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

by Julia P. Gelardi

  Princess Alice of Albany, For My Grandchildren: Some Reminiscences of H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (London: Evans Brothers, 1966), p. 74.

  Marfa Mouchanow, My Empress (New York: John Lane Co., 1928), p. 91.

  Edgar T. S. Dugdale, Maurice de Bunsen: Diplomat and Friend (London: John Murray, 1934), p. 164.

  Empress Frederick to Queen Victoria, 9 July 1897, in Ramm, ed., Beloved and Darling Child, p. 217.

  Diary entry of Grand Duchess Xenia, 14 June 1899, in Maylunas and Mironenko, eds., Lifelong Passion, p. 185.

  Queen Victoria to Tsar Nicholas II, 2–14 July 1899, in Alia Barkovets and Valentina Tenikhina, Nicholas II: The Imperial Family (St. Petersburg: Abris Publishers, 1999), p. 14.

  Tsar Nicholas II to Tsarina Alexandra, 10 July 1899, in Maylunas and Mironenko, eds., Lifelong Passion, p. 188.

  Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 554.

  Empress Frederick to Queen Victoria, 10 February 1900, in Ramm, ed., Beloved and Darling Child, p. 246.

  Queen Victoria to the Empress Frederick, [20 December 1899], in ibid., p. 241.

  Lee, ed., Empress Frederick Writes to Sophie, p. 308.

  Pakula, Last Romantic, pp. 108, 123.

  Paul D. Quinlan, The Playboy King: Carol II of Romania (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), p. 17.

  Ibid.

  Ibid.

  Ibid.

  Queen Marie of Romania, My Life, vol. I, p. 19.

  Marino Gómez Santos, La Reina Victoria Eugenia, de Cerca (Madrid: Afrodisio Aguado, 1969), p. 21.

  Jerrold M. Packard, Farewell in Splendour: The Passing of Queen Victoria and Her Age (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1995), p. 206.

  de Vilmorin, “The Queen of Spain’s Own Story,” Chatelaine, p. 94.

  Tony Rennell, Last Days of Glory: The Death of Queen Victoria (London: Viking, 2000), p. 263.

  Vilmorin, “The Queen of Spain’s Own Story,” Chatelaine, p. 94.

  The Times, 3 February 1901.

  The Times, 26 January 1901.

  Buxhoeveden, Alexandra Feodorovna, p. 90.

  Queen Marie, My Life, vol. I, pp. 74–75.

  Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 59.

  Møller, Dronning Maud, p. 42.

  Vilmorin, “The Queen of Spain’s Own Story,” Chatelaine, p. 93.

  Queen Marie, My Life, vol. I, p. 19.

  PART II

  SEVEN: SPLENDID ISOLATION

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 271.

  Queen Victoria to Princess Victoria of Hesse, 2 February 1887, in Hough, ed., Advice to My Grand-Daughter, p. 86.

  Count Paul Vassili (a.k.a. Princess Catherine Radziwill), Confessions of the Czarina (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1918), p. 52.

  Diary entry of Grand Duchess Xenia, 5 June 1901, in Maylunas and Mironenko, eds., Lifelong Passion, p. 206.

  Daily Mail, 19 June 1901.

  Tsarina Alexandra to the Reverend William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 29 December 1902/11 January 1903, Add. MSS 46721/239, The British Library.

  Count Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte, ed. Sidney Harcave (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), p. 360.

  Lee, ed., Empress Frederick Writes to Sophie, p. 337.

  Ibid., pp. 309–10.

  Interview with Lady Katharine Brandram, 2 May 2001, Marlow, Bucks.

  Letter of Crown Princess Sophie of Greece, 26 August 1901, private collection.

  Ponsonby, ed., Letters of the Empress Frederick, pp. 468–69.

  Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 74.

  Queen Marie of Romania, My Life, vol. I, p. 15.

  Tsarina Alexandra to the Reverend William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 29 December 1902/11 January 1903, Add. MSS 46721/239, The British Library.

  Ibid.

  Maurice Paléologue, Ambassador’s Memoirs. Vol. I (London: Hutchinson, 1927), p. 321.

  Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 243.

  Lieven, Nicholas II, p. 163.

  Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 313.

  Queen Victoria to the Crown Princess of Prussia, 16 July 1867, in Hibbert, ed., Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, p. 199.

  EIGHT: EMBATTLED BUT NOT DEFEATED

  Queen Marie of Romania, My Life, vol. II, p. 177.

  Ibid., p. 178.

  Harper, Letters and Poems of Queen Elisabeth, p. 157.

  Queen Marie, My Life, vol. II, p. 179.

