Queen Victoria, The Grandmother of Europe Quiz

Answer: Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany

Prince Albert and Victoria were first cousins. Albert brought the German tradition of decorating Christmas trees to England when he married Victoria. They were shown in a London newspaper decorating the tree with their children, and the Yuletide tradition took root in England.

Answer: Camilla, Queen Consort to King Charles III

The former Camilla Shand is said to have remarked to the now King Charles III on their first meeting in 1970: "You know that my great-grandmother was your great-great-grandfather's mistress, so how about it?" (Source: CBC News Online, April 18, 2006)

Answer: Mountbatten

Lord Louis Mountbatten, the son of Princess Victoria and Prince Louis of Battenberg, was the uncle of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. He was murdered by an IRA bomb while sailing near his country home in County Sligo, Ireland in 1979. The last Viceroy of India, "Uncle Dickie" as he was known to family, was a beloved mentor to Charles, the Prince of Wales.

Answer: Lake Louise

Lake Louise is an alpine lake within the Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Princess Louise was married to John Campbell, the Duke of Argyll who also served as the Governor General of Canada from 1878-1883.

Answer: True

In a February, 2011 article in the British paper The Telegraph, Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence, was said to be "as heedless and as aimless as a gleaming gold-fish in a crystal bowl and reputedly suffered from syphilis which drove him to insane murders, a subsequent imprisonment (by the knowing Royal Family) and death in asylum in 1892.

However, chronological issues with evidence make this story (Jack the Ripper) flimsy at best." There have been many theories as to the true identity of this famous murderer of prostitutes but the mystery remains unsolved.

Answer: Convert to Catholicism

At the time of her marriage, a royal such as Princess Victoria Eugenie would have de facto renounced their right to the throne by their marriage to a Catholic or by converting to Catholicism; no formal document or pronouncement doing so was required.

Following the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (Prince William and Kate Middleton) two rules affecting succession to the British throne have been proposed to be amended. The first is that male primogeniture will be eliminated, thus the eldest daughter will no longer be placed behind a younger son in the succession. Therefore, should the Cambridges have a daughter first, she will be first in line to succeed her father regardless of whether they subsequently have sons. The other change is that marrying a Roman Catholic will no longer bar a royal from succeeding to the crown, though converting to the religion would do so, as the monarch is the head of the Church of England.

Answer: Tsar Nicolas of Russia

George V's father was King Edward VII. The Kaiser's mother was Edward's sister Victoria, the Princess Royal. Tsarina Alexandra, born Alix of Hesse, was the daughter of Edward's sister Princess Alice. Nicholas II and George V were also first cousins and bore a striking resemblance to one another.

Their mothers were sisters, the daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark and his wife Louise of Hesse-Kassel.

Answer: Hemophilia

The most famous of her descendants who suffered from hemophilia was her great-grandson Alexei, the tsarevich of Russia and son of Nicholas and Alexandra.

Medical research has shown that mild DNA defects in the sperm of older fathers cause many diseases such as polycystic kidney disease and hemophilia. An article by Dr. Carl Herbert in "Healthline" reports that "for fathers over age 40, the risk of having a child with a disease-causing mutation is similar to the risk the mother has for a child with Down syndrome." Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, was 51 at the time of her birth.

Answer: The Romanovs

Prince Philip is in the unique position of being related to both Tsar Nicholas Romanov and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra and had fewer generations between himself and the Romanovs than other living European royals at that time. This genetic testing put to rest the long held urban legend that Grand Duchess Anastasia and possibly also Tsarevich Alexei survived and escaped Russia.

Answer: "Being pregnant is an occupational hazard of being a wife."

"All women become like their mothers..." is from Oscar Wilde. "One thing they never tell you..." was said by Erma Bombeck. "Having a child is surely..." is a quote by Bill Cosby.