All language subtitles for BBC Royal Cousins at War 1of2 A House Divided.srt - 2

MUSIC: "The British Grenadiers"

On August 4th, 1914,

Britain went to war against
an old friend and traditional ally.

A people with whom it shared

countless historical
and cultural ties.

It did so in alliance
with an authoritarian dictatorship

which had been its most deadly enemy
for the best part of a century.

How it is that Britain came to fight
alongside Russia against Germany

is one of the great puzzles
of the 20th century.

The explanation, in part,
lies in the eccentricities

and foibles of a single family -

that of Queen Victoria, whose
descendants occupied the thrones

of no less than
ten European countries,

a dynastic web that meant

European diplomacy
was also a domestic drama.

At the outbreak of war,

three first cousins reigned
over Europe's greatest powers.

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia,

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany,

and King George V of Britain.

Their passions,

their friendships,

and, above all,
their poisonous rivalries

would play a key role in the
realignment of European politics.

A role often overlooked
by historians.

This is the story of how royalty
helped drag Europe into the abyss.

The story of a family tragedy.

On March 10th, 1863,
half a century before the outbreak

of World War I,
the royalty of Europe gathered

at St George's Chapel, Windsor,

for the wedding of
Queen Victoria's eldest son Bertie,

later King Edward VII,
to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

MUSIC: "Serenade For Strings
in E major" by Antonin Dvorak

Beautiful and glamorous,
Princess Alix, as she was known,

was the Princess Diana of her day.

Already wildly popular
with the British public.

But the wedding would also be
remembered as the first

public appearance in England
of Queen Victoria's grandson,

the future German Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Wilhelm, who is aged four,
comes to the wedding as a page.

And he's very excited
because he's allowed to wear

what he calls his "Scotch dress",
with a kilt and a sporran

and a sgian-dhu in his socks.

He is sat next to
a couple of his uncles,

and first of all
he bites the leg of one of them

and then he throws his little dirk
into the middle of the aisle

while they're saying their vows!

So at the age of four he's trying
to upstage the British monarchy

and his uncle.

It was the beginning of a long,
complex and tortured relationship

between the future German Kaiser
and his British family.

And the wedding that spring day
would prove a turning point

in the Royal Family's relations
with Europe in other ways as well.

Within a year of the marriage
of Bertie and Alix,

Prussia invaded Denmark.

Prussia was the largest
of the states,

in a Germany which, at that time,
was still not united.

The troublesome Wilhelm's father,
known as Fritz,

was heir to the Prussian throne,

and was married to Queen Victoria's
oldest daughter Vicky.

Denmark was the home country of the
beautiful new Princess of Wales.

The effect of this
is basically to set up

a hostility between Denmark
and Prussia

that is to be a major factor

in the sort of alignment
of the European powers,

and to divide Victoria's family.

Alix was reported to weep
every night,

and Bertie would come in
and find her crying over

the tremendous humiliation
that Germany had done to Denmark.

But Alix's mother-in-law
Queen Victoria took Prussia's side.

She ordered her son Bertie
to remember...

'Your connection with Denmark
is only of a year's standing.

'Your whole family are German,
and you are half-German.'

You've got to remember that she is

pretty much completely German
herself -

her mother was German,
her paternal grandmother was German,

and her great-grandparents
were all German too.

Princess Alix, though,

was determined to signal
her support for her Danish homeland.

She became, I think,
more deeply anti-Prussian

because she had to bottle it up
effectively.

And she found lovely subtle
little ways of expressing it.

One of the earliest family
photographs of their first child,

she has the baby on her knee,

and he is dressed in what appears
to be the traditional baby outfit,

but if you look very closely it's
decorated with little Danish flags.

It is literally a very quiet piece
of flag-waving

on the part of
the Princess of Wales.

Princess Alix,
darling of the British public,

wife of one future British king,
mother of another,

would never forgive the Prussians
for the war of 1864.

And although Prussia won,
the war would also have

profound implications
for Queen Victoria's daughter Vicky

and her husband Fritz in Berlin.

MUSIC: "Prussia's Glory"
by Johann Gottfried Piefke

Prussia was an aggressive,
rising power.