  The acerbic Nancy Astor (1879–1964) met her match in Winston Churchill. During a famous exchange of words at Blenheim Palace, Nancy shouted, “If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee.” To which, the equally blistering Churchill shot back, “And if I were your husband, I would drink it.” See Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), pp. 204–05.

  Crown Princess Marie of Romania to Nancy Shaw, 27 February 1906, Astor Papers, University of Reading.

  Crown Princess Marie of Romania to Nancy Shaw, 8 April 1906, Astor Papers, University of Reading.

  Maurice Collis, Nancy Astor (London: Faber & Faber, 1960), p. 42.

  James Fox, The Langhorne Sisters (London: Granta Books, 1999), p. 96.

  Queen Marie, “Is Royal Blood a Blessing?” (1926) in Queen Marie of Romania Papers, Kent State University.

  Tsarina Alexandra to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, 17 March 1904, in Roderick R. McLean, “Kaiser Wilhelm II and His Hessian Cousins: Intra-state Relations in the German Empire and International Dynastic Politics, 1890–1918,” German History, vol. 19, no. 1 (2001), p. 43.

  Buxhoeveden, Alexandra Feodorovna, p. 109.

  Ibid., pp. 108–09.

  Daily Mail, 25 January 1901.

  Hardinge, Old Diplomacy, p. 51.

  Princess Anne-Marie Callimachi, Yesterday Was Mine (London: Falcon Press, 1952), p. 49.

  Rosemary and Donald Crawford, Michael and Natasha: The Life and Love of the Last Tsar of Russia (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997), p. 43.

  Callimachi, Yesterday Was Mine, p. 51.

  Gordon Brooks-Shepherd, Royal Sunset: The European Dynasties and the Great War (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1987), p. 235.

  Roger Fulford, Hanover to Windsor (London: Collins, 1970), p. 155.

  Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), pp. 19, 49.

  Ibid., p. 19.

  See Maria Teresa Puga Eusebio Ferrer, Victoria Eugenia: Esposa de Alfonso XIII (Barcelona: Editorial Juventud, 1999), p. 32; and Fernando Gonzalez-Doria, Las Reinas de España (Madrid: Editorial Bitacora, 1989), p. 577.

  David Chavchavadze, The Grand Dukes (New York: Atlantic International Publications, 1990), p. 235.

  NINE: THE FACADE CRUMBLES

  Edward Crankshaw, Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia’s Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917 (New York: Viking Press, 1976), p. 329.

  Mouchanow, My Empress, p. 155.

  Diary entry of Tsar Nicholas II, 8 September 1904, in Harrison E. Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow: Russia’s Revolutions, 1905–1917 (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1977), p. 110.

  Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 113.

  W. Bruce Lincoln, In War’s Dark Shadow: The Russians Before the Great War (New York: Dial Press, 1983), p. 295.

  Ibid., p. 297.

  Witte, Memoirs, p. 480.

  Ibid.

  McLean, “Kaiser Wilhelm,” German History (2001), p. 44.

  Salisbury, Black Night, p. 160.

  Witte, Memoirs, p. 604.

  Grand Duke Alexander, Once a Grand Duke, p. 225.

  Tsar Nicholas II to Empress Marie, 19 October 1905, in Bing, ed., Tsar Nicholas and Empress Marie, pp. 188–89.

  Salisbury, Black Night, p. 162.

  Tuchman, Proud Tower, p. 50.

  Salisbury, Black Night, p. 161.

  Anna Viroubova, Memories of the Russian Court (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923), p. 17.

  Elizabeth Narishkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars: The Memoirs of the Lady-in-Waiting Elizabeth Narishkin-Kurakin, ed. Re
né Fülöp-Miller (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1931, p. 190.

  Count V. N. Kokovtsov, Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, trans. Laura Matveev, ed. H. H. Fisher (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1935), pp. 130–31.

  Grand Duke Alexander, Once a Grand Duke, p. 227.

  Diary entry of Grand Duchess Xenia, 30 April 1906, in Maylunas and Mironenko, eds., Lifelong Passion, p. 293.

  Cecil Spring Rice to Sir Edward Grey, 9 May 1906, in D. C. B. Lieven, Kenneth Bourne, and D. C. Watt, eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part I, from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the First World War. Series A, Russia 1859–1914. Vol. 4: 1906–1907, ed. Dominic Lieven (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983), Document 38.

  Ibid.

  Tim Greve, Haakon VII of Norway: Founder of a New Monarchy (London: Hurst, 1983), p. 24.

  Salisbury, Black Night, p. 180.

  Narishkin-Kurakin: Under Three Tsars, p. 192.

  Buxhoeveden, Alexandra Feodorovna, p. 126.

  Pierre Gilliard, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1921), p. 26.

