The Life of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. Conclusion

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Albert-Edward Prince of Wales, Balfour, Ceasar, Emperor of India, France, George I of Greece, German Emperor Wilhelm II, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Queen Alexandra

When Queen Victoria died on January 22, 1901, Edward became King of the United Kingdom, Emperor of India and, in an innovation, King of the British Dominions. He chose to reign under the name of Edward VII, instead of Albert Edward—the name his mother had intended for him to use—declaring that he did not wish to “undervalue the name of Albert” and diminish the status of his father with whom the “name should stand alone”.

The numeral VII was occasionally omitted in Scotland, even by the national church, in deference to protests that the previous Edwards were English kings who had “been excluded from Scotland by battle”. J. B. Priestley recalled, “I was only a child when he succeeded Victoria in 1901, but I can testify to his extraordinary popularity. He was in fact the most popular king England had known since the earlier 1660s.”

As king, Edward played a role in the modernisation of the British Home Fleet and the reorganisation of the British Army after the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. He re-instituted traditional ceremonies as public displays and broadened the range of people with whom royalty socialised.

He fostered good relations between Britain and other European countries, especially France, for which he was popularly called “Peacemaker”, but his relationship with his nephew, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, was poor.

The Edwardian era, which covered Edward’s reign and was named after him, coincided with the start of a new century and heralded significant changes in technology and society, including steam.

Death

Edward habitually smoked twenty cigarettes and twelve cigars a day. In 1907, a rodent ulcer, a type of cancer affecting the skin next to his nose, was cured with radium. Towards the end of his life he increasingly suffered from bronchitis.

He suffered a momentary loss of consciousness during a state visit to Berlin in February 1909. In March 1910, he was staying at Biarritz when he collapsed. He remained there to convalesce, while in London Asquith tried to get the Finance Bill passed.

The king’s continued ill health was unreported, and he attracted criticism for staying in France while political tensions were so high. On April 27, he returned to Buckingham Palace, still suffering from severe bronchitis. Alexandra returned from visiting her brother, King George I of Greece, in Corfu a week later on May 5.

On May 6, Edward suffered several heart attacks, but refused to go to bed, saying, “No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end.” Between moments of faintness, his son the Prince of Wales (shortly to be King George V) told him that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park that afternoon.

The king replied, “Yes, I have heard of it. I am very glad”: his final words. At 11:30 p.m. he lost consciousness for the last time and was put to bed. He died 15 minutes later. The Prince of Wales succeeded to the throne as King George V.

Alexandra refused to allow Edward’s body to be moved for eight days afterwards, though she allowed small groups of visitors to enter his room. On May 11, the late king was dressed in his uniform and placed in a massive oak coffin, which was moved on May 14 to the throne room, where it was sealed and lay in state, with a guardsman standing at each corner of the bier.

Despite the time that had elapsed since his death, Alexandra noted the King’s body remained “wonderfully preserved”. On the morning of May 17, the coffin was placed on a gun carriage and drawn by black horses to Westminster Hall, with the new king, his family and Edward’s favourite dog, Caesar, walking behind.

Following a brief service, the royal family left, and the hall was opened to the public; over 400,000 people filed past the coffin over the next two days. As Barbara Tuchman noted in The Guns of August, his funeral, held on May 20, 1910, marked “the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last.” A royal train conveyed the king’s coffin from London to Windsor Castle, where Edward VII was buried at St George’s Chapel.

June 26, 1914: Birth of Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark.

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Cristoph of Hesse, Duke of Edinburgh, Georg Wilhelm of Hanover, George I of Greece, Philip Mountbatten, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Royal Marriages Act 1772, Sophie of Greece and Denmark

Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark (June 26, 1914 – November 24, 2001) was the fourth child and youngest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. The Duke of Edinburgh is her younger brother. Sophie was born at the villa Mon Repos on the island of Corfu in Greece.

Prince and Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark

Family and youth

Sophie’s father was the fourth son of King George I of Greece and Grand Duchess Olga Konstantinovna of Russia. Through King George, she was a great-granddaughter of King Christian IX of Denmark (hence her subsidiary title, Princess of Denmark). Through Queen Olga, she was a great-great-granddaughter of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia.

