by Theo Aronson
One of Queen Ingrid's chief characteristics was her unfeigned interest in everything around her. Her homes – Amelienborg Palace in winter, Fredensborg Castle in spring and autumn, and Graasten Palace in summer – all bore the imprint of her talent for decoration. She could spend hours in bookshops; she was an accomplished needlewoman; gardening, and orchid-growing in particular, was one of her passions. She delighted in royal tours; unlike other royalties, she never found them exhausting.' You just cannot be tired when you enjoy yourself so much and see so many interesting things,' she would exclaim. 'I had to see everything.' She had the rare gift of projecting this enthusiasm to all around her: the most mundane occasion would be enlivened by her evident interest. Her charm was exceptional. 'Mother,' claimed one of her daughters, 'can charm anyone.' Queen Ingrid, in short, was a thorough-going professional.
The home life of the Danish royal family was enviably serene. Husband and wife were devoted to each other and no less devoted to their daughters. Even after the three girls had married (the youngest, Princess Anne-Marie, married King Constantine of the Hellenes – the grandson of Queen Sophie – and thus linked Queen Victoria's descendants yet again) the relationship between parents and daughters remained close. 'I have never found a four-leaf clover but with the years one has grown up in my home,' said the King, turning to the Queen during a public speech, 'you, my dear, and our three daughters. The four of you have been the cloverleaf that has brought happiness into my life and sunshine streaming into my heart. My deepest thanks, Ingrid, for the support you have given me and for all you have meant through the years. I shall never be able to tell you how much gratitude I owe you . . . .'
As, by the year 1953, King Frederik and Queen Ingrid had had no son, the Danish constitution, which had hitherto excluded women from succeeding to the throne, was altered. A new Succession Law was introduced, whereby Princess Margrethe became the heir apparent. Thus, on the death of King Frederik IX, this great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria would become Queen Margrethe, the first reigning Queen of Denmark.
2
On 29 October 1950, Crown Princess Louise became Queen of Sweden. Her father-in-law, King Gustaf V, had finally died in his ninety-third year and Louise's sixty-eight-year-old husband became King Gustaf VI Adolf. Queen Louise was sixty-one.
With the best will in the world, and unlike the Danish sovereigns, one could not call King Gustaf Adolf and Queen Louise a handsome couple. He, tall and bespectacled, had the look of an amiable Professor; she seemed thinner, toothier, and more sharp-featured than ever. But this lack of good looks was no more important now than it had ever been. Gustaf Adolf remained one of the most civilized and conscientious kings in Europe while Queen Louise, with so vital a personality, had no need of conventional beauty. Within minutes of meeting her, one would be struck by her vivacity, her enthusiasm, her quickness and her naturalness. She spoke at such a rate that, if excited, she missed out words altogether. Although unselfish and compassionate to a remarkable degree, she could be critical and quick-tempered; a marshal of the court once described her as 'a saint with temperament'.
Through the Swedish court, grown stale during the old King's long reign, the new Queen swept like a fresh breeze. Obsolete formalities were scrapped, the staff thinned out and reorganized, and court etiquette, unchanged for forty years, revised and modernized. The royal guest list was enlarged to include whoever might prove interesting. Moving with her quick, light tread, Louise inspected the hundreds of rooms in the Stockholm Palace and set in motion their alteration, modernization and redecoration. On everything she left her imprint. Her biographer, Margit Fjellman, calling on the Queen at the Stockholm Palace, was once obliged to wait in the Hall of Mirrors while Louise finished a telephone call. Through an enfilade of lovely rooms, the caller could see, in the distance, the bird-like Queen gesticulating energetically as she spoke into the mouthpiece. 'Her thin figure looked small and far away,' writes Margit Fjellman, 'but none the less she radiated vitality and it flew into my mind that here was the dynamo on the heart of the Palace, the centre of a great machine.'
That she was now Queen in no way altered Louise's naturalness. Although, on gala occasions, in flashing jewels and gleaming satins, she could look undeniably regal, the Queen was happier on informal occasions, wearing simple clothes. She still enjoyed being able to move about without fuss. In Sweden, fortunately, this was quite possible. She could go shopping, or even ride on the underground, without being mobbed or stared at. The public's eagerness to catch a glimpse of her on the day after she became Queen had seemed all but incomprehensible to Louise. 'People look at me as if I was something remarkable,' she complained with characteristic sharpness. 'I don't look any different from what I did yesterday, do I?'
Indeed, it took her some time to appreciate that she had become a queen. At the funeral of King George VI, some eighteen months after her husband's succession, Louise was waiting for the car in which she would drive in the procession, when a large Daimler drew up beside her. 'For me!' protested the Queen, drawing back. 'No, it must have come for a Queen.'
Yet even to be a queen was not something that unduly impressed her. Some time after the death of her mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, Queen Louise was discovered at Kensington Palace by one of her nieces, going through her late mother's books. The Queen was planning to give some of them away. Several of the books had been the gifts of Queen Victoria to Louise's mother and bore inscriptions such as 'To dearest Victoria from her affectionate Grandmother V.R.I.' Queen Louise's niece was astonished to see her aunt energetically ripping out the pages carrying these valuable inscriptions. When she protested that anyone would be delighted to own a book inscribed by Queen Victoria, Louise brushed the idea aside. 'Do you think I'd want to have a book in my personal library just because it had Queen Victoria's signature on the flyleaf?' she scoffed. 'That wouldn't make it any more interesting to read would it?' And out, with a vigorous tear, came another page.
