Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Viana’s antipathy toward Ena stemmed from an excessive prejudice against foreigners. Scornful as he was, Ena epitomized all that he disliked in non-Spaniards. Sadly for Ena, because Viana was one of King Alfonso’s closest and most trusted friends, it was difficult to dislodge the marquis from his favored position at court. Viana’s very proximity to the monarch made him all the more of a trial to the long-suffering queen. In time, Ena would be unable to contain her anger, leading to a devastating final confrontation between the two enemies.

  Two further friends of King Alfonso also brought their share of mischief and grief into Ena’s life. One was Doña Sol, sister of the premier grandee of Spain. The second female confidante and bane of Ena’s existence turned out to be none other than her first cousin, Beatrice, who also happened to be Queen Marie of Romania’s sister.

  Like Doña Sol, Beatrice relished intrigue. Once she had married into the royal family in 1909 by becoming the wife of Alfonso’s cousin, the Infante Alfonso (“Ali”), opportunities for wreaking havoc in Ena’s life proved too tempting. Ali’s marriage to the Protestant Beatrice was frowned upon by many in Spain. King Alfonso had to bow to pressure and express disapproval for the marriage, which meant that Ali and Beatrice lived for a time in exile. When the couple returned to Spain in 1912 and were welcomed into the family fold, Beatrice’s intrigues against Ena took off. Though rumor had it that a jealous Beatrice took her revenge on Ena for taking the Spanish crown away from her, it seems more plausible that Beatrice “needed a scapegoat for her husband’s discom-fitrue, and Ena, who had few friends at the rigid Spanish court, was the perfect victim.”

  Annoying and hurtful as King Alfonso’s numerous cronies and Ena’s enemies were, the queen would always view the Marquis de Viana as the most malevolent, for Viana took perverse pleasure in seeing his queen suffer. He never forgave Victoria Eugenie for being an Englishwoman, nor did he forgive the queen for lacking enough charms to keep Alfonso XIII from straying. The marquis cleverly manipulated the king in his quest to bring misery to Ena’s life. As one of the king’s aristocratic cronies, Pepe Viana had made himself indispensable. He carefully cultivated his friendship with the king, even managing to lay out the royal polo grounds, which were several miles away from the Madrid palace and commanded excellent views of the Guadarrama Mountains.

  As the man mainly responsible for seeing to it that Alfonso’s insatiable appetite for women was met, the queen deemed the marquis “her principal enemy at Court.” Ena saw through Viana, whom she rightly viewed with utter contempt. Not only did he poison minds against the queen, and procure women for Alfonso, but the marquis “did not neglect to cater for his own amusements.”17 Tension between Ena and this implacable enemy continued unabated through the years. Like the bull and the matador facing each other in a dance of death, a showdown between Queen Victoria Eugenie and the Marquis of Viana was imminent.

  Whether he indulged himself in Paris incognito or made the nocturnal rounds in Madrid’s “high-class” brothels, Spain’s playboy king found many women willing to offer their charms to the hot-blooded Alfonso XIII; few of those he set eyes on proved immune to the king’s legendary charms. Inevitably, Alfonso ended up siring several illegitimate children. No one knew the exact number, but rumors of numerous offspring abounded. Queen Maria Cristina touched upon this once, telling her sister, the Archduchess Maria Teresa, “If you had to pick out all the grandchildren credited to me, you would not live long enough to be able do so.”18 In spite of King Alfonso’s serial adultery, Ena did not give up on her marriage. Their marital relations did not completely break down, as her pregnancy in 1918 attests. This pregnancy, however, ended in a miscarriage.

  That King Alfonso had ample opportunity to listen to Queen Ena’s advice there is no doubt. For much of their married life, unhappy though they were, Alfonso often set aside time to spend with his long-suffering wife. Both lovers of the outdoors and keen sportspeople, they played tennis and golf together. Sometimes, the king would read out loud to the queen in English, in order to practice the language. Mindful of her husband’s military tastes, Ena would find English books for him on army matters and life in India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. As for her own reading, it tended toward serious works, especially English authors, but the queen also ventured into Spanish authors. She devoured all the works of Padre Luis Coloma, a Spanish Jesuit whose works, characterized by their defense of the faith, appealed to Spaniards espousing orthodox views of Catholicism. Ena even read one of the most famous authors of twentieth-century Spain, Vicente Blasco Ibañez, known for his anti-monarchist and pro-republican leanings. She appeared to have a greater appetite for reading than the king, who gravitated toward physical sports in his spare time.