Sophie was also a great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, through descent from Victoria’s second daughter, Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse.

Sophie was the closest sister in age to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the consort of Elizabeth II. Her three sisters were Margarita (1905–1981), she married Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. Theodora (1906-1969), married her paternal second cousin Berthold, Margrave of Baden. Cecile (1911-1937) and she married Georg-Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine.

Sophie of Greece and Denmark

In 1913 Sophie’s grandfather, King George I of Greece was assassinated and in 1917 most of the Greek royal family went into exile when her uncle, King Constantine I, was deposed in favour of his younger son, King Alexander I. The family returned to Greece upon the brief restoration of Constantine to the throne when Alexander died in 1920, but left again when he abdicated in 1922, inaugurating the even briefer reign of Constantine’s eldest son, George II.

Banished with King George II in 1924, the Greek monarchy was reinstated in 1935, by which time Sophie had married and was raising a family in Germany.

During these periods of exile Sophie, her parents, and siblings lived abroad in reduced, though never uncomfortable, circumstances, sometimes in hotels and sometimes with relatives in France, England or Germany. In the late 1920s, her mother, Alice, became increasingly mentally unstable and was committed to a series of sanitariums in Germany by her mother, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Marchioness of Milford Haven. Eventually released, Alice wandered Europe until, following the death in a plane crash of Sophie’s sister, Cecilie, in November 1937, she resumed contact with her children and took up a life dedicated to religious charity in Athens.

Meanwhile, Sophie’s father remained in contact with his children, but lived apart from them, settling in Monaco. Sophie and her sisters lived under the care and at the expense of relatives, all four princesses marrying German princes between December 1930 and August 1931. Their brother Philip, not yet 10 years old, was sent to various boarding schools and, later, to a British naval academy.

First marriage

Although the youngest of four sisters, Sophie was the first to wed, marrying her second cousin-once-removed Prince Christoph of Hesse (1901–1943) on December 15, 1930 in Kronberg, Hesse; she was 16. Christoph of Hesse was a younger son of Prince Friedich-Charles of Hesse and Princess Margaret of Prussia, Christoph was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria through her eldest daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, wife of Friedrich III, German Emperor. A director in the Third Reich’s Ministry of Air Forces and a commander in the German Air Reserves, Christoph held the rank of Oberführer in the Nazi SS. On October 7, 1943, he was killed in an airplane accident in a war zone of the Apennine mountains near Forlì, Italy. His body was found two days later.

Second marriage

Sophie’s second marriage was to Prince Georg-Wilhelm of Hanover (her second cousin through Christian IX and third cousin through Victoria, having also been a first cousin once removed of Sophie’s first husband, Christoph, in descent from Victoria, Princess Royal) on April 23, 1946 in Salem, Baden. Georg-Wilhelm was a younger son of Ernst-August III, Duke of Brunswick, who lost his duchy in 1918, and his consort, Princess Viktoria-Luise of Prussia, the only daughter of Wilhelm II, German Emperor.

Prince Georg-Wilhelm of Hanover

Monarch’s consent to marriage withheld

Sophie’s marriage to Georg-Wilhelm constitutes the only known case of permission to marry being withheld by the British sovereign from a descendant of King George II of Great Britain who had been obliged by the Royal Marriages Act 1772 to apply for royal consent to marry.

Although permission to marry had been granted by King George VI in 1937 to Georg-Wilhelm’s sister, Frederica of Hanover, future Queen of the Hellenes. When Sophie became engaged to Georg-Wilhelm, a German citizen, in 1945, the United Kingdom was at war with Germany.

When Georg-Wilhelm’s father, Ernst-August III, Duke of Brunswick and Head of the House of Hanover, submitted the request to marry on his son’s behalf—a formality his branch of George III’s descendants had continued to observe even after obtaining the German crowns of the Kingdom of Hanover (in 1837) and the Duchy of Brunswick (in 1913). Even though the dynastic titles and peerages of the Hanovers had been suspended since 1919, no British monarch had withheld marital authorisation from any kinsman or kinswoman who sought it.

