Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria - Theo Aronson [epub]

Author's note:
The direct descendants of Queen Victoria occupy, or have occupied, ten European thrones. It is with this dynastic expansion that this book is concerned. However, in order to accommodate, and make intelligible, so immense a subject as the Queen's crowned descendants, I have found it necessary to set myself certain limits. The study is confined to those of the Queen's children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren who first occupied the various European thrones, and not with their descendants. I therefore deal with Queen Victoria's son Bertie, who became King Edward VII but not with his son, who became King George V; and with the Queen's daughter Vicky who – as the wife of the German Emperor Frederick III – became German Empress, but not with Vicky's son Kaiser Wilhelm II. I do, however, deal with Vicky's daughter Sophie, who married the future King of the Hellenes; for she, as Queen Victoria's granddaughter, was the first of Victoria's direct descendants to become a queen in Greece. Thus, with the exception of King Edward VII, this book is concerned with the various British or half-British princesses who became the queens and empresses of Europe.