Trashy Royals

Once their grandmother, Queen Victoria, died in 1901, Ernie and Ducky were finally free to do what everyone sorta kinda understood they should: divorce. But sovereigns don't divorce, so the situation became a scandal in the Royal Houses of Europe, and in Russia, Ernie's sister, Empress Alexandra, blamed Ducky for it all. This became a significant issue for Ducky, who had rekindled her romance with Russian Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (another first cousin), whose station and nationality meant that he required Tsar Nicholas II's permission to marry, and Nicky's wife was having none of it, at least until World War I broke out.

Ernie remarried into a happier union with Princess Eleonore of Solms-Hohensolms-Lich, but the decades that followed for Ernie and Ducky were marred by great tragedy, including the death of their daughter Elisabeth at just eight years old.

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Sources

Princess Victoria Melita: Grand Duchess Cyril of Russia, 1876-1936, by John Van Der Kiste (Amazon)

Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece, by Hugo Vickers (Amazon)

Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria, by Theo Aronson (Amazon)

Queen Victoria's Matchmaking: The Royal Marriages that Shaped Europe, by Deborah Cadbury (Amazon)

Marie of Romania: The Intimate Life of a Twentieth Century Queen, by Terence Elsberry (Amazon)

Queen Victoria’s Granddaughters: 1860-1918, by Christina Croft (Amazon)

Queen Victoria's Grandsons (1859-1918), by Christina Croft (Amazon)

Seven Royal Marriages Almost as Disastrous as Catherine the Great’s | Vanity Fair

Princess Victoria Melita: the British princess who scandalised the royal family (historyextra.com)

Royal divorce: The princess whose divorce scandalised the royal family (express.co.uk)

DUCKY AND THE GRAND DUKE - The Washington Post

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Queen Victoria's efforts to make suitable matches for her dozens of grandchildren was in no way a flawless endeavor. Take today's subjects, for instance. First cousins Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (nickname: Ernie) and Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (nickname: Ducky), became the subject of intense Royal meddling as Victoria pushed Ernie to propose to Ducky, not realizing that Ernie's interests ran more to the young men employed at his court in Hesse.

But the wedding did eventually happen in 1894, leading to a union so spectacularly unhappy that Queen Victoria swore off the matchmaking game entirely.

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Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had a plan to use their nine children to unite Europe's various monarchies into one big, happy family. Unfortunately for those royal houses, Queen Victoria herself appears to have spontaneously developed a gene mutation for the inherited clotting disorder hemophilia.

With son Leopold affected, and two of her daughters as unwitting carriers of the disease, royal houses in Spain, Germany, and Russia all found themselves navigating a new terrain where the potential male heir to a dynasty could be at risk every day - with especially dire results in Russia.

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Before he was King Edward VII, Queen Victoria's son "Dirty Bertie" lived a few different lives. There was his endless womanizing and brothel-patronizing, which prompted that nickname, as well as "Edward the Caresser." But after a particular romantic scandal that Queen Victoria blamed for his father's death, Bertie married and fulfilled his duties to the empire to produce heirs (if not to produce a monogamous marriage).

Prince Albert Victor was the eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) and Alexandra of Denmark. As such, he was second in line to the English throne. A poor student, even his own siblings developed disdain for him, but for a time he seemed to come into his own in the Navy. This was cut short by his obligation to attend Cambridge, where his lackluster intellect again asserted itself.

All of this was awkward enough for Queen Victoria and The Prince of Wales, but things would only get more awkward for Prince Albert Victor. In 1889, after Metropolitan Police raided a male brothel, rumors swirled that the young man was a patron. While no charges were ever brought and no concrete evidence was provided, the blow to his reputation made finding a suitable bride difficult for his match-making grandmother. Even worse, as the reign of terror known as the Jack the Ripper Murders gripped London in 1888, Prince Albert Victor was floated as a suspect.

Whatever the truth, his story would come to an end in an influenza pandemic when he was just 28 years old, changing the course of the British Monarchy, and leaving his brother to ascend as George V.

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As we continue looking at the lives and times of Queen Victoria's children and grandchildren, we're going to keep bumping into people who changed the course of human history, often for the worse. But when it comes to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria's first grandchild, events beginning with his breech birth lend a bit of context to emotional and moral deformities that he would inflict on the world in the form of World War I.

Wilhelm's mother, Princess Royal Victoria, very nearly died in childbirth when he was born in 1859, as did the young prince. The difficult delivery left him with a condition known today as Erb's Palsy, as well as possible brain damage from hypoxia during delivery. Because of his disabled and, eventually, significantly shorter left arm, his childhood was, in part, a series of painful physical ordeals. He was subjected to protracted sessions in binders and braces to try to strengthen or correct the injured arm, as well as folksier treatments like "animal baths." These are not the warm and fuzzy events you may be imagining.