  Among the best times for a tête-à-tête where political matters could be brought up at discretion occurred during that quintessential British habit of tea in the afternoon, which took place in Ena’s private sitting room. As the royal children grew older, they were invited to join their parents. Ena ensured that her sons and daughters were brought up along English lines, with plenty of opportunities for exercising outdoors. When asked about her ideas on rearing children, Queen Ena’s answer reflected her grandmother, Queen Victoria: “Plenty of fresh air and early to bed.” This predilection for fresh air irritated a number of her Spanish ladies, who were accustomed to hermetically sealed homes. They could not understand why the queen wanted her rooms aired or her insistence that the royal children take outdoor exercise no matter what the weather. Nor could some Spaniards understand Ena letting her daughters enjoy such vigorous sports as tennis—which Ena taught the infantas herself. Asked whether tennis might be unladylike, Ena replied: “I hope my girls will be ladies. I do not think tennis will interfere with that, but before all things I want them to be strong young women with healthy minds in healthy bodies.”19

  As the war progressed, Spain’s value to the Allied cause diminished. When Italy and Portugal entered the war on the Entente side, the Allies were able to adopt a strategy of “wait and negotiate from a position of strength” toward Spain.20 This served to ease the pressure on King Alfonso to throw in his lot with the Allied cause and permitted him to devote a good deal of his energy to helping prisoners of war. Queen Ena’s husband, and by extension Ena herself, did not feel the kind of intense pressure exerted by the Allies and Eleutherios Venizelos on King Constantine and Queen Sophie. Just how much longer the Greek monarchy could withstand the multi-pronged attack was anyone’s guess.

  Twenty

  BELEAGUERED AND BETRAYED

  THE FATE OF NEUTRAL GREECE AND THE ROYAL FAMILY WAS OF GREAT interest to Crown Princess Margaret (“Daisy”) of Sweden, another of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters. “Here,” wrote Daisy from Sweden, “we are anxiously awaiting news from Greece…the Balkan question seems as much in a muddled state now as ever it has been in bygone years & that is saying a good deal!”1 Mossy was equally concerned about Queen Sophie’s plight, telling a friend, “you can imagine how much I worry about my sister and the horrible position they are in.”2

  Mossy and Daisy were right to fret about Greece, for the country was split into two irreconcilable camps pitting the followers of Venizelos against those of King Constantine. After the Allied troops poured into the northern Greek city of Salonika and entrenched themselves, Venizelos established a provisional government there, acting as a rival to King Constantine’s leadership in Athens. This forced the Greek Army to take sides: either switch over to the Venizelist camp or remain loyal to the royalist side. Heading the Allied forces in Salonika was the heavy-handed anti-monarchist French general M.-P.-E. Sarrail, who thought nothing of interfering in Greek affairs to the detriment of the royalists.

  The plight of Queen Sophie resonated with her Russian counterpart, Tsarina Alexandra. Both were in the middle of a vicious campaign to blacken their reputations with allegations of being pro-German. When one of Sophie’s brothers-in-law, Prince Christopher, visited Alix in Russia, Greece was the
main topic of conversation. Alix then told Nicholas II, in her convoluted English, that Prince Christopher “Says untrue all one said about Sophie [that she was a traitor to Greece], she kept herself very quietly & did not scream out her feelings, never left the country. “3

  The Tsarina of Russia was full of sympathy for the plight of her cousins, Sophie and Tino. In letters to the tsar, Alexandra vented her frustration over Allied policy toward Greece. One letter went: “Why on earth this ultimatum to Greece, for sure England & France are at the bottom of it—to my simple mind, it seems unjust & hard—cannot imagine how Tino will get out of it & it may harm his popularity”4 In another, the tsarina laments, “what on earth is going on in Greece—looks like a revolution impending, God forbid—the allies [sic] fault then, alas!”5 How tragic that Alexandra Feodorovna could sense an impending revolution in Greece, but was blind to the revolution brewing within Russia because of her refusal to let go of Rasputin and her incompetent governance of the empire.

