Assassination: The Royal Family's 1000-Year Curse (51 page)

The first child, Victoria the Princess Royal, married Prince Frederick of Prussia. She became EMPRESS OF GERMANY and QUEEN OF PRUSSIA when her husband succeeded to the throne. Albert had hoped that his daughter and her husband would have a liberalising influence on the growing state. However, Frederick was already dying of throat cancer, and he reigned for only 99 days. He was succeeded by their son William II, EMPEROR OF GERMANY and KING OF PRUSSIA, the KAISER; anything but liberal. Although he was devoted to his grandmother, he was fiercely anti-British, leading Germany into the First World War. After defeat, he abdicated and died in exile in Holland.

The Princess Royal’s seventh child, Sophie, became QUEEN OF GREECE, and two of Sophie’s children became KING OF GREECE; one child became QUEEN OF ROMANIA.

Charlotte, the Princess Royal’s second child, suffered from porphyria, as did Charlotte’s daughter, Feodora. Two of Charlotte’s sons, Waldemar and Heinrich, were haemophiliacs.

The Princess Royal did not become queen on the death of Queen Victoria because of the rule that sons take precedence over daughters regardless of age. It has recently been decided to introduce legislation to change that rule so that age, not gender, will be the only factor. If that had been the case in 1901, the Princess Royal would have become Queen, and on her death six months later, the Kaiser would have become King.

The second child, Edward Prince of Wales, became KING EDWARD VII OF THE UNITED KINGDOM and EMPEROR OF INDIA. His second son succeeded him as King George V. Two of George’s sons became KINGS and EMPERORS:
Edward VIII and George VI.

Edward’s fifth child, Maud, married her cousin Prince Carl of Denmark who became King Haakon VII of Norway, and Maud became QUEEN OF NORWAY; her son became KING OF NORWAY.

The third child, Alice, married the Grand Duke of Hesse. Their first child, Victoria, married Louis of Battenberg and their daughter Louise married Crown Prince Gustave who became King Gustave VI of Sweden, and she became QUEEN OF SWEDEN; another daughter, Alice, married Prince Andrew of Greece and their son is Prince Philip, the husband of the Queen.

Alice of Hesse’s second son, Friedrich, suffered from haemophilia and bled to death at the age of two after a fall. Alice of Hesse’s daughter, Alix, married Grand Duke Nicholas who became Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and she became Alexandra EMPRESS OF RUSSIA (the TSARINA); she was murdered with the rest of her family in the Bolshevik Revolution – her son Alexei, the TSAREVITCH, was a haemophiliac.

Another of Alice of Hesse’s daughters, Irene, who married her cousin Prince Heinrich of Prussia, passed haemophilia to two of her sons: Waldemar who died aged 56 without issue and Henry who died aged four.

The fourth child, Alfred, had not been allowed to become King of Greece. He became Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, thought to be a greater honour by his mother. Alfred married Grand Duchess Marie of Russia (the daughter of the Tsar). Their son Alfred shot himself during his parents’ 25th wedding anniversary celebrations.

Their daughter Marie married Prince Ferdinand who became King Ferdinand of Romania, and she became QUEEN OF ROMANIA. Marie’s son Carol became KING OF ROMANIA. Marie’s daughter, Elisabeth, married Prince George who became King George II of Greece, and she became QUEEN OF GREECE. Marie’s daughter Maria married King Alexander, and became QUEEN OF YUGOSLAVIA, their first son becoming KING OF YUGOSLAVIA.

The fifth child, Helena, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. None of her children gave her legitimate grandchildren.

The sixth child, Louise, was the only one not to marry a foreigner. She married the Duke of Argyll. Victoria approved of the introduction of new and British blood into the family, but they had no children.

The seventh child, Arthur, married Princess Louise of Russia. Their daughter, Margaret, married Prince Gustaf of Sweden, but she died before he became king (Gustaf then married Louise, granddaughter of Victoria’s third child, Alice). Margaret’s grandson is Carl XVI the present KING OF SWEDEN. Her granddaughter Ingrid became QUEEN OF DENMARK, and Ingrid’s daughter is the present QUEEN OF DENMARK; another daughter is the present ex-QUEEN OF GREECE.

