Queen Victoria's Grandchildren, Part 1 Quiz

Answer: 15 hours

It was a very difficult breech birth. Most people were certain that both Vicky and the baby would die, and notices were made ready to send to the press if this happened.
Neither of them died, but little Willy was born with a withered arm, and recent research suggests that he was cut off from oxygen for a time while in the womb, thus causing brain damage. This may have contributed to his rather unstable personality in the future.

Answer: Victoria

Though she was christened Victoria Elizabeth Augusta Charlotte, the child was always called Charlotte in the family. Like the Kaiser, she detested and disrespected their mother, and often spread malicious gossip about her. She later became Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen when she married Duke Bernhard, and had a child aged 18, making Vicky a grandmother at 38, and Queen Victoria a great-grandmother at 59.

Answer: A naval career

Henry was initially close to his elder brother Wilhelm, and disrespectful to his mother and father, but marriage to his cousin Princess Irene of Hesse mellowed him, and he became more polite to his English relatives.

Answer: Duck

He also threw his Aunt Beatrice's (she was six at the time) muff out of the carriage window. During the ceremony, he threw his cairngorm onto the floor. When his uncles Arthur (13) and Leopold (ten), attempted to keep him quiet, he bit them on the legs. Thus began a long career of baiting and infuriating his English relatives.

Answer: 1866

Vicky was totally devastated at Sigi's death from meningitis, and tried to ignore her grief by helping with the war effort (Prussia was at the time at war with Austria). She was deeply disappointed and hurt by Wilhelm and Henry's early antipathy towards her, and had hoped Sigi would have turned out differently.

Answer: Prince Alexander of Battenberg

Alexander ('Sandro') was a rather unreliable character, but was made sovereign Prince of Bulgaria. Vicky and Fritz supported the match, but Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm I and Prince Wilhelm were appalled, and absolutely forbade it. A long and bitter war of words ensued, but eventually Vicky had to admit defeat, her decision supported by Queen Victoria.
Heartbroken when she found out that Sandro was having an affair with an opera singer, Moretta resolved to marry the first eligible bachelor she could find. She accordingly married Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe in June 1890.
She later married again, to one Alexander Zubkov.

Answer: A crocodile

The crocodile's name was Bob, and needless to say, the Queen was 'not amused'. Alas, Waldemar died of diphtheria in 1879, and Vicky was never the same after his death. One Prussian priest told his congregation that he hoped the prince's death was a trial sent by God to humiliate his mother's hardened heart. This was just one of the few trials Vicky had to undergo in Germany.

Answer: That she had refused to nurse him because she was disgusted by his deformed arm

This was possibly the vilest lie that the odious Empress Augusta could possibly have told him. Wilhelm was disgusted with his mother.
The real reason she did not nurse him was because Prussian etiquette decreed she could not do so to her first three children. Unsurprisingly, she was always much closer to her last three children than to her first three.

Answer: Greece

Sophie married Crown Prince Constantine ('Tino') of Greece in 1889. Tino became king of Greece in 1913, when his father King George (brother of Alexandra, wife of Edward VII) was wantonly assassinated. Unfortunately, economic and political unrest in Greece led to his deposition in 1917, and for a while he and Sophie had to live elsewhere.

They were restored to the throne in 1920 but deposed again in 1922. Tino died miserably in 1923, but Sophie lived on in Italy until 1932. She had achieved a reputation for being a haughty German hausfrau, but was in reality, a gentle, caring woman and a devoted wife and mother. Wilhelm had been initially opposed to the match, and had banned Sophie from Germany when she went through with it and changed her religion to Greek Orthodox.

He soon changed his mind though, telling her indulgently (albeit condescendingly) that she 'wasn't important enough' to be bothered about.

Answer: Prince Albert Victor of Wales

Unfortunately, the troublesome Albert Victor was not attracted to Mossy, and thus she never became Queen of England; but she did marry. Her husband was Prince Frederick Charles of Hesse, later Landgrave of Hesse. She had children with him, including two sets of twins. Frederick Charles was in fact a relative of Mossy, being the son of Princess Anne of Prussia, a cousin of Fritz.

Answer: Elizabeth of Hesse

Unfortunately for Wilhelm, 'Ella' had already lost her heart to Grand Duke Serge of Russia, so instead of the beautiful, charming Hessian princess, Willy married Augusta Victoria of Schleswig Holstein, called 'Dona' in the family. She was ill-educated, arrogant and stroked Wilhelm's ego so much that it ballooned to unimaginable proportions. Even before they had married, it was obvious that Dona would be nothing more than a vacuous trophy wife.
Dona behaved appallingly to Vicky, but got her just deserts when Queen Victoria, furious that Dona disapproved of the marriage of Princess Beatrice and Henry of Battenberg, branded Dona a 'poor, insignificant little princess.'
Empress Augusta, who also opposed the match, also felt the force of Queen Victoria's wrath. How could the Empress object to Henry's rather low birth, the Queen asked, when the father of her son-in-law was the son of a 'very bad woman'? (no doubt some allusion to the grandmother of the husband of Augusta's only daughter, Louise, Grand Duchess of Baden).
Wilhelm still felt a sentimental attraction to Ella, and offered to help her during the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, when she was in serious danger.

Answer: He rifled through his father's desk hoping to find and repossess his correspondence

Wilhelm did all of these things soon after his father's death, but the first thing he did was have his guards surround the palace and prevent anyone from entering or leaving. He searched his father's desks for his papers and correspondence, but he was out of luck - Vicky and Fritz had deposited them safely with Queen Victoria in Windsor when they went to England for her Golden Jubilee a year earlier.
Before Fritz died, he requested that the Neue Palais, where he and Vicky had lived more or less all their married life, be renamed Friedrichskron in his memory.
Soon after Fritz's death, Wilhelm callously ordered his mother to leave the palace that had been her home for 30 years, and ordered that it be named the Neue Palais once again. His callousness shocked Queen Victoria, who wrote him a letter asking him to be kind to his mother in this difficult time. Though Willy respected his grandmother, she might as well not have bothered for all the effect it had.

Answer: Hermine

Hermine was the daughter of Henry XXII, Duke of Reuss. She was a lady with considerably more spunk than Dona, but they soon tired of each other and by the time Wilhelm died in 1941 they lived separate lives.

Answer: Prince Albert, Duke of York

Albert, who later became King George VI (and who was the father of Elizabeth II), told her gently that he thought it would be a long time before such a state of affairs could exist. They had, after all, been on opposite sides during the war, though Moretta had always disliked her brother the Kaiser and adored her English cousins.

Answer: 1954

She was 82 years old. Charlotte had died in 1919, Henry and Moretta in 1929, Sophie in 1932 and Wilhelm in 1941.