Queen Louise's links with Britain remained close. She was devoted to her brother Louis, now Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and frequently visited Broadlands, his home in Hampshire. With his two daughters and their families she was especially friendly. The marriage of her nephew, Prince Philip – the son of her elder sister Alice – to Princess Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of King George VI, linked her with the reigning branch of the present British royal family. Indeed, by his marriage to the future Queen of England, Prince Philip added the most brilliant chapter to the annals of the talented Battenberg family. One feels certain that Queen Victoria, always a champion of the Battenbergs, would have approved of the match.
In common with all Queen Victoria's descendants living on the Continent, Louise loved the London shops. To go shopping alone in London gave her great pleasure. But even on these outings her well-known efficiency manifested itself. 'I like going out shopping by myself,' she explained to a friend who had called on her at the Hyde Park Hotel, '[but] it would be so inconvenient if I got run over and they couldn't find out who I was!' And with that she popped a card into her handbag, on which was written in bold capital letters: I AM THE QUEEN OF SWEDEN.
In all her royal duties, Queen Louise showed a more than conventional interest. Whether it was a state visit, a dinner party, a tour through a hospital or a call on an old villager, the Queen, through her genuine concern for, and interest in, the lives of others, won the hearts of her subjects. That she was so devoted and solicitous a wife made her even more popular. One of her chief concerns was to prevent her husband from overworking; she was forever urging him to cut down his engagements. 'Swedish women allied themselves to Queen Louise and I think I can tell you why,' said Countess Estelle Bernadotte to Margit Fjellman after the Queen's death. 'Instinctively they realized that she was absorbed in the care of her husband, and that was something they understood and approved of.'
Yet it was the Queen who died first. She had always been frail and, after a heart attack in 1951, she had been left weaker still.
However, by the exercise of her extraordinary will-power, she kept up her exacting royal role. Not until the end of 1964, when she suffered a very severe attack, did she give in. She lived for another three months and died on 7 March 1965 at the age of seventy-six. A week later, on a still, grey, snowy day, she was buried. The funeral ceremony in the ancient church on Gamla Stan was extremely moving. But no funeral oration was preached over the coffin as it lay draped in the Swedish flag and the Union Jack. The Queen, who had drawn up the programme for her own funeral, had stipulated that no personal words were to be spoken during the ceremony. She had remained efficient, and modest, to the end.
3
For Queen Marie of Yugoslavia, an echo of the day on which her husband, King Alexander, was assassinated in the streets of Marseilles, came in October 1959. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the King's death, a service was held at his statue, situated at the Rond Point de la Muette in Paris. With head bowed and leaning on a stick, the dowdily dressed Queen paid tribute to her long-dead husband. Now sixty years old and far from well, Queen Marie had aged considerably during the previous few years; she was no longer the stout, uniform-wearing, pistol-carrying woman who had once quarrelled so tempestuously with her son Peter and his wife Alexandra. She looked frail and ill.
In fact, Queen Marie did not long survive the twenty-fifth anniversary of her husband's death. Less than two years later, on 22 June 1961, she died in London at the age of sixty-two. Her funeral service was held in the Serbian Orthodox Church in Lancaster Road, London. The chief mourner was her son, King Peter II. For a brief space of time, in this ornate church with its elaborate ritual, its richly robed priests, its black-clad royalties and its host of Yugoslavian mourners – many in national dress – one could catch something of the flavour of those days when, in the company of her exotic, ambitious mother, the attractive young Mignon had first come to Belgrade as a bride.
4
Since the end of the Second World War, Queen Ena of Spain had been living quietly in Lausanne in Switzerland. Her marriage to King Alfonso XIII, which had deteriorated so badly during the last years of the reign, had not survived the shock of their flight from Spain in 1931. For the most part, the couple had lived apart since then. During the 1930s both their haemophilic sons had been killed in car accidents; and in 1941, the King himself had died in Rome. Their third son, Don Juan, had then become the Pretender to the Spanish throne.
Of all the royal pretenders thronging Europe after the Second World War, the Spanish seemed to have the best chance of regaining a throne. For, in theory, Spain was a monarchy once more. In 1947 General Franco (who since the Civil War had ruled Spain) introduced a Succession Law whereby Spain was declared to be 'a kingdom in accordance with tradition'. On the death or incapacity of Franco, his position as Head of State would be filled by 'a person of Royal Blood' who would have to be male, Spanish, Catholic and over thirty years of age. It was generally assumed that this monarch would be – not Don Juan of whose candidacy Franco did not seem to approve, but his son – Prince Juan Carlos. Consequently, with his father's somewhat reluctant permission, this personable young prince was groomed by Franco for his future role. As Queen Ena's grandson, the next monarch of Spain would therefore be the great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria.