Wilhelm adored his grandmother, and the feeling was quite mutual, but his mother's guilt over his injuries led to a level of estrangement between them as he grew up. The role of English doctors in his own birth, as well as in misdiagnosing his father's ultimately fatal throat cancer, appear to have fully curdled Wilhelm's feelings on England and the English. Add it all up, and by the time he ascended to the throne at 29, he was primed to do real damage on the world stage.

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While the thesis of this podcast is that our betters have always behaved badly, there are examples that really take it to the next level. Meet Princess Charlotte of Prussia, the first granddaughter of Queen Victoria, daughter of Princess Royal Victoria, and sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose reputation for using people as pawns became legendary in her own time. From spreading rumors about her many cousins to dim their marriage prospects to hosting sex parties in order to blackmail the participants, Princess Charlotte was a headache to her family from the start.

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Sources

Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria, by Theo Aronson (Amazon link)

Queen Victoria's Granddaughters: 1860-1918, by Christina Croft (Amazon link)

The Prussian Princesses: The Sisters of Kaiser Wilhelm II, by John Van der Kiste (Amazon link)

ALL GERMANY TALKING OF IT.; The Kotze Scandal an Absorbing Topic Everywhere. - The New York Times

Sex parties, bloody duels and blackmail: life at court of last German emperor | Germany | The Guardian

THE SCANDALOUS PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF PRUSSIA - Wap.org.ng

Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen - The unloved and misunderstood Princess - History of Royal Women

Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen (1879-1945) – Dearest Mama

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In her first decade and a half on the throne, Queen Victoria was pregnant for more than 40% of it. This was an irony, as she herself disliked the condition of pregnancy, and was no fan of small children, either. And yet, her lusty romance with her husband ultimately produced nine children, and a new project for the English monarchy: using matrimonial ties to stitch Europe into a friendly, peaceful future.

Well, it was a nice thought anyway. Aside from producing marriageable offspring, Victoria also inadvertently launched the gene for Hemophilia B into Europe's royal houses, a fact that becomes particularly significant to the Romanovs in just a couple of generations. More on that later.

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Crown Prince Rudolf's death left a young daughter in mourning, but her grandfather, Emperor Franz Joseph, stepped into the breech to become guardian of young Elisabeth Marie, future Archduchess. Though the two were close, Elisabeth was a fiery child who balked at convention, much like her father.

She cajoled her grandfather into approving her first marriage, a union unsuitable for her rank, but he ultimately relented and allowed Elisabeth to wed Prince Otto of Windisch-Graetz. Otto was as surprised as anyone by the union, leading to an unfortunate incident where Elisabeth murdered his mistress with a handgun he'd given her.

Though they would have four children, the marriage floundered, and by 1918 they were separated. In 1921, always a radical, Elisabeth joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria - hence, The Red Archduchess - and met her next flame, Leopold Petznek. The two would remain together until his death in 1956, though only married for a short time - on account of Elisabeth and Otto remaining married until 1948!

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Content warning: Suicide

This week, we take a little trip over to the Austro-Hungarian Emprire in the latter half of the 19th century to meet one of the more scandalous figures of his age - and a man whose death most likely put the world on the path toward World War I.

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria grew up in an emotionally and physically abusive environment, tormented by the military official in charge of his education and ignored by his mother, whose affection he craved.

Bookish and forward-thinking, young Rudolf clashed often with his father, Emperor Franz Joseph, and struck out on his own as a Playboy Prince, nurturing a close friendship with Queen Victoria's heir, Bertie, Prince of Wales. While forced into a loveless marriage, Rudolf didn't slow his extracurriculars for even a minute; he would later contract, and share with his unsuspecting wife, gonorrhoea, and it's thought that the Prince himself may have contracted syphilis as well.

These are all unseemly things, to be sure, but it is the murder-suicide that ended both Crown Prince Rudolf's life, as well as his 17-year-old mistress's, that shook up the line of succession, forged a tight alliance with Germany, and seems to have inevitably led to the beginning of hostilities in 1914.

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We tend to think of Queen Victoria attired in black, with a dour countenance, but as a young queen she was anything but. Her marriage to Prince Albert was the rare love match, and according to her surviving letters and journal entries, the two enjoyed a vibrant intimacy, albeit in an era where birth control wasn't really a thing. The nine children Victoria and Albert produced speaks to that.

Then, Alicia has some tales from the more ordinary lives of Victorians in England, most of which evinced an enduring - and in our day, a somewhat funny - fascination with death.

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