When Victoria and Prince Albert

had sent Vicky to marry
the Prussian heir six years before,

they were sending her on a mission.

Queen Victoria and Albert
had this plan to civilise Prussia.

It was an attempt to use Vicky

to marry the eventual heir
to the German throne,

and to rescue Prussia from
the excesses of German militarism.

Vicky was just 17 when
she married Fritz. A child bride.

But she was highly intelligent,

and had been carefully trained
by her father for the task in hand.

It was assumed Germany would soon
be united under Prussian leadership.

It was Vicky's job to make sure
the new Germany would be a liberal,

pro-British constitutional monarchy.

If you have a liberal Prussia,
you'll have a liberal Germany.

So Vicky is fired off like a sort of
Exocet missile into Prussia

to kind of create
the liberal Prussia.

It was nothing less than a battle
for the soul of the future Germany.

A heavy burden to place on
the shoulders of a 17-year-old girl,

as even Queen Victoria recognised.

'Poor, dear child.

'I often tremble when I think
how much is expected of her.'

Victoria's plans soon unravelled.

In 1862, Otto von Bismarck was
appointed Prussian Prime Minister.

An arch-conservative,

Bismarck's politics
were the opposite of Vicky's.

The attack on Denmark in 1864

consolidated Bismarck's
grip on power,

resulting in the seizure
of the Duchies

of Schleswig and Holstein.

A series of short wars followed,
during which Bismarck

crushed the independence
of the smaller German states

and defeated Austria and France.

By 1871, he had achieved the dream
of German unification,

transforming the map of Europe.

The creation of the united Germany
totally threatens the European

balance of power.

Simply because
of the number of Germans,

their strategic position
in the middle of Europe,

and the fact that Germany
has the most vibrant economy,

in many ways it creates
in the middle of Europe

a country which potentially
could dominate the continent.

Unification also meant a dramatic
tilt in the balance of power

within Germany.

The forces of conservative
militarism were triumphant.

Vicky was sidelined.

She wrote anguished letters
to her mother, Queen Victoria.

'You cannot think how painful it is
to be continuously

'surrounded by people who consider
your very existence a misfortune.'

But Bismarck was just
one of Vicky's problems.

As the British had already observed
at Bertie's wedding,

her son Wilhelm
was a difficult child.

His problems had begun
on the night he was born.

Wilhelm's had been a breech birth.

The baby was firmly stuck.

He was coming out bottom first.

His legs were sort of
up over his chest.

His arms were behind his head.

And the doctor somehow got
the left arm,

brought it down,

but he said in his own notes

that he had to use
considerable force to do it.

Which, even when you think about it,
it's hideous.

And it's really in those moments
that the Kaiser is made.

Wilhelm's left arm
would be permanently disabled -

shorter than his right,
and of little use.

His sensitive, intelligent

18-year-old mother Vicky
was traumatised.

'It cuts me to the heart
when I see all other children

'with the use of all their limbs,
and that mine is denied that.

'The idea of his remaining a cripple
haunts me.

'I long to have a child

'with everything perfect about it
like everybody else.'

It's a militaristic society,

a milieu
where you can't be handicapped -

I mean, you can't have
a one-armed king,

that's something
you don't have in Prussia.

You have to have the perfect body,

and she has a son who hasn't got
a perfect body.

Wilhelm's grandfather,
the Prussian King Wilhelm I,

reacted with characteristic
Prussian tact.

William I, when he sees
little baby William,

is said to have wondered aloud
to his son Fritz

whether he should congratulate him
on the birth of a defective child.

Vicky had failed in what, for the
Prussians, was her central mission.

By the early 1860s, Vicky and Fritz
were living in the vast,

impersonal grandeur
of the new palace outside Berlin.

Here, Wilhelm was subjected
to a series

of desperate treatments
for his disability.

His right arm was strapped
to his body,

to force him to use his left arm,

resulting only in endless
painful falls

as he tottered along
the marble corridors.

Then, at the age of four, Wilhelm's
head began to twist to one side

as a result of the imbalance
in his neck muscles.

To treat this,
he was strapped into a machine.

Vicky included a sketch
in a letter to her mother.

'I cannot tell what I suffered
when I saw him in that machine.

