![]() ![]() Queen Sophie and King Constantine, with their own subjects in revolt, facing the French bombardment. The theatricality of Queen Marie of Romania. King Edward paying a state visit to Paris and succeeding in charming the French, making the Entente workable with his new popularity. ![]() The Tsar rising out of his sickbed - soon to be his deathbed - to don his uniform to welcome Alexandra to Russia, because as soon as she marries his son, she will be the Tsarita, a fact that none of his court except him seems to remember. How Queen Victoria asked her daughter whether she used chloroform and when the abashed daughter admitted it, talked of how she had used it for her last and would surely have used it for them all if only it had been invented soon enough. What the queen of England thought good enough for them was indeed good enough. Her haughty contempt when her German relatives objected to her descendants marrying, of all things, offspring of a morgantic marriage. Queen Victoria's insistence on not considering political matches against the young people's will. There is a certain tendency of certain kinds of stories to congregate at a time. It's divided into three parts: during her lifetime, between her death and World War I, and from World War I to the 1960's. Though of course I don't know how I'd take to it today I tried another of Aronson's books recently and couldn't get through it.Īdventures, anecdotes, stories - this is not the history of Europe through its kings and queens but the family history of the kings and queens themselves. In retrospect, this book was better than I thought because I really do remember it pretty well and what's more remember enjoying it and learning from it. And I can even conjure memories of reading about some of the later descendants, exiled to England or (I think) Spain after the kingdoms they had ruled briefly were no more. I can still recall the sad story of Victoria's eldest daughter, also Victoria, who wanted to be Empress of Germany but ended up only the mistreated, discarded mother of the spoiled egoist Wilhelm. What I remember most about the book is the remarkable sweep of Victoria's descendants: not just the famous ones like Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia and Czarina Alexandra of Russia but lesser-known monarchs in places like Spain, Greece, and Romania. Aronson's writing is novelistic in style, so it's a readable and engaging book, offering a surface history lesson shrouded in low-impact gossip and melodrama. It tells the story of Queen Victoria and her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and how among them they eventually included crowned heads of most of the countries of Europe. I read this when I was in high school I remember that I borrowed it from our local public library-how I found it, I don't know-and moved through it fairly rapidly. Aronson argues that the the connections between Europe's royal houses were of limited political importance as the frequent family gatherings of the early 20th century did not prevent the First World War but these marriages still had a profound cultural influence as British customs and conceptions of royal duties spread across the continent. ![]() His favourite one of Queen Victoria's descendants is clearly Queen Marie of Romania, who is described in glowing terms throughout the book. ![]() The book was first published in the 1970s and there are some sections of the book, especially the chapters concerning the Russian Imperial family, which are rather dated, but Aronson provides an excellent account of how princesses with British upbringings experienced the courts of Russia, Romania, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. A royal history classic! Theo Aronson examines the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria who married into Europe's royal houses. ![]()
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