Yet another link was forged between two branches of Queen Victoria's family when, in the spring of 1962, this future King of Spain was married to the Greek princess, Sophie. For as Prince Juan Carlos was the grandson of Queen Ena of Spain, so was Princess Sophie the granddaughter of Queen Sophie of the Hellenes. The couple were thus both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. Their wedding in Athens, stage-managed by the bride's redoubtable mother, Queen Frederika of the Hellenes, had all the glitter of a pre-war royal occasion. Notable amongst the galaxy of kings and queens was the imposing figure of Queen Ena of Spain.
Married, Juan Carlos and Sophie took up residence in the little palace of Zarzuela in Madrid. In 1968, having already had two daughters, Princess Sophie gave birth to a son.
For the christening of this little prince, Queen Ena returned to Spain for a few days. Not for thirty-seven years had she set foot in this country where she had reigned for quarter of a century. Queen Ena had turned eighty a few months before but she was still a handsome woman, erect, dignified and elegant. What, one wonders, were her thoughts on coming back to this violent and sun-scorched land? A bomb had marked the start of her life in Spain; a revolution had ended it. Was she gratified at having lived long enough to see the dynasty once more established?
Queen Ena lived on for only a short while after her visit to Spain. In April 1969, she died in Lausanne. She was in her eighty-second year. Born in the year of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, before any of the Queen's descendants had come to occupy a throne, Queen Ena had lived to see the full flowering of her grandmother's matriarchy. During the course of Ena's long lifetime, the thrones of Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece had been occupied by Queen Victoria's children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And in that lifetime, too, more than half these thrones had fallen.
EPILOGUE
The Matriarchy Today
1
Today, there are seven monarchies in Europe. They are Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and that kingdom without a king, Spain. In five of these seven monarchies, the ruling families are directly descended from Queen Victoria. The Queen's great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, reigns in Great Britain. Her great-grandson, King Olav IV (the son of Queen Maud) reigns in Norway. In Sweden, on the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf, Queen Victoria's great-great-grandson, Crown Prince Carl Gustaf (grandson of the Swedish King and his first wife, Princess Margaret of Connaught) will become King. With the death of King Frederick IX of Denmark in 1972, Victoria's great-great-granddaughter Margrethe became the reigning Queen of Denmark. In Spain, her great-great-grandson Prince Juan Carlos has already been sworn in as the future monarch.
In one of the two monarchies in which the dynasties are not directly descended from Queen Victoria – the Netherlands and Belgium – the relationship to the Queen's family is close. The founder of the Belgian royal family was Queen Victoria's uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Thus, of all the remaining reigning houses of Europe, only the Dutch is not closely related to Queen Victoria's family. If the old Queen's matriarchy has shrunk somewhat, it is, proportionately, no less all-pervading.
What, if any, are the advantages of this closely-woven dynastic web? Today, other than to the members of the dynasties themselves, they are negligible. To a greater or lesser degree, present-day monarchs have been stripped of all personal power, or even influence, in affairs of state. The fact that one monarch is a second cousin once removed to the monarch of a neighbouring country has not the slightest bearing on the political relationship between the two countries.
But then, this was hardly less true during the years that Queen Victoria's matriarchy was at its apogee. At one time seven of Queen Victoria's grandchildren sat on important European thrones: they were King George V of Great Britain, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Empress Alexandra of Russia, Queen Maud of Norway, Queen Sophie of the Hellenes, Queen Marie of Romania and Queen Ena of Spain. Ironically, the period during which all seven of these first cousins were enthroned at the same time was from 1915 to 1917; the middle years of the First World War. Nothing could more vividly illustrate the irrelevance of these close family relationships than this.
The unfortunate fact was that the spread of Queen Victoria's matriarchy coincided, almost exactly, with the growth of nationalism in Europe. During the second half of the nineteenth century the various countries of Europe became increasingly and aggressively nationalistic. The old Europe of little kingdoms and duchies and principalities, with their dynastic rather than their nationalistic allegiances, was replaced by half a dozen or so rigid power blocs. Men thought of themselves as Englishmen or Germans or Italians rather than
as subjects of a reigning house. The state had become more important than the sovereign.
Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, had at one time imagined that a great royal caste – a set of upright, enlightened and conscientious rulers – would ensure political, social and international stability. How much more effective would this not be if these model sovereigns were not only friends, but relations? Surely this would guarantee the peace of Europe? But, of course, not only could model princes not be made to order but, with the growth of ever more powerful national states, each competing with the other, the idea of a great royal clan became obsolete. By 1914 it did not much matter whether a king were good or bad; and it certainly did not matter that he was a first cousin to half the other kings of Europe.
Yet the fact that Queen Victoria's descendants occupied almost all the thrones of Europe was not entirely without significance. This flock of English and half-English princesses introduced more than just chintzes and nannies and rice puddings into the royal households of the Continent. They 'made their presence felt in every Court of Europe,' wrote the astute Infanta Eulalia, 'where English is talked freely, and where English, influence, secret or otherwise, is never absent from the family life of the Royal Houses. In short, if the private history of the Courts and aristocracy of Europe were written, it would surprise many people to know the important parts played in both by certain English women.'