'It was all I could do
to prevent myself from crying.

'To see one's child treated like one
deformed, it really is very hard.'

Wilhelm's young, traumatised mother
compounded his problems.

Vicky finds it almost impossible
to accept Wilhelm's disability,

that there's no bonding
between them.

She clearly sends messages,

perhaps subliminally, to Wilhelm

that he's somehow
not up to her expectations.

This is the story of a proud mother

who reacts really badly
to her son's handicap.

She TRIES to love him,

and pulls herself together
and tries to be a good mother,

but at the end of the day

she looks at him and she thinks,
"This is my greatest failure."

That's what she feels.

The relationship
between the future Kaiser

and his English mother
would be fraught and complicated,

with profound implications
for the future of Europe.

MUSIC: "Moments musicaux No.3"
by Franz Schubert

Across the North Sea
at Marlborough House,

the London home
of the Prince and Princess of Wales,

the childhood of the future King,
George V,

could not have been more different.

George was born six years after
Wilhelm, and was healthy and robust.

The second son, he was not
originally intended for the throne.

His brother Eddie was the heir.

George was spared
the hothouse education

imposed on his German cousin.

His father, Bertie,
the Prince of Wales,

although fond of George's mother,
was a notorious philanderer.

It was a situation the beautiful
Princess Alix, his future Queen,

had little option but to accept.

But it meant she poured
her affection into her children.

Alix is the dominant figure at home.
Bertie is often away.

And she creates, what, for small
children, must have been a rather

wonderful, atmosphere of endless
games. No lessons, nothing serious.

Endless, sort of, romping. A very,
sort of, child-centred environment.

Every other summer, Princess Alix
would take the whole family off

to stay with her parents,
in Denmark.

Although comparatively impoverished,
the Danish royal family

had succeeded in marrying into
various European dynasties.

Cousins, uncles and aunts,
from across the Continent,

would all meet up
at the Danish king's

summer home, outside Copenhagen.

Among them
were the Russian royal family.

It was here that George
first met his cousin,

the future Tsar Nicholas II,

whose mother, Dagmar, always known
as "Minnie", was Alix's sister.

What happens is,

Bertie and Alix
end up holidaying, you know,

once every two years with
the Russian tsar and his wife,

because Alix and Minnie have
this very close relationship.

They were obviously sisters and they
want to bring families together.

Minnie's husband was Alexander,
tsar of Russia from 1881.

A larger-than-life personality,

famous for being able to bend
iron pokers with his bare hands.

Both shy and withdrawn,
George and Nicholas were somewhat

in awe of their fathers
and they would become firm friends.

The informality of these
summer holidays is captured

in rarely-seen images
from the Danish archives,

taken by the royals themselves,
keen amateur photographers.

The atmosphere
is completely knockabout.

That circle is

notorious for a very relaxed,
very slapstick, sense of humour.

You hear of the Princess of Wales
and the Empress of Russia

turning somersaults
in full evening dress.

The children turn a garden hose
on the Tsar of Russia and he laughs

and turns it back.

They call him "Uncle Fatty".
Can you imagine that?!

So, this extraordinary atmosphere

of emperor, empress,
several kings and queens

and endless, countless,
archdukes and duchesses,

all of them behaving like,
sort of, children on holiday.

Traces of the royal holidaymakers
remain to this day...

An initial,
scratched into a window pane,

probably that of Tsar Alexander.

The heights of the children,
marked on a door frame.

But one royal cousin
was never invited -

Vicky's son, the future
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany,

who, as a Prussian, was not welcome
in defeated, humiliated Denmark.

Many of the other guests were from
minor German royal houses,

also beaten in
the German wars of unification,

and no more keen than the Danes

to holiday with
their Prussian conquerors.

You get the, sort of, losers
from the Prussian wars of the 1860s

all gathering on the beach
and muttering against Prussia.

For the Tsarina of Russia
and the future British Queen,

the holidays had
a clear political purpose.

Minnie and Alix
hoped to draw their husbands,

Bertie and Alexander,
closer to each other -

and away from Germany.

In 1874, the Russian
royal family visited London.