Although there was apparently no question of officially denying the request, the British government advised the king that it would be of dubious “propriety” to give royal assent to his cousin’s application. George VI then unsuccessfully sought to have the Hanovers informally advised that the exigencies of war, rather than personal disapproval, prevented him from approving the marriage to Sophie (whose brother, Philip, became informally engaged to the King’s elder daughter, after years of courtship, a few months later).

Thus, no reply was made to the Duke of Brunswick’s correspondence, the couple wed without George VI’s consent, and after the war the practice of British monarchs receiving and acquiescing to requests to marry from the Hanovers resumed. At the time British officials reviewing the matter considered that the marriage and its issue would not be legitimate in the United Kingdom, having failed to obtain the prior consent of the King in Council.

The repeal of the Royal Marriage Act as part of implementation of the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 does not specifically address the unique position of the descendants of Sophie and Georg-Wilhelm’s marriage (deemed legal in Germany). The 2013 Act does not confer legitimacy upon the children of a marriage which formerly required approval under the Royal Marriage Act, if such approval was sought but not obtained. Nor does it confer succession rights upon a descendant of any marriage which has already transpired, if such rights were not already extant.

Later years and death

Until her death on November 24, 2001 in Munich, Sophie was a frequent visitor to her brother, Prince Philip and her sister-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II. She was a godmother to their son, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. Sophie was often seen at events such as the annual Windsor Horse Show in the presence of her brother and his family. She was survived by her second husband, seven of her eight children and her younger brother, Prince Philip.

Happy 99th Birthday to HRH The Duke of Edinburgh

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George I of Greece, Happy Birthday, King George VI of the United Kingdom, Prince Louis of Battenberg, Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, Princess Alice of Battenberg, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, June 10, 1921), is the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms.

HRH Duke of Edinburgh and HM Queen (official photo released in honor of the Duke of Edinburgh’s 99th birthday).

Ancestry

Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was born in Mon Repos on the Greek island of Corfu on June 10, 1921, the only son and fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. Prince Philip is a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, itself a Collateral branch of the House of Oldenburg, he was a prince of both Greece and Denmark by virtue of his patrilineal descent from George I of Greece and Christian IX of Denmark, and he was from birth in the line of succession to both thrones; the 1953 Succession Act removed his family branch’s succession rights in Denmark. Philip’s four elder sisters were Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie, and Sophie. He was baptised in the Greek Orthodox rite at St. George’s Church in the Old Fortress in Corfu.

Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark

Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine. Her mother was the eldest daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Princess Alice of Battenberg

Princess Alice of Battenberg’s father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was the eldest son of Prince Alexander of Hesse and By Rhine through his morganatic marriage to Countess Julia von Hauke, who was created Princess of Battenberg in 1858 by Ludwig III, Grand Duke of Hesse of By Rhine. Alice’s three younger siblings, Louise, George, and Louis, later became Queen of Sweden, Marquess of Milford Haven, and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, respectively.

Prince and Princess Andrew of of Greece and Denmark

Prince Philip’s family was exiled from the Greece when he was an infant. After being educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the British Royal Navy in 1939, aged 18.

Prince Philip and his father.

That same year, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. During the visit, the Queen and Louis Mountbatten asked Philip to escort the King’s two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, who were Philip’s third cousins through Queen Victoria, and second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark. Elizabeth fell in love with Philip, and they began to exchange letters when she was 13.

From July 1939, he began corresponding with the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, whom he had first met in 1934. During the Second World War he served with distinction in the Mediterranean and Pacific Fleets. After the war, Philip was granted permission by George VI to marry Elizabeth.

Before the official announcement of their engagement in July 1947, he abandoned his Greek and Danish royal titles, became a naturalised British subject, and adopted his maternal grandparents’ surname Mountbatten. He married Princess Elizabeth on November 20, 1947. Just before the wedding, he was created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. In post-war Britain it was not acceptable for any of the Duke of Edinburgh’s German relations to be invited to the wedding, including Philip’s three surviving sisters, all of whom had married German princes.

The Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Elizabeth

Philip left active military service when Elizabeth became queen in 1952, having reached the rank of commander, and was formally made a British prince in 1957.

Philip and Elizabeth have four children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. Through a British Order in Council issued in 1960, descendants of the couple not bearing royal styles and titles can use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, which has also been used by some members of the royal family who do hold titles, such as Princess Anne, and Princes Andrew and Edward.

