Queen Victoria

Victoria, daughter of Prince Edward and Princess Victoria, was Queen of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. She and Prince Consort Albert had 9 children, one of whom was Princess Alice. In 1876 she also became the Empress of India. She was the grandmother of Ella and Alix.

Victoria had an invested interest in the lives of her grandchildren, especially after the grief of losing her husband. She also had a dislike of Russians, so both Ella and Alix’s engagements were not undertaken lightly.

Princess Alice

Alice was the third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She married Grand Duke Louis IV in 1862 and became a German Grand Duchess. Together they had 7 children.

Alice spent her time helping orphans, hospitals and underprivileged women. She founded her own school for nurses and was well known for her charity work. Alice succumbed to illness, along with her youngest child May, in 1878.

Grand Duke Louis IV

Louis married Alice in 1862, and became the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine in 1877.

After his wife’s death, the Grand Duke attempted to re-marry to a divorcee he was in love with. The marriage occurred in secret on the same night his eldest daughter Victoria was wed. As soon as his mother-in-law, Queen Victoria, heard of the marriage, she had it annulled — furious that she wasn’t consulted. It’s rumoured that a child resulted of this short-lived marriage, but it was put up for adoption by the mother.

Princess Victoria

Victoria was the eldest child of Alice and Louis, and quite close with her sister Elisabeth. They were called the perfect pair, even sharing a bedroom until Victoria’s wedding day.

Victoria married her father’s first cousin, Prince Louis of Battenburg. They had 4 children before changing their surname to ‘Mountbatten’ during the First World War in order to sound more British.

She lived to watch many of her family members perish in WWI and II, eventually dying at age 89.

Grand Duke Sergei

Sergei was the seventh child of Alexander II of Russia and Maria Alexandrovna. He grew up a questioning child, which drove his mother to push him further towards his religious studies. He was close to his younger brother Paul and cousin Konstantin growing up and as an adult, even adopting Paul’s children Dmitri and Maria in 1902 after his brother’s banishment from Russia.

Sergei married Ella in 1884. They were never able to have children together, and many historians believe this was made difficult due to Sergei’s homosexuality. After a tumultuous career as Governor General of Moscow, Sergei was assassinated by a revolutionary in 1905.

Tsar Nicholas II

Nicholas was the son of Alexander II. He became the Tsar of Russia in 1894 , mere months after his betrothal to Alix. He was known as a kind father and loving husband, but a nonsensical autocrat politically. During the First World War, he personally planned and led many military operations, many of which weren’t sanctioned by his advisors. The autocratic regime of Russia and its leader prompted the revolution of the Russia people.

With Alix, he had 4 daughters and 1 son, who had haemophilia. He abdicated his throne in 1917, surrendering the capital to the Bolsheviks as he and his family fled to Tobolsk, then Ekaterinburg. His entire family was assassinated in 1918.

Konstantin Konstantinovich

Grand Duke Konstantin was the first cousin of Sergei, and the two were quite close. He, Sergei and Sergei’s younger brother Paul were educated together as children. Konstantin became a famous artist, and is well known for his translations of classic English literature into Russian. His later life was filled with strife due to his conflicting homosexual urges, his religion and the social boundaries of the time.

Wilhelm II

Popularly known by his later title, Kaiser Wilhelm II was the first cousin of Ella and Alix, and Queen Victoria’s eldest grandchild.

As a young man, he fell in love with 14-year-old Ella and planned to marry her. Although the marriage never happened, it is rumoured that Willy’s feelings for his cousin never truly disappeared.

Similarly to Tsar Nicholas II, Wilhelm had great confidence in himself and his own abilities, leading him to fire the infamous German Chanceller Bismarck as soon as he came to power as Kaiser. He made his own decisions, ignored his advisors, and drove his empire into the ground. He abdicated in 1918 and fled to the Netherlands.