Minnie, seen here on the left,

was as glamorous and photogenic as
her sister and the British public

was enchanted.
The Danish sisters became

the fashion icons of their day

and quickly turned the trip
into a declaration

of Anglo-Russian friendship.

They came out together,
I think on the first day,

wearing identical outfits
and, of course,

they were
very striking women, anyway.

This makes an incredible impact

and it makes a very interesting
underlying point - perhaps

Britain and Russia
DO have something in common,

perhaps there are things
that could draw them together.

But in the 1870s, the sisters
were fighting an uphill battle

in seeking to forge
Anglo-Russian ties.

For the British,
Russia was the traditional enemy.

Throughout the 19th century,
most Britons looked with fear

and something
close to loathing at Russia.

Russia was the country that,
in the, kind of,

nightmare imagination
of the government in London,

threatened India - India,
the jewel in the imperial crown.

They are Asiatic, they are the
descendants of the Mongol horde,

they are barbarians.

Queen Victoria spoke for the nation.

"Those detestable Russians -

"horrible, deceitful, cruel.

"They will always hate us
and we can never trust them."

The Russians
were no more fond of the British

resenting their presence
in India and Central Asia.

The Russian perspective is that
the British are both hypocritical

and a dammed nuisance.

Britain is the country which
blocks Russia, in all sorts of ways.

The moral superiority of Britain,

that sticks in a few gullets.

Rather than to Britain,
Russia looked to Germany,

where the chancellor, Bismarck,

had worked hard
to cultivate good relations,

fearful of an alliance
between France and Russia

that would leave Germany encircled.

In Berlin, in 1884,
Bismarck strengthened ties,

by sending a delegation to Russia,
for the celebration

of the coming-of-age of Tsarevich
Nicholas, the Russian heir.

His choice to lead it
was a surprising one -

Nicholas' cousin,
Prince Wilhelm, now 25.

This is incredibly flattering for
somebody so young and inexperienced

as Wilhelm - he has not done
any diplomatic work before -

but it is also
a tremendous slight to his father.

because Wilhelm's father Fritz
had long wanted to take part

in government and Bismarck
had basically kept him out.

Ever keen to marginalise the liberal
influences of Wilhelm's parents,

still only heirs to the throne,

Bismarck was exploiting
what had become

a complex, troubled relationship,

particularly between Wilhelm
and his English mother.

As a teenager,
Wilhelm had written strange,

sexually-charged letters to Vicky,

describing dreams,
in which he repeatedly

kissed and caressed her hands -

dreams he longed to fulfil.

"In eight days, we will go to Berlin
and then what I dreamed about,

"we will do in reality,
when we are alone in your room,

"without any witnesses. Promise to
do so really as you did in my dream

"to me, for I do so love you."

Well, what does one think of that?
It is clearly an erotic dream...

..and, strangely,
concentrating on the hands

and, specifically, the left hand.

And one can't overlook the fact
that it is Wilhelm's left hand

that is in a glove,
to hide the discoloured nature

and the claw-like nature of it.

My interpretation of it is that it
is one last appeal that he is making,

through this illicit,
incestuous avenue,

to his mother,
to love him the way he really is.

Now in his twenties, the future
Kaiser's heart had hardened.

He had become fiercely hostile to
everything his parents represented.

Vicky wrote in despair
to her mother, Queen Victoria.

"Willie is chauvinistic
and ultra-Prussian, to a degree

"and with a violence
which is often very painful to me.

"He is turning into the archetypal
Potsdam Lieutenant,

"with that evil mixture
of a very loud mouth

and a chauvinist's hatred and
ignorance of all things foreign.

He does everything
that annoys his parents, of course.

He is a total rebel. He knows
that it will upset his parents

if he mingles in anti-Semitic
circles, and he does that.

He wants to be with the winners,

with his grandfather
and with Bismarck.

His parents are, to him,
the losers in German society.

He does not want to be
associated with them.

The tensions between
mother and son were exacerbated

by Vicky's ferocious attachment
to her British homeland.

She was always saying how
fantastic England was and how,

basically, rubbish Germany was.

"You're a little German boy,

"you will never understand
what it is to be an Englishman.

"You may praise your navy, but it
is nothing compared with OUR navy."

And on and on and on and on.