A keen sports enthusiast, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving. He is a patron, president, or member of over 780 organisations, and he serves as chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award for people aged 14 to 24. He is the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch and the oldest ever male member of the British royal family. Philip retired from his royal duties on 2 August 2017, aged 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements since 1952.

On this Date in History: Assassination of King George I of the Hellenes.

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Alexandros Schinas, Assassination, Christian IX of Denmark, George I of Greece, King George I of the Hellenes, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of the Hellenes, Otto of Greece, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

George I of Greece (1863-1913) was originally a Danish prince, the second son and third child of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (future King Christian IX of Denmark) and Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel. George was born on December 24, 1845 at the Yellow Palace, an 18th-century town house at 18 Amaliegade, right next to the Amalienborg Palace complex in Copenhagen.

King George I of the Hellenes

Until his accession in Greece, he was known as Prince Wilhelm, the namesake of his grandfathers Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel. George was destined for a career in the Royal Danish Navy. He was only 17 years old when he was elected king by the Greek National Assembly, which had deposed the unpopular former king Otto (second son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghause).

Otto, King of Greece

His nomination was both suggested and supported by the Great Powers: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Second French Empire and the Russian Empire. He married the Russian grand duchess Olga Constantinovna of Russia, and became the first monarch of a new Greek dynasty.

George and his family, 1862: (back row left to right) Crown Prince Frederick, Christian IX, George; (front row left to right) Dagmar, Valdemar, Queen Louise, Thyra, Alexandra

The death of Britain’s Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901 left King George as the second-longest-reigning monarch in Europe. His always cordial relations with his brother-in-law, the new King Edward VII, continued to tie Greece to Britain. This was abundantly important in Britain’s support of King George’s second son Prince George as Governor-General of Crete. Nevertheless, Prince George resigned in 1906 after a leader in the Cretan Assembly, Eleftherios Venizelos, campaigned to have him removed.

As a response to the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Venizelos’s power base was further strengthened, and on October 8, 1908 the Cretan Assembly passed a resolution in favor of union despite both the reservations of the Athens government under Georgios Theotokis and the objections of the Great Power. The muted reaction of the Athens Government to the news from Crete led to an unsettled state of affairs on the mainland.

King George I of the Hellenes

In August 1909, a group of army officers that had formed a military league, Stratiotikos Syndesmos, demanded, among other things, that the royal family be stripped of their military commissions. To save the King the embarrassment of removing his sons from their commissions, they resigned them. The military league attempted a coup d’état, and the King insisted on supporting the duly elected Hellenic Parliament in response. Eventually, the military league joined forces with Venizelos in calling for a National Assembly to revise the constitution. King George gave way, and new elections to the revising assembly were held in August 1910. After some political maneuvering, Venizelos became prime minister of a minority government. Just a month later, Venizelos called new elections for December 11, 1910, at which he won an overwhelming majority after most of the opposition parties declined to take part.

Venizelos and the King were united in their belief that the nation required a strong army to repair the damage of the humiliating defeat of 1897. Crown Prince Constantine was reinstated as Inspector-General of the Army, and later Commander-in-Chief. Under his and Venizelos’s close supervision the military was retrained and equipped with French and British help, and new ships were ordered for the Hellenic Navy. Meanwhile, through diplomatic means, Venizelos had united the Christian countries of the Balkans in opposition to the ailing Ottoman Empire.

When the Kingdom of Montenegro declared war on Turkey on October 8, 1912, it was joined quickly by Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece in what is known as the First Balkan War. George was on vacation in Denmark, so he immediately returned to Greece via Vienna, arriving in Athens to be met by a large and enthusiastic crowd on the evening of 9 October. The results of this campaign differed radically from the Greek experience at the hands of the Turks in 1897. The well-trained Greek forces, 200,000 strong, won victory after victory. On November 9, 1912, Greek forces commanded by Crown Prince Constantine rode into Thessaloniki, just a few hours ahead of a Bulgarian division. Three days later King George rode in triumph through the streets of Thessaloniki, the second-largest Greek city, accompanied by the Crown Prince and Venizelos.