The eighth child, Leopold, married Helena of WaldeckPyrmont; it was believed that he had previously wished to marry Alice Liddell – the Alice who was the inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
. Leopold had haemophilia, and died at the age of 31 when he slipped on the stairs at the Yacht Club in Cannes and hurt his knee.

The disease was passed through his daughter Princess Alice (Alice Liddell called her second son ‘Leopold’) to her son Rupert, and it led to his death from a brain haemorrhage after a car crash.

Leopold’s posthumous son Charles was not infected, and he succeeded his uncle as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and had a daughter, Sibylla; she married her second cousin Prince Gustav of Sweden, and their son is Carl XVI, the present KING OF SWEDEN.

The ninth child, Beatrice, married Prince Henry of Battenberg. Their second son, Leopold, had haemophilia; he died aged 32 during a minor operation.

Beatrice’s daughter Victoria married King Alfonso XIII of Spain and became QUEEN OF SPAIN; it was controversial as she had to convert to Catholicism. She was known by her last forename: Ena. Her mother had chosen the name Eua (Gaelic for Eve) and had written it down at the christening, but it was misread. At Ena’s wedding, an anarchist threw a bouquet of flowers concealing a bomb at the royal couple; Ena’s dress was covered in the blood of one of the guards, but she was unharmed although several bystanders were killed. Their son, Alfonso, was the heir. When he was circumcised, he bled for a long time – it was haemophilia. Ena was unpopular with the Spanish as a former Protestant; now they hated her for introducing haemophilia to their royal family. In 1931, Republicans won the election, and the royal family went into exile. The King eventually blamed Ena for introducing the disease, and the couple separated. Their first son, Alfonso, died following a car crash when he suffered very minor injuries. He had already renounced his rights to the crown on marrying a commoner – anyway he left no children. The next son, Don Jaime, renounced his rights because of infirmity; he had become deaf and mute as a result of a childhood operation. The third son, Don Juan, became the heir despite Don Jaime having sons, because Don Jaime had renounced not only his own right but also the rights of his descendants (yet Don Jaime remained Pretender to the French throne as Henry VI, being the senior legitimate male heir of the House of Capet and the head of the House of Bourbon). However, when the Spanish monarchy was reinstated, the dictator Franco bypassed Don Juan as he considered him too liberal. Instead, he chose Don Juan’s son to become KING OF SPAIN, the present King Juan Carlos – great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria (chosen despite the fact that Juan Carlos had apparently killed his younger brother when fooling around with a revolver). Ena’s fourth son, Don Gonzalo, had haemophilia. He was involved in a minor car accident (he hit a wall when avoiding a cyclist); although he appeared to be unhurt, internal bleeding had started and he died two days later.

Gonzalo is the last senior royal descendant of Queen Victoria known to have had haemophilia. However, the damaged gene can remain hidden in females for generations before reappearing. It seems that the only ones at risk are the femaleline descendants of Beatrice, and that means the Spanish royal family.

After Queen Victoria died, Beatrice was given the task of editing hundreds of volumes of Victoria’s daily journals, instructed by Victoria to delete confidential and offensive sections. It took Beatrice 30 years to transcribe the acceptable parts and then destroy the originals – she left out almost 70%, which was lost forever.

A lesser-known descendant of Queen Victoria, Ferdinand Soltmann (173rd in line to the throne), born in 2005, the son of Princess Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenberg, is a haemophiliac. Princess Xenia is a 4 x great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria through her third child, Princess Alice.

Even today, Victoria’s direct descendants include Queen
Elizabeth II, Prince Philip (who is 489th in line to the throne), King Harald V of Norway, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Queen Sophia of Spain, ex-King Constantine II of Greece, the ex-Queen of Greece, ex-King Michael of Romania, the pretenders to the thrones of Serbia, Russia, Prussia, Germany and France, and the claimants to the rule of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Hanover, Hesse and Baden.