Wilhelm's trip to Russia,

for Nicholas'
coming of age, in 1884,

put the final seal on his
defection to the conservative camp.

Wilhelm is absolutely enchanted
by the autocracy that he sees

in St Petersburg and Moscow. The
fact that there are 12,000 soldiers

lining the railway tracks,
all shouting, "Hooray!"

when the Imperial Train goes past -

this is his ideal world.

Wilhelm saw the Russian Tsar,

Alexander III, Nicholas' father,
as a demi-god.

Living amidst almost-unimaginable
splendour in his numerous palaces,

the Tsar wielded absolute power,

untrammelled by any form
of representative government.

Wilhelm was intoxicated.

The emperor ideology that he had
developed in 1884 stays with him -

this, kind of, notion of,

"I have been sent by God to rule
my people and I must listen

"to the people and I must listen
to God and tell them what God

"tells me is best for them."

On returning to Berlin,

Wilhelm began a gushing,
private - alarmingly indiscreet -

correspondence with the Tsar,
in which it was clear his hostility

to his mother now extended
to her British family.

"I ask you only one favour.
Oppose the English uncles.

"Do not be shocked by what
you will hear from my father.

"He is under the influence
of my mother, who, for her part,

"is directed by the Queen of England
and who causes him to see everything

"through English eyes."

But Wilhelm's relationship

with England mirrored
his relationship with his mother,

in all its complexity.

He is pulled
in all sorts of directions.

He is fascinated by Britain,
he wants to be noticed by Britain,

he hates Britain!

He loved the pomp of the Empire,

he loved the pomp
around his grandmother.

That is all appealing
to him, terribly,

but at the same time,
there is always this insecurity.

You know, "I am not up to it.

"They think
that Germany is not equal."

All his relationships in his
whole life are totally conflicted

and so is this one.

His relationship to England is
the most troubled one he has.

In 1887, Queen Victoria
celebrated her Golden Jubilee.

Wilhelm was far fonder of his
grandmother than his mother.

and now showed his pro-British face,

once again persuading
his grandfather to send him,

rather than his parents,
as head of the German delegation.

Queen Victoria
was having none of it.

When Victoria hears

that Wilhelm has invited himself
as the German representative,

bypassing his parents,
without telling his parents,

she is furious.

She, sort of, disinvites him
and asks his parents, instead,

invites them.

As the grand procession wound its
way through the streets of London,

Wilhelm had to make do
with a minor role.

In the official portrait
of Victoria's extended family,

painted for the occasion,

it was his father, Fritz,
who was given pride of place.

Wilhelm was left gnashing his teeth,
relegated to a window alcove

with his younger cousin,
Prince George.

In private,
his anti-English venom returned.

"It's high time that old woman died.

"One can not have enough
hatred for England."

A few months later, the royalty of
Europe gathered once more in Berlin,

for the funeral of Wilhelm's
grandfather, Kaiser Wilhelm I,

who had finally died, aged 90.

30 years after arriving in Germany,
Queen Victoria's

daughter Vicky was empress, at last,

but there was
to be no joyful coronation.

Her husband, Fritz, was dying.

Fritz, Wilhelm's father,
contracts throat cancer

and it takes ages to get
the diagnosis and, by the time

they have worked out
what it is, it is basically too late.

Fritz became Kaiser in
March 1888.

But by then,
he had just a few months to live.

It is one of the great
what ifs of history.

If Wilhelm I had not lived
quite so long,

if his son Fritz had taken over
sooner,

Germany might have evolved
in a different way.

Fritz was a liberal,

he wanted to make Germany
a constitutional and modern country.

But his son Wilhelm II did not want
to do any of the above.

Vicky knew that she and her husband
would never wield real power.

She wrote, tragically,
to Queen Victoria.

"I think people in general consider
us a mere passing shadow,

"soon to be replaced by reality
in the shape of Wilhelm."

Fritz wants to have some effect
on German politics,

but he's just too ill and two weak

and he sort of sits there,
knowing he's dying

and that everything he'd worked for
for 20 years,

this sort of liberal idea of Germany
that he'd hoped to create,

is just not going to happen.

It's really, really grim.

Fritz died after
just 99 days on the throne.