Assassination of George I by Alexandros Schinas as depicted in a contemporary lithograph

As he approached the fiftieth anniversary of his accession, the King made plans to abdicate in favor of his son Constantine immediately after the celebration of his golden jubilee in October 1913. Just as he did in Athens, George went about Thessaloniki without any meaningful protection force. While out on an afternoon walk near the White Tower on March 18, 1913, he was shot at close range in the back by Alexandros Schinas, who was “said to belong to a Socialist organization” and “declared when arrested that he had killed the King because he refused to give him money.” George died instantly, the bullet having penetrated his heart. The Greek government denied any political motive for the assassination, saying that Schinas was an alcoholic vagrant. Schinas was tortured in prison and six weeks later fell to his death from a police station window.

The King’s body was taken to Athens on the Amphitrite, escorted by a flotilla of naval vessels. For three days the coffin of the King, draped in the Danish and Greek flags, lay in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Athens before his body was committed to a tomb at his palace in Tatoi. Crown Prince Constantine succeeded his father as the new king of the Hellenes.

Election of the King of the Hellenes.

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Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, Christian IX, Christian IX of Denmark, Election, Ernest II Duke of Save-Coburg-Gotha, George I of Greece, King George I of the Hellenes, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of the Hellenes, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Otto of Greece, Plebiscite, Queen Victoria

On this date in History: March 30, 1863. Prince Wilhelm of Denmark was elected as King of the Hellenes (Greece).

George I (born Prince Wilhelm of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg; 24 December 24, 1845 – March 18, 1913) was King of the Hellenes (Greece) from 1863 until his assassination in 1913.

George was born at the Yellow Palace, an 18th-century town house at 18 Amaliegade, right next to the Amalienborg Palace complex in Copenhagen. He was the second son of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (Christian IX of Denmark) and Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel. Although his full name was Prince Christian Wilhelm Ferdinand Adolf Georg of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, until his accession in Greece, he was known as Prince Wilhelm the namesake of his paternal and maternal grandfathers, Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel.

Although he was of royal blood, his family was relatively obscure and lived a comparatively normal life by royal standards. In 1853, however, George’s father was designated the heir presumptive to the childless King Frederik VII of Denmark, and the family became princes and princesses of Denmark. George’s siblings were Frederik (who succeeded their father as King of Denmark), Alexandra (who became wife of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom and the mother of King George V), Dagmar (who, as Empress Maria Feodorovna, was consort of Emperor Alexander III of Russiaand the mother of Emperor Nicholas II), Thyra (who married Prince Ernest Augustus, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale) and Valdemar.

King of the Hellenes

Following the overthrow of the Bavarian-born King Otto of Greece (son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen) in October 1862, the Greek people had rejected Otto’s brother and designated successor Leopold, although they still favored a monarchy rather than a republic. Many Greeks, seeking closer ties to the pre-eminent world power, Great Britain, rallied around Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. British prime minister Lord Palmerston believed that the Greeks were “panting for increase in territory”, hoping for a gift of the Ionian Islands, which were then a British protectorate.

The London Conference of 1832, however, prohibited any of the Great Powers’ ruling families from accepting the crown, and in any event, Queen Victoria was adamantly opposed to the idea. The Greeks nevertheless insisted on holding a plebiscite in which Prince Alfred received over 95% of the 240,000 votes. There were 93 votes for a Republic and 6 for a Greek.King Otto received one vote. Prince Alfred was also the designated heir to his uncle, Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha should the Duke remain childless.

With Prince Alfred’s exclusion, the search began for an alternative candidate. The French favored Henri d’Orléans, duc d’Aumale, while the British proposed Queen Victoria’s brother-in-law Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, her nephew Prince Leiningen, and Archduke Maximilian of Austria, among others. Eventually, the Greeks and Great Powers winnowed their choice to Prince William of Denmark, who had received 6 votes in the plebiscite.

Aged only 17, he was elected King of the Hellenes on March 30, 1863 by the Greek National Assembly under the regnal name of George I. Paradoxically, he ascended a royal throne before his father, who became King Christian IX of Denmark on November 15 of the same year. There were two significant differences between George’s elevation and that of his predecessor, Otto. First, he was acclaimed unanimously by the Greek Assembly, rather than imposed on the people by foreign powers. Second, he was proclaimed “King of the Hellenes” instead of “King of Greece”, which had been Otto’s style.