  When another of King Constantine’s brothers, Prince Nicholas, visited Petro-grad in the summer of 1916, his talk with Alexandra served to convince her even more that she was correct in her assessment of the Greek situation. The prince had been sent on his mission to Petrograd (When war broke out in August 1914, St. Petersburg was thought to be too German-sounding, so the name was changed to the more Russian-sounding Petrograd.) as a personal emissary of Constantine. The king decided on this move because he saw that his own explanations to the Allied representatives in Greece were getting him nowhere. Since Nicholas was married to a Romanov grand duchess, he seemed a logical choice for the mission. Queen Sophie’s brother-in-law met with a sympathetic tsar, who assured the prince, “I have entire confidence in Tino; I know how true and loyal he is. I trust him implicitly. I shall do all I can for him.”

  King Constantine’s other brother, Prince Andrew, meanwhile, was despatched to Paris and London. Nothing came of their visits. Prince Andrew even met with hostility in London. On a visit to the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, Andrew was told point-blank, “what can we expect when your Queen is the sister of the Kaiser?” Andrew replied that “he did not think anybody had the right to ruin a country because of the relationship of its Queen.”7

  Tsarina Alexandra proved more amenable. The Greek predicament struck a sympathetic chord with Alexandra, prompting her to report to the tsar: “I must own that the diplomats of the allies have blundered very often, as usual; in upholding that Veniselos [sic] we may come to grief. Tino thinks that perservering [sic] in this way the allies may force the dynastical question to rise & that might be playing with fire—for no reason.”8 Alexandra was right. King Constantine was thinking the same thing, for he was under no illusions, saying, “I am playing a very dangerous game, but I am convinced that I am right, otherwise I would not act as I am doing.”9

  With passions running high, it was inevitable that attempts would be made on the lives of Queen Sophie and King Constantine. One such incident occurred in July 1916, at the royal family’s summer retreat of Tatoi, not far from Athens. This sprawling estate, with its hilly terrain and forests of pine trees, offered a respite from the dust and heat of the capital. But the summer was a hot one, with temperatures in the shade reaching a scorching 100-plus degrees. Knowing how much the royal family enjoyed Tatoi, a number of their enemies acted on a plan to eliminate them there.

  The arsonists set out on a murderous rampage in the early morning of 14 July In no time, the forests around Tatoi had erupted in a blazing inferno. King Con-stantine and his party, trapped in the conflagration, found themselves with minutes to spare as they stared at columns of flames and breathed the acrid smoke. Fortunately, the king was able to direct his men to safety. But in the ensuing rush to escape, Constantine fell. The king’s life was spared thanks to two aides who carried him off as they fled. Some of those accompanying Constantine were not so lucky. Cut off from the rest of the party, they found themselves trapped. Tragically, these men, eighteen in all, perished in the fire, some burnt beyond recognition.

  Queen Sophie, who had accompanied Constantine by car, was separated from the other members of the group and also found herself trapped, the flames heading toward her with great speed. But Sophie was clutching her three-year-old daughter, Princess Katherine, and the instinct for self-preservation drove her to outrun death. She almost fainted from exhaustion; but mother and child survived.

  In Tsarina Alexandra’s eyes, what Russia needed was firmness. And if Nicky could not provide that, Alix would see to it that she helped Nicholas rule the way Russia needed to be ruled. Alexandra’s pleas for Nicholas to assert himself first came to the fore during World War I. In one letter she pressed her husband on: “You are Autocrat & they dare not forget it.”10 In another: “Play the Emperor! Remember you are the Autocrat. Speak to your Ministers as their Master.…Be like Peter the Great.…Crush them all. No, don’t laugh, you naughty child. I so long to see you treat in this way those who try to govern you, when it is you who should govern them.” The tsar did not mind being upbraided by his wife. He wrote back: “My Darling…Tender thanks for the severe reprimand in writing. I read it with a smile because you talk to me as to a child.” His letter closed: “I…remain your ‘poor, little, weak husband.’ “11

