the tsar. He and his English cousins were close, but nothing could really have saved him from the violence which swept Russia. For all three men, the war would be a disaster that destroyed forever the illusion of their close family relationships, with any sense of peace and harmony shattered in a final coda of murder, betrayal, and abdication.