Along with Henry III, V and VI, Edward I, III and VI and George IV, Edward is one of only eight English/British sovereigns who, provided he survived, had been certain to succeed his predecessor from the moment of his birth right up to his coronation, with no future births having a chance of priority. For Edward it was a long wait – over 59 years. No other heir apparent
⁴⁰
to any throne had to wait so long.
⁴¹

Edward was brought up by his parents with the intention that he should become a copy of his father, studious and sober. They even gave him ‘Albert’ as his first name. It did not help; he was a different type of person.

The strict education only helped Edward to develop into a lover of travel and good-living. With it came the gifts of charm and diplomacy.

Yet diplomacy would not help Edward with his parents. In 1861, he was sent to Ireland for military training. It was there that Edward started a brief association with an actress,

40 ‘heir apparent’ meaning that he was entitled to the throne if he survived, rather than ‘heir presumptive’meaning that he was first in line but would be displaced if someone was later born with a prior right.
41 Prince Charles will overtake Edward on succeeding to the crown; he passed Edward’s waiting period on 20 April 2011.

Albert was horrified, and he treated the matter as a disaster that could lead to the abolition of the monarchy. Having given instructions that Edward was to be despatched on a visit to Turkey, Albert travelled to Cambridge. Although feeling unwell, Albert insisted on taking Edward for a long walk in the rain to lecture him on his responsibilities. Two weeks after returning from Cambridge, Albert was dead from typhoid. Victoria blamed Edward, and she made no secret of it. She never forgave him.

When Edward came home – the visit to Turkey took place despite Albert’s death, as Victoria was committed to doing all that Albert had wanted – it was time for Edward to marry. Something else that Albert had decided.

Edward’s sister, Victoria, had introduced him to Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, the oldest daughter of Prince Christian, who became King Christian IX of Denmark on the death of the previous king without issue. Christian was chosen by the great powers and the Danish Parliament out of several claimants largely because his wife was the niece of an earlier king. The Danish royals were not highly regarded, they were not wealthy and there was little diplomatic advantage. Quite the opposite, as Denmark was the enemy of Germany, which was demanding the transfer of Schleswig-Holstein. However, Edward had been quite taken with Alexandra, she was Protestant and Albert had approved. When Victoria travelled to Coburg to visit her late husband’s childhood home, she met Alexandra and gave her consent. Edward, who had accompanied his mother, proposed and was accepted. The only notable event at the wedding was when Edward’s nephew, the future Kaiser, was told by two of his uncles to stop throwing things at the choir, and in retaliation he got down on his knees and started to bite the legs of Prince Alfred and Prince Leopold – no joke for Leopold who was a haemophiliac.

Until his accession nearly 40 years later, Edward was given few public duties; Victoria saw to that. She remembered only too well Albert’s views of his son’s inadequacies, and for Victoria the memory of what Albert had said was what counted, even when Edward reached middle age and beyond. Edward spent his time hunting, shooting, going to the races (he would eventually own three Derby winners and one Grand National winner), partying and travelling. But what else was there for him to do?

Although they cared little about his activities, Victoria, the establishment and the press objected to Edward’s choice of friends, Victoria complaining that they included actresses, low nobility and Jews. Her displeasure was proved justified to a degree with regard to the low nobility. Many of them became involved in scandals: fraud, bigamy, perversion and more. Edward’s reputation was tainted not just by association but in some cases by involvement. It may have been no worse than for many previous Princes of Wales, but now there was a growing and ravenous press.

Edward was said to be spending his Civil List income on gambling and to have been unable to pay his losses. Visits to Paris apparently involved evenings at the Chabanais brothel, where Edward liked to bathe in champagne with a prostitute. All night parties did not help; nor did a stag chase through the streets of London with the animal being killed at Paddington Station.