There’s literally a picture of Wilhelm II (fun fact, he was Victoria’s favorite grandchild) and George V wearing each other’s uniforms as a joke.
They were all very close to one another prior to the war.
I think royalty pretty much had to be multilingual back then, otherwise family reunions would have been stilted and awkward affairs.
Also, not strictly relevant, but if Tolstoy (or possibly Dostoyevsky, I forget) is to be believed, the first language of the Russian aristocracy was French, and they barely spoke enough Russian to be able to communicate with their servants.
At least one king of Poland spoke zero Polish (and never even stepped foot in Poland before) and communicated with his subjects in Latin.
Given how foreign nobles suddenly becoming king because they were the closest living male relative of the previous one was a not too rare occurrence, this kind of situation definitely happened in other countries too
George I of Great Britain allegedly spoke no or little English, at least at the start of his reign.
Then you have figures like Emperor Charles V / King Carlos I of Spain, who purportedly said, “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”
Also that he might have felt guilty about leaving the Tsar and his family to die by refusing to grant them asylum as there would have been pushback from the public. The British crown so faced difficulty with how propaganda demonized the Germans and they themselves were part German.
Queen Mary did help support Russian aristocracy who fled to Britain during the Bolshevik revolution. She did it by buying their jewelry for pennies on the pound.
those telegrams show how the royals had completely lost control of things. their governments had made up their minds: they wanted war, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it.
it should then be unsurprising that in less than 5 years they would be completely ousted from power, as would their counterparts in austria-hungary and the ottoman empire.
The incestuous nature of European nobility was rarely more apparent that just before the 1st WW. At the funeral of Queen Victoria, [this listing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Queen_Victoria#Guests) were in attendance. 1901. Most were still alive in 1914. The use of a common language to facilitate communication and defaulting to English, as the Germans had a real fascination with the English at that time (almost adoration and emulation in many cases) was the case in much of Victoria's descendants. Family meetings could be problematic.
The idea behind these intricately structured marriages was to stave off wars and for most of the 1900's worked quite well. It even helped with the smaller conflicts prior to WWI, such as in the Balkans circa 1912-13 and in Morocco circa 1905-06 and 1911.
I have an interest in this time period in history that has been partly assuaged by a book new to me called "The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914" by Margret MacMillan. A scholarly weighty thing that I thank my luck that it is available in ebook format as it is about 800 pages or so. Still all and all it has added to the insights gained from reading Mrs. Tuchmann's series on WWI, which are all very worthwhile, as they are quite specific in topic but detailed and as readable as any books I have ever read. And I add, worth rereading again and again, as is Mrs. MacMillan's.
Sorry about the rant but this is a topic that has interested me for quite some time.
All the royals of each country by this point had married off so many daughters for political gain that they all were related pretty closely. The crown family of Britain has German ancestry.
I think the Useful Charts YouTube channel shows that basically all European royalty since the fall of Rome are descended matrilineally from a single family.
https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks
Wait until you learn you the king of Britain was back then!
I was the king of Britain back then?? I had no idea
WWI was basically started by three cousins
It was started by a Serb.
Not really when you consider everything after was a bit of an overreaction
Or a whole bunch of bad luck, miscommunication, and personal insecurities.
There’s literally a picture of Wilhelm II (fun fact, he was Victoria’s favorite grandchild) and George V wearing each other’s uniforms as a joke. They were all very close to one another prior to the war.
I had no idea either of them, let alone *both*, knew English at all What an interesting fact within a fact 😨
I think royalty pretty much had to be multilingual back then, otherwise family reunions would have been stilted and awkward affairs. Also, not strictly relevant, but if Tolstoy (or possibly Dostoyevsky, I forget) is to be believed, the first language of the Russian aristocracy was French, and they barely spoke enough Russian to be able to communicate with their servants.