  Unlike Queen Marie of Romania’s steadying and wise influence on King Ferdinand, which was tolerated and even encouraged, Tsarina Alexandra’s misguided influence on the tsar was resented and condemned. This was largely due to that arch intriguer, Rasputin. It was he—claimed the chorus of the tsarina’s enemies— along with Alexandra herself, who was responsible for the mess Russia was in. One needed a score card to keep track of who was in and out of power where government ministers were concerned, thanks to that meddlesome duo. In fact, between 1915 and 1917, “Russia had four prime ministers, five ministers of the interior, four ministers of religion, four ministers of justice, three ministers of agriculture, three foreign ministers, and four ministers of war. Twenty-six men held these seven positions over a twenty-month period.” Yet out of all these, “only four ministerial positions may have changed hands due to Rasputin.”12

  Alexandra’s letters to Nicholas certainly contain numerous references to their “friend” and how the tsar should do what he advised. But a closer examination of the evidence suggests, as one historian has pointed out, that:

  When key political appointments were concerned, however, it is very doubtful whether the absence of Rasputin would have made any significant difference. Given the course which Nicholas was steering, suitable candidates for key government offices were few and far between and it is easy to point to influences other than Rasputin’s advice which resulted in the appointment of individuals to top positions. Even in 1915-16 what really mattered about Rasputin was not his actual political influence but the fatal impact he had on the monarchy’s prestige.13

  In a number of instances Rasputin was not so much influencing the tsarina as she was looking to him for confirmation of what she wanted to hear. Rasputin was clever enough to capitalize on this. Alexandra then foolishly thought that every word that came out of Rasputin’s mouth was advice he was getting from God; many a time, the staretz was telling the tsarina only what he knew she would be receptive to hearing. She then passed his words on the to tsar as orders to be executed without question.

  The Alexandra/Rasputin dynamic has some eerie parallels with the Queen Victoria/John Brown episode. From the 1860s to the 1880s, Victoria’s Highland servant played a preeminent role in the queen’s life, so much so that the queen became known, disparagingly, as “Mrs. Brown.” These were bleak years in the queen’s personal life, when Victoria purposefully shut herself away from the public’s gaze after the death of her beloved Albert. Her self-enforced purdah behind the walls of Balmoral, Windsor, and Osborne House had similar parallels in Alexandra’s self-imposed isolation at Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof, and Livadia.

  Like Rasputin, Brown offended many by his loutish behavior, drunkenness
, and overfamiliarity with Queen Victoria, who could see no wrong in this man of the lower classes. This view may have stemmed largely from the fact that Brown never profited from his close association with Victoria. It was the same with Rasputin and Alexandra. Neither Brown nor Rasputin cared for the trappings of personal wealth, and this made their attachment to their sovereigns all the more genuine in each woman’s eyes.

  The war now took on the tone of a crusade against Germany and all things German. Headlines in Russian papers commonly cited a “Holy War”; and The Times maintained that “this war is holy to every one, and its motto is—getting rid of the German spirit in life.”14

  As Russia’s fortunes plummeted, the tsarina’s close association with Rasputin laid her open to charges of mental instability and treachery. The tsarina from Germany came close to sharing the same fate as the Austrian-born Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, whose portrait hung in Tsarskoe Selo. Of all the calumnies heaped upon the tsarina, the most devastating, and certainly the most unfounded, was the accusation that she was pro-German. In fact, though a German princess by birth, her personal inclinations and her upbringing were thoroughly English. Not for nothing was she a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and a favored one at that.

  Maurice Paléologue, France’s ambassador to Russia from 1914 to 1917, was firmly convinced of the tsarina’s devotion to Russia, noting in his diary that “Alexandra Feodorovna is German neither in mind nor spirit and has never been so.…In her inmost being she has become entirely Russian…I have no doubt of her patriotism.…Her love for Russia is deep and true. And why should she not be devoted to her adopted country which stands for everything dear to her as woman, wife, sovereign and mother?”15