  From Anna Viroubova’s Unpublished Memoirs, quoted in Yuri Shelayev, Elizabeth She-layeva, and Nicholas Semenov, Nicholas Romanov: Life and Death (St. Petersburg: Liki Rossii, 1998), p. 43.

  TEN: DESTINY BECKONS

  Robert Sencourt, The Spanish Crown, 1808–1931: An Intimate Chronicle of a Hundred Years (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), p. 275.

  Vicente R. Pilapil, Alfonso XIII (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1969), p. 94.

  Noel, Ena, p. 43.

  Ibid., p. 53.

  Pilapil, Alfonso XIII, p. 33.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, 26 June 1905, no. 54 in Ministerio de Obras Publicas, Transportes y Medio Ambiente, Secretaria General de Comunicacion Organismo Autonomo Correos y Telegrafos y Patrimonio Nacional, eds., Correspondencia Epistolar de la Princesa Victoria Eugenia de Battemberg al Rey Alfonso XIII, 1905–1906 (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1993), p. 21.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, undated, no. 12 in ibid., p. 26.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, undated, no. 45 in ibid., p. 35.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, undated, no. 10 in ibid., p. 26.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII of Spain, 5 December 1905, no. 11 in ibid., p. 24.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII, 31 December 1905, no. 48 in ibid., p. 36.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII, 10 January 1906, no. 78 in ibid., p. 38.

  Angeles Hijano, Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg: Una Reina Exiliada (1887–1969) (Madrid: Alderabán Ediciones, 2000), p. 69.

  Kellogg Durland, Royal Romances To-day (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1912), p. 18.

  Ferrer, Victoria Eugenia, p. 75.

  Sir Sidney Lee, King Edward VII: A Biography. Vol. II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), p. 513.

  E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968), p. 20.

  Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 204.

  Ricardo de la Cierva, Alfonso y Victoria: Las Tramas Íntimas, Secretas y Europeas de Un Reinado Desconocido (Madrid: Editorial Fénix, 2001), p. 189.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII, 20 February 1906, in ibid., p. 190.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII, 21 February 1906, in ibid.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to King Alfonso XIII, 22 February 1906, in ibid.

  Hijano, Victoria Eugenia, pp. 61-62.

  de la Cierva, Alfonso y Victoria, p. 193.

  Hijano, Victoria Eugenia, p. 62.

  Ibid.

  Ferrer, Victoria Eugenia, p. 78.

  Noel, Ena, pp. 71, 75.

  Santos, Victoria Eugenia, pp. 71–72.

  Princess Beatrice to Louisa, Lady Antrim, 16 February 1906, MSS D/4091/B/3/1/5, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

  Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to Mrs. Oglander, 11 April 1906, MSS OG/CC/2208 (103/177), Oglander Papers, Isle of Wight County Record Office.

  Møller, Dronning Maud, pp. 59-60.

  Lee, Edward VII, vol. II, p. 317.

  Roderick R. Mclean, Royalty and Diplomacy in Europe, 1890–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 118.

  Lee, Edward VII, vol. II, p. 318.

  The Family Herald (May 1903), p. 777.

  John Van der Kiste, Northern Crowns: The Kings of Modern Scandinavia (Stroud, Glos.: Sutton Publishing, 1996), p. 38.

  Lee, Edward VII, vol. II, p. 321.

  Kjellberg, Dronning Maud, p. 31.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 403.

  Empress Marie to Tsar Nicholas II, 1 November 1905, in Bing, ed., Tsar Nicholas and Empress Marie, p. 194.

  The Times, 20 November 1905.

  The Times, 22 November 1905.

  Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 193.

  Salisbury, Black Night, p. 208.

  Dostoevsky quoted in Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 54. See also Salisbury, Black Night, p. 208, and Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 194.

  Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, pp. 130–31.

  Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 100.

  Paléologue, Ambassador’s Memoirs, p. 292.

  ELEVEN: BAPTISM OF FIRE

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 398.

  Durland, Royal Romances, p. 21.

  Albert Frederick Calvert, The Spanish Royal Wedding (Taunton, Devon: Privately printed, 1906), p. 86.

  Dugdale, Maurice de Bunsen, pp. 218–19.

  Calvert, Royal Wedding pp. 26-27.

  William Miller Collier, At the Court of His Catholic Majesty (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1912), pp. 138, 151.

  Petrie, King Alfonso XIII, p. 88.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 400.

  H.R.H. Princess Pilar of Bavaria and Major Desmond Chapman-Houston, Don Alfonso XIII: A Study of Monarchy (London: John Murray, 1931), p. 128.

  Calvert, Royal Wedding p. 260.

  Noel, Ena, p. 95.