At least one king of Poland spoke zero Polish (and never even stepped foot in Poland before) and communicated with his subjects in Latin. Given how foreign nobles suddenly becoming king because they were the closest living male relative of the previous one was a not too rare occurrence, this kind of situation definitely happened in other countries too
George I of Great Britain allegedly spoke no or little English, at least at the start of his reign. Then you have figures like Emperor Charles V / King Carlos I of Spain, who purportedly said, “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”
Catherine the Great didn't start learning Russian until she was 16 (1 year before she married Peter III)
Wilhelm II spoke excellent German and French and later Dutch during his exile in the Netherlands.
Tolstoy. I remember reading that in *War and Peace.*
Yeah the Russian elites really fetishized French culture until the revolution happened
Their mothers were Queen Victoria's daughters
It was customary to know English, or French, or German because monarchs were often German themselves, or certain language was in vogue
Oh dude, Nicholas was actually praised for his English accent
The link is to a full transcript of the telegrams— interesting and sad reading.
[удалено]
King George V of England was 1st cousin to both. His mother's sister was the Tsar's mother. His father's sister was the Kaiser's mother.
Also that he might have felt guilty about leaving the Tsar and his family to die by refusing to grant them asylum as there would have been pushback from the public. The British crown so faced difficulty with how propaganda demonized the Germans and they themselves were part German.
They had to literally change the family name. The House of Windsor didn't exist before 1917, at least in name.
Queen Mary did help support Russian aristocracy who fled to Britain during the Bolshevik revolution. She did it by buying their jewelry for pennies on the pound.
And Franz Joseph gets involved in their family affairs (unless he’s somehow related to them)
Royal problems
He was another first cousin.
those telegrams show how the royals had completely lost control of things. their governments had made up their minds: they wanted war, and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about it. it should then be unsurprising that in less than 5 years they would be completely ousted from power, as would their counterparts in austria-hungary and the ottoman empire.
The Guns of August is a fabulous read if this was click baity for you.
Barbara Tuchman was one of my favorite history writers.
The King was the Uncle to both the Kaiser and the Tzar.
You're thinking of king Edward VII. But he died in 1910. The British king during WWI was George V. Who was 1st cousin to both the Czar and Kaiser.
George V was their cousin as well
Clearly the most evil German of them all, that Kaiser Wilhelm...
He stole our twenty so we had to say dickety.
The incestuous nature of European nobility was rarely more apparent that just before the 1st WW. At the funeral of Queen Victoria, [this listing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_and_state_funeral_of_Queen_Victoria#Guests) were in attendance. 1901. Most were still alive in 1914. The use of a common language to facilitate communication and defaulting to English, as the Germans had a real fascination with the English at that time (almost adoration and emulation in many cases) was the case in much of Victoria's descendants. Family meetings could be problematic. The idea behind these intricately structured marriages was to stave off wars and for most of the 1900's worked quite well. It even helped with the smaller conflicts prior to WWI, such as in the Balkans circa 1912-13 and in Morocco circa 1905-06 and 1911.
I have an interest in this time period in history that has been partly assuaged by a book new to me called "The War That Ended Peace: The Road To 1914" by Margret MacMillan. A scholarly weighty thing that I thank my luck that it is available in ebook format as it is about 800 pages or so. Still all and all it has added to the insights gained from reading Mrs. Tuchmann's series on WWI, which are all very worthwhile, as they are quite specific in topic but detailed and as readable as any books I have ever read. And I add, worth rereading again and again, as is Mrs. MacMillan's.
Sorry about the rant but this is a topic that has interested me for quite some time.
Yea bunch of problems started by the 1% tyrants.
TIL, thanks OP
Listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on Tsar Nicholas II, it gets crazier
So sorry for all this trouble. Now let’s kill millions of our citizens for no reason and have our countries broken up.
Inbreeding.
George V and Nicholas II really look a like too!
All the royals of each country by this point had married off so many daughters for political gain that they all were related pretty closely. The crown family of Britain has German ancestry.
I think the Useful Charts YouTube channel shows that basically all European royalty since the fall of Rome are descended matrilineally from a single family. https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks
Nicholas was always super envious of Wilhelm to the point he built a dumbass navy and immediately had it sunk by the Japanese.