THE BARE BONES OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S FAMILY TREES: HER CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN
In 1819 Princess Victoria of Kent and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha were born within three months of each other. Her mother and his father were sister and brother. Twenty years later, the young Queen Victoria was completely bowled-over by her handsome cousin and wrote in her diary that he was ‘beautiful’. Within six months she had married him and was pregnant with the first of their nine children.
Those children’s children and grandchildren were encouraged to intermarry, and from them descend the Royal Families of Britain, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The kings of Romania and Yugoslavia were also descended from Victoria and Albert, and the last Kaiser of Germany was their eldest grandchild. The last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna (born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine), was a granddaughter, while her sister Victoria of Hesse was the mother of Earl Mountbatten of Burma and also the maternal grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Details: 106 pages, 150 photographs, 16 family trees, bibliography
The Bare Bones of Queen Victoria’s Family Trees: Her Children and Grandchildren
Cover Story
Queen Victoria with two of the children of her son Arthur, Duke of Connaught
The little boy, left, is Prince Arthur of Connaught (1893-1938), seen here in the mid-1880s with his sister Princess Margaret ‘Daisy’ (1882-1920) and their grandmother. Their father, Arthur, Duke of Connaught (1850-1942) was the seventh and longest-lived child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and outlived his son and elder daughter, (the youngest child, Lady Patricia Ramsay, died in 1957).
Prince Arthur of Connaught
Like his father, Prince Arthur chose a military career, entering the Royal Military College at Sandhurst when he was 16. In 1920 he was appointed governor-general and commander-in-chief in South Africa. His last public appearance was at the coronation of George VI in 1937; the following year he died of stomach cancer at the age of 55. He married his first cousin once removed, Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife, a granddaughter of his uncle King Edward VII. Princess Alexandra, who appears to have been a down-to-earth sort of character, had a successful career as a state registered nurse. In 1943 their only son, who had become Duke of Connaught the previous year upon the death of his grandfather, died in circumstances in Canada never fully explained.
Princess Margaret of Connaught
In 1905 Princess Margaret of Connaught married the Crown Prince of Sweden but died in 1920 from infection after undergoing an operation for mastoiditis. She was 38 and pregnant with her sixth child that did not survive. Among her grandchildren are the present King of Sweden, the Queen of Denmark and the former Queen of Greece. As his second wife her widower married Lady Louise Mountbatten, sister of Earl Mountbatten of Burma.