  E. Thornton Cook and Catherine Moran, Royal Daughters (London: Heath Cranton, 1935), p. 171.

  Collier, ed., Victorian Diarist, pp. 168–69.

  Calvert, Royal Wedding p. 266.

  Collier, ed., Victorian Diarist, p. 167.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 401.

  Noel, Ena, p. 101.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 401.

  Paul Cambon, letter of 2 June 1906, in Correspondance 1870–1924. Vol. II (Paris: Grasset, 1940), p. 218.

  Queen Victoria Eugenie to the Rev. William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 2 June 1906, Add. MSS 46722/71, The British Library.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 401 (“As for me, I am so much accustomed to this sort of thing”).

  Noel, Ena, p. 104.

  Princess Beatrice to the Rev. William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 14 June 1906, Add. MSS 46721/161, The British Library.

  Noel, Ena, p. 101.

  Durland, Royal Romances, p. 39.

  Princess Beatrice to Louisa, Lady Antrim, 9 June 1906, MSS D/4091/B/3/1, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

  Queen Victoria Eugenie to Mrs. Paget, 22 June 1906, Paget Papers, Add. MSS 43830, The British Library.

  TWELVE: NORWAY S ENGLISH QUEEN

  Mary Bronson Hartt, “Haakon VII, The New King of Norway,” The Outlook, 23 June 1906,pp. 464-65.

  The Times, 27 November 1905.

  Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra, p. 256.

  Van der Kiste, Edward VII’s Children, p. 108.

  Hartt, “Haakon VII,” The Outlook, p. 470.

  Van der Kiste, Edward VII’s Children, p. 109.

  The Times, 23 June 1906.

  Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, p. 403.

  Van der Kiste, Northern Cr
owns, p. 56.

  Hartt, “Haakon VII,” The Outlook, p. 464.

  Sir Frederick Ponsonby Recollections of Three Reigns (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1952), p. 276.

  Hartt, “Haakon VII,” The Outlook, p. 468.

  Ibid., p. 469.

  Queen Victoria Eugenie to the Rev. William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 13 January 1907,Add. MSS 46722/73, The British Library.

  Joan Kennard to John H. Oglander, 6 April 1907, MSS OG/CC/2258 (103/228), Oglan-der Papers, Isle of Wight Record Office.

  John H. Oglander to Florence Oglander, 17 March 1907, MSS OG/CC/2255A (107/57), Oglander Papers, Isle of Wight Record Office.

  Noel, Ena, p. 135.

  Collier, His Catholic Majesty, p. 231.

  Illustrated London News, 1 June 1907.

  Collier, His Catholic Majesty, p. 234.

  Ibid., pp. 235, 241.

  Princess Henry of Battenberg to the Rev. William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, 14 May 1907, Add. MSS 46721/168, The British Library.

  THIRTEEN: REVOLUTIONARY FEVER

  General Report on Roumania for the Year 1907 in Kenneth Bourne, D. Cameron Watt, and John F. V Keiger, eds., British Documents on Foreign Affairs (cited hereafter as BDFA), Part I, Series F: Europe, 1848–1914. Vol. 16: Montenegro, 1914; Romania, 1878–1914, ed. John F. V Keiger (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987), Document 28.

  Pakula, Last Romantic, p. 149.

  Callimachi, Yesterday Was Mine, p. 138.

  Pakula, Last Romantic, p. 161.

  Callimachi, Yesterday Was Mine, p. 139.

  Terence Elsberry Marie of Romania: The Intimate Life of a Twentieth-Century Queen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), p. 86.

  Sir Conynham Greene to Sir Edward Grey, Inclosure, Annual Report on Roumania for the Year 1906, in BDFA, Part I, Series F, vol. 16, Document 26.

  R. W. Seton-Watson, A History of Roumanians: From Roman Times to the Completion of Unity (New York: Archon Books, 1963), pp. 469–70.

  Anthony Di Iorio, “Italy and Rumania in 1914: The Italian Assessment of the Rumanian Situation, 1907 to 1914,” in Rumanian Studies: An International Annual of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol. IV: 1976–1979 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), p. 130.

  Crown Princess Marie of Romania to Nancy Astor, 6 April 1907 (though inadvertently dated 1906 by Marie), Astor Papers, University of Reading.

  Sir Francis Elliot and A. Young to Sir Edward Grey, Annual Report on Greece for 1909, 14 February, 1910, in Kenneth Bourne, D. Cameron Watt, and John F. V Keiger, eds., BDFA, Part I, Series F: Europe, 1848–1914. Vol. 14: Greece, 1847–1914, ed. David Stevenson and John F. V Keiger (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987), Document 55.