King George V seated front and centre with eight other European kings in Windsor Castle in 1910
In May 1910, nine European crowned heads of state posed for a photograph at Windsor Castle where they’d gathered for the funeral of King Edward VII, great-grandfather of Britain’s present head of state Queen Elizabeth II.
They were all related by blood or marriage — and often by both– to King George V, the late king’s son. They probably all spoke English but could default when required into German, the language of the place their ancestors mainly came from.
The nine had other things in common that spring day 110 years ago.
All were struggling with the implications of rapid economic and social change sweeping Europe.
You can perhaps discern it in the worried demeanour of King Manuel II of Portugal, standing in the back row, then aged 20 and the youngest of the nine. His father and elder brother had been shot and killed in 1908 by republican assassins. Manuel, perhaps, had a premonition of his deposition five months after the photograph was taken. He spent the rest of his life in England. With his departure, the Portuguese monarchy was abolished.
George I of Greece, standing behind and to the left of his nephew George V, was however unlikely to have anticipated his own end. The Greek army was a member of the coalition that triumphed against the Ottomans in the first Balkan war in 1912 but George was assassinated the following March while walking through Thessalonica by a deranged gunman. Invaded and occupied by Germany and Italy in 1940, Greece became a republic in 1947.
Another dead European dynasty was represented by Bulgaria’s Tsar Ferdinand, son of one of Queen Victoria’s European nephews. Bulgaria was to share Greece’s triumph against the Ottomans in 1912 but subsequently suffered defeat and the loss of territories to its former allies Greece and Serbia in the second Balkan war the following year.
The defeat was to play a crucial role in Bulgaria’s decision to join Germany and Austro-Hungary against Britain and France in the First World War. It was comprehensively defeated. Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his son Boris and lived in exile in Germany until 1947, the year after his grandson Simeon was deposed and the monarchy abolished in Bulgaria.
Sitting on George V’s right hand is Alfonso of Spain. His grandmother Beatrice was Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter. Spain stayed out of the First World War but Alfonso was to suffer the fate of other European kings in the 20th century. He left Spain (but did not abdicate) following the declaration of the second Spanish republic in 1931 which set the scene for the Spanish civil war. His grandson Juan Carlos, himself now living in exile, became king following the death of President Franco in 1975.
The disaster experienced by Kaiser Wilhelm (standing in the centre of the back row) was exceptional. Delusional, paranoid and megalomaniac, Wilhelm was born in 1859 and Queen Victoria’s first grandson. He fatally approved the invasion of Belgium in August 1914 which was to bring Britain into the First World War.
Facing complete defeat, Wilhelm abdicated, Germany became a republic and the war ended in November 1918. He was to live in Netherlands long enough to hail Hitler’s early triumphs, placing himself once more on the wrong side of history.
The European dynasties represented by three others in the photo still exist, but all were buffeted by war.
Albert of Belgium (the only one of the nine not wearing the pale blue sash of Britain’s Order of the Garter) was 35 when the photograph was taken. He was the grandson of Leopold, Belgium’s first king and the influential uncle of both Queen Victoria and of her husband Prince Albert.
Albert had succeeded to the throne following the death of his father Leopold II the previous December. On 2 August 1914, Germany demanded passage for its armies through Belgium for its invasion of north-east France. The Belgian government refused two days later and Germany declared war and invaded. This brought the UK, a guarantor of Belgian sovereignty, into the war. Most of Belgium was occupied for the entirety of the conflict and Albert lived in exile. He led an army group in the final offensive of the war and received a hero’s welcome in liberated Brussels. His great-great grandson succeeded to the Belgian throne in 2013.
Haakon I of Norway, standing on the far left, was married to Maud, another of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren. Neutral in the First World War, Norway was invaded and occupied by Germany in 1940, forcing Haakon into exile. His grandson Harald succeeded to the Norwegian throne in 1991.
Haakon had a double connection among the nine. His father was Frederick (seated to King George’s left), then Denmark’s king. Frederick died in 1912 and was succeeded by his son Christian who like Haakon was forced into exile in England in the Second World War. Frederick’s great-granddaughter has been Denmark’s queen since 1972.
Other crowned heads of European nations with family connections to the nine were not in the 1910 picture. They included Carol, Rumania’s first king, whose son and heir Ferdinand had married Marie of Edinburgh in 1893. Marie was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, one of Queen Victoria’s eight children.
The most egregious absentee was Nicholas II, Russia’s last Tsar. His wife Alexandra was the daughter of Alice, Prince Victoria’s second daughter. The brothers of Nicholas’ mother included Frederick of Denmark and George of Greece. One of her sisters was in 1910 Alexandra, the widow of Britain’s King Edward.
The photograph captures some of the self-confident certainties of Europe’s rulers just four years before the cataclysm of World War I which was to be followed in 1939 by a second and even more destructive global conflict. The world the nine knew was swept away in little more than a generation.
There is continuity in the person of Britain’s King George. His nation was never invaded or occupied and George was to die in his own bed in Buckingham Palace in 1936. George’s granddaughter, now 94, is Britain’s longest-serving monarch and can comfortably expect succession to the British throne to pass in due course to her grandson George.
And there is a connection today among eight of the nine countries the kings represented. They are members of the EU, the contemporary expression of European unity that family once represented. The exception, of course, is the UK, the country of their host 110 years ago in a world that time has largely forgotten.