Queen Victoria’s grandchildren
The rest of the family
After Queen Victoria’s death, not only were Britain, Russia and Germany ruled by her grandchildren, but the thrones of five other countries were occupied by them. For some, war and revolution ended their reigns, but others have shown remarkable staying powers.
Greece
In 1913, following his father’s assassination, Constantine I (1868–1923) ascended the Greek throne. His wife was Wilhelm II’s sister Princess Sophia of Hohenzollern (1870–1932), the daughter of Friedrich III and Princess Royal Victoria Mary, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter. They had married in 1889 and subsequently had six children.
Constantine’s first reign lasted just four years; he was deposed in June 1917 because of his pro-German sympathies, in favour of his second eldest son Alexander, and he and Sophia left for exile in Switzerland. When Alexander died of a monkey bite in 1920, Constantine again took the throne. This time he lasted a mere two years, being deposed in favour of his eldest son George after the Greeks were soundly defeated by the Turks in 1922. He died in Italy a year later. Sophia lived a further 10 years, dying of cancer in Frankfurt in 1932.
The present royal families of Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania are all descendants of Constantine and Sophia, as is the prince of Wales (his father, Prince Philip, is one of Constantine and Sophia’s grandchildren).
Norway
Princess Maud Charlotte Mary Victoria was born on 26 November 1869, the fifth and youngest child of Edward, prince of Wales, and Alexandra of Denmark, and granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Nicknamed ‘Harry’, she had a frugal but relaxed upbringing at her father's estate at Sandringham in Norfolk.
On 22 July 1896, Maud married her first cousin Prince Carl of Denmark, the second son of the crown prince of Denmark, her mother’s elder brother, and went to live in Copenhagen while Carl pursued his naval career. In 1903, their son and only child Alexander was born in the house on the Sandringham estate that the prince of Wales had given the couple.
Two years later, everything changed, when the political union of Norway and Sweden was dissolved. The citizens of the newly independent Norway overwhelmingly (79%) voted to retain a monarchy rather than become a republic, and Prince Carl accepted the invitation from the Storting (parliament) to take the throne. He changed his name to Haakon VII and his son became Crown Prince Olav. The coronation was held on 22 June 1906 at Trondheim, when Princess Maud became queen consort of Norway.
She did the usual royal things – supporting charities and encouraging music and the arts – and died of heart failure in London on 20 November 1938, three days after an operation. Her body was returned to Norway on board HMS Royal Oak. She is memorialised in Antarctica, where both Queen Maud Land and the Queen Maud Mountains are named after her. Her descendants still occupy the Norwegian throne.
Romania
Marie Alexandra Victoria was born on 29 October 1875 in Kent, the eldest daughter of Alfred, duke of Edinburgh (and the second of Queen Victoria’s sons), and the former grand-duchess of Russia, Marie Alexandrovna.
Her first cousin, the future George V, fell in love with her, but Marie’s parents refused to allow them to marry, as they were so closely related. Instead in 1893 she married short, large-eared Ferdinand of Romania and, on the death of Ferdinand’s uncle Carol I in 1916, became queen of the Romanians (although not crowned until 1922). At that time, she was serving as a Red Cross nurse, an occupation that was indicative of her growing status as a ‘modern queen’. She later represented Romania at the Versailles peace talks, saying ‘Romania needs a face, and I will be that face.’
Marie’s marriage was not a happy one – she confided to an American friend that she felt ‘distaste, which grew to revulsion’ for Ferdinand. Only the two eldest of her six children were definitely biologically Ferdinand’s. The others were probably the products of Marie and one or more of her lovers, who included Romanian prime minister Barbu Stirbey and the Russian grand duke Boris Vladimirovich.
Ferdinand died in 1927, and Marie’s eldest son succeeded him as Carol II. They did not get on, the king resenting his mother’s involvement in politics. She spent her time writing the two-volume Story of My Life, and adopted the Baha’i faith, abandoning the Orthodox faith she had taken on her marriage. She died suddenly in 1938. According to her instructions, her body was buried next to her husband’s in a monastery, but her heart was kept in a cloister at Balchik Palace, which she had had built (her heart was later moved when Bulgaria took over this part of Romania in 1940).