His ceremonial enthronement in Copenhagen on 6 June was attended by a delegation of Greeks led by First Admiral and Prime Minister Constantine Kanaris. Frederick VII awarded George the Order of the Elephant, and it was announced that the British government would cede the Ionian Islands to Greece in honor of the new monarch.

King George I is the paternal grandfather of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, husband of HM Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark.

Top Favorite Monarchs ~ Part II

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Alexander III of Russia, Christian IX, Denmark, Edward VII, George I of Greece, George III, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of the United Kingdom, Wilhelm I of Germany, Wilhelm II of Germany

 

Part II

Queen Victoria (my favorite picture of her)

6. George III, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Hanover
Born: 4 June, 1738. Died: 29 January 1820. Reign: 1760-1820

George III is Britain’s longest reigning king. He was the first of the Hanoverian monarchs to speak English as his native language. Suffered from the blood disease porphyria which caused mental breakdowns. The king had a passion for agriculture and earned the nickname “Farmer George.” He was not the tyrant of the American revolution and it was in his reign which saw a further erosion of political powers and the move toward a symbolic monarchy where the king embodied moralistic virtue.

7. Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
Born: 24 May, 1819. Died: 22 January, 1901. Reign: 1837-1901

Queen Victoria is Britain’s longest reigning monarch and gave her name to an entire era. Her reign saw great advancement of changes with the industrial revolution. Dependent on her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, she became isolated and withdrawn for years after his death in 1861. Political power was lost during her reign as Victoria placed the monarchy above partisan politics. Her reign saw the British Empire reach its zenith.

8. Edward VII, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
Born: 9 November, 1841. Died: 6 May, 1910. Reign: 1901-1910

As Prince of Wales the future Edward VII lived in the shadow of his mother. Although Edward reigned for only 9 years an era was named for him also. The Edwardian era contrasted with the Victorian era in that social life became more vibrant after the many years of official mourning at his mother’s court. Edward was a very gregarious king and his personal relationships with other monarchs in Europe gave Edward the reputation as a efficient diplomat.

9. Christian IX, King of Denmark
Born: 8 April, 1818. Died: 29 January 1906. Reign: 1863-1906

Prince Christian was born the son of Duke Wilhelm of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck, from 1825 Duke of Glücksburg, and was a direct descendant of King Christian I of Denmark in the male line; the future Christian IX was born without rights to the Danish throne. In 1847 the great European powers selected prince Christian as heir presumptive to the Danish throne with the extinction of the most senior line of Danish kings was growing imminent seeing that the Frederik VII seemed incapable of fathering children. Christian unsuccessfully sought the hand of the future Queen Victoria of Great Britain. He eventually married Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel, a great-niece of Christian VII of Denmark and she actually was a closer heir to the throne than her husband. Christian and Louise, like Victoria and Albert of Great Britain, had children that married into many of the Great royal houses of Europe earning Christian IX the nickname “the father-in-law of Europe.” His eldest son became king of Denmark, his eldest daughter became Queen of Great Britain (wife of Edward VII). Another daughter became Empress of Russia (married to Emperor Alexander III). His second son was elected to the Greek throne a few months before he was even king of Denmark. His grandson was elected the first king of an independent Norway in centuries.

10. Wilhelm II, German Emperor and King of Prussia
Born: 27 January, 1859. Died: 4 June, 1941. Reign: 1888-1918

The last German Emperor is a fascinating study. He was the eldest grandson to both Queen Victoria of Great Britain on his mother’s side and to German Emperor Wilhelm I on his father’s side. This set a battle between liberal and conservative ideologies which would have a great impact on his life. He also had an injury at birth which gave him an non-functioning left hand and arm. These and other issues had a great influence on his personality. A very intelligent man who would suffer violent outbursts of temper and depression. In an era where monarchs were becoming symbols of their nation and above partisan politics, Wilhelm II had considerable powers which he tried to implement, often with disastrous results. He was the Emperor-King that saw the dissolution of his empire at the end of the First World War and many nations placed sole blame on his shoulders. Although he held responsibility for the war, historians have come to see that there were many other factors that lead to war that were beyond his control.