Spain
Victoria Eugénie Julia Ena von Battenberg – who was always called ‘Ena’ – was born at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on 24 October 1887. She was the daughter of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry von Battenberg. He was himself the product of a morganatic marriage – his father Prince Alexander of Hesse had married the Polish commoner Julia von Hauke – and so was not considered sufficiently royal to be in line for the throne of Hesse.
Alexander had been allowed to marry Beatrice only on condition that she remain in Britain to act as Queen Victoria’s companion and secretary. So Ena was brought up in the queen’s household, her father meanwhile dying of malaria in 1896 while fighting in the Ashanti War in West Africa.
In 1905, Ena caught the eye of Alfonso XIII of Spain, who on being told that she was Edward VII’s niece began courting her. Her Uncle Edward gave her the title of ‘Her Royal Highness’ to compensate for her inherited morganatic status, but this did not satisfy Alfonso’s mother Maria Christina of Austria, who still thought Ena was too common. She also disliked her because she was a Protestant, and was also concerned that the girl might be a carrier of haemophilia like her maternal grandmother.
Despite these objections, and after Ena took instruction to become a Catholic, the couple were married in May 1906 at the royal monastery of San Geronimo in Madrid. As they headed back to the palace, an anarchist threw a bomb at the royal carriage. Although uninjured, Ena was covered with the blood of a guard who had been decapitated nearby.
King Alfonso and Queen Eugenia (as she was now officially known) had seven children: five sons and two daughters. Ena indeed turned out to be a haemophilia carrier and passed the condition on to her eldest son, the Infante Alfonso, and his youngest brother Gonzalo. In addition, her second son Jaime became deaf from the age of four following an operation to relieve mastoiditis in both ears and also never spoke properly; and her third son was a stillborn. Only her fourth son Juan and her daughters were healthy.
Alfonso blamed Ena for their children's health problems, and their relationship deteriorated. Described by Time magazine as ‘loose-lipped and loose-living’, he indulged in numerous affairs, perhaps including one with Ena’s cousin Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh, who, rumour had it, had previously been about to marry him before he proposed to Ena.
After elections in 1931 brought the Republicans to power in Spain, the royal family went into exile in France and, later, Italy. Ena and Alfonso separated and she went to live in Britain and then Switzerland.
In 1933, their son Alfonso renounced all rights to the Spanish throne so that he could marry a rich Cuban commoner. A year later, their eldest daughter Beatriz and youngest son Gonzalo were in a car accident in Austria. Although they were barely injured, Gonzalo was unable to stop bleeding and died at the age of 19.
The personal disasters continued in 1936. In September, Ena sailed to New York to be with her son Alfonso, who was in hospital getting blood transfusions to stem internal bleeding. At the same time, his wife, suing for divorce, had gone to court to prevent the queen from taking Alfonso out of the country (they divorced the following year). In addition, lawyers were after him for payment for a car or to get hold of the Spanish crown jewels that he had used as security.
The year 1938 was full of incident for Ena and her family. After a marriage that had lasted only six months, Alfonso divorced his second wife in January. Shortly after, the family got together in Rome for the baptism of Juan’s eldest son Juan Carlos. Then, in late summer, Alfonso crashed his car into a phone booth and died of internal bleeding in September.
In 1941, Alfonso XIII abdicated in Juan’s favour and died soon after. Ena lived in Switzerland for the rest of her life, only returning to Spain once, in 1968, to stand as godmother to her great-grandson Felipe, son of Juan Carlos I and now the heir-apparent to the Spanish throne. She died in Lausanne on 15 April 1969.
Sweden
An early death prevented this granddaughter of Queen Victoria from ruling in her own right, but her children and grandchildren all carry the great British monarch’s genes.
Princess Margaret of Connaught was born on 15 January 1882, the daughter of Queen Victoria’s third son Prince Arthur, duke of Connaught, and Princess Luise Margarete of Prussia. Known as ‘Daisy’, she was the first wife of Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, marrying him in June 1905, having fallen in love with him while on tour in Egypt. They became crown prince and crown princess when his father Gustaf V acceded to the Swedish throne two years later.
During World War I, Daisy acted as a conduit through which members of Europe’s warring royal families could contact each other. She also traced the fates of prisoners of war on both sides. On 1 May 1920, the 38-year-old princess died suddenly of infection following a mastoid operation. She had been carrying her sixth child at the time.
Her grandchildren include the present king of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, the current queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, and the former queen of Greece, Anne-Marie.