Aged 29, his erratic,
emotionally unstable son

was now Kaiser of one of the most
powerful countries in the world.

A country where ultimate power
still rested with the monarch.

His first act was to order troops
to surround the new palace

where his father had died.

He says that the palace must be
searched for papers

relating to his father's time as
emperor.

It's sort of monstrous,
it's such an aggressive act

because it's really
directed at Vicky.

The British family hear of this,
Bertie in particular,

and it's an awful, awful thing to do
to your mother, obviously,

and they are horrified by this.

Bertie, the Prince of Wales,
now in his late 40s,

was close to his sister.

He wrote to Vicky to console her
over the behaviour of her son.

"His conduct towards you is simply
revolting

"but, alas, he lacks the feelings
and usages of a gentleman."

The future British king
never forgave his German nephew.

The relationship between Wilhelm's
cousin Prince George

and his mother could not have
been more different.

George always called Alix,
the Princess of Wales,

"darling Mother dear".

While she called him
"little Georgie",

signing off one letter...

"With a great big kiss
for your lovely little face."

George was 25 at the time.

Princess Alix's loathing for Germany
had not dimmed.

In 1890,

George was made honorary colonel
in a Prussian dragoon regiment

during a visit to Berlin
with his father.

While Bertie squeezed into
a somewhat tight uniform,

George kept in the background. His
mother reacted with amused dismay.

"So my Georgie boy has become
a real live, filthy,

"blue-coated, Pickelhaube
German soldier.

"Never mind. As you say,
it could not have been helped."

George remained behind his older
brother in line to the throne

and had originally been intended
for a career in the Royal Navy.

George had the education
of a midshipman.

He was extraordinarily badly
educated.

Almost uniquely among
late 19th century royalty,

George could speak
no foreign languages.

I think, to a large extent, George is
shaped by his life in the Navy.

He likes small spaces, even after
he becomes Prince of Wales.

He is not gregarious.
He does not like meeting people.

He likes order, he likes discipline,
he likes control.

It was only with the death in 1892

of his older brother, Eddie, from
pneumonia that George became heir.

Unlike cousin Wilhelm, he had never
had any desire to be king.

The death of his brother
comes as a complete shock.

Eddie is almost a twin to him.

At that level, it is devastating.

And then, suddenly to be faced with
all these responsibilities

which he had never anticipated
is terrifying to him, I think,

at the beginning.

Now a sense of shared destiny
drew him more than ever

to friendship with his cousin,
the Russian heir, Nicholas.

With whom he also shared
a remarkable physical similarity.

They are both rather decent, rather
callow, rather nice young men

without really much curiosity to move
beyond the rank and station in life

which fate has assigned them to.

Like George,

Nicholas's closest relationship was
with his mother, Minny.

His Danish mother,
as is the way with her sister,

Queen Alexandra of Britain,

is a very good mother, a very
possessive mother,

but one who does her
utmost to keep her sons children.

It strikes me as an extraordinary
thing

that you have got these two
immensely prominent royal figures

who, at home, are little more
than big babies.

But there was one key difference
between the two royal cousins.

Where George dutifully married
Princess Mary,

the girl who had been engaged
to his older brother,

Nicholas's marriage would be
an epic tale of drama and romance.

One that would alter
the course of Russian history.

In Saint Petersburg in 1889,
during a family visit,

Nicholas had fallen deeply
and passionately in love

with his German cousin,

Queen Victoria's granddaughter,
Princess Alix of HesseDarmstadt.

Alix was the daughter of Victoria's
second daughter, Alice,

who had married a German duke.

Alice had died of diphtheria
when Alix was just six years old.

Queen Victoria had taken the
motherless children under her wing.

Victoria has this strong sense
that Alice's children have

in some way become her own children.

The Queen takes a particular
interest in the daughters

and that inevitably means
the daughters' marital prospects.

Alix was always said to have been
Victoria's favourite grandchild.

And the thought of her marrying
the Russian heir

revived all the Queen's old fears
and suspicions.

My blood runs cold

when I think of her placed on that
very unsafe throne.

The state of Russia is so bad,
so rotten that,

at any moment, something dreadful
might happen

and the wife of the heir
to the throne

is in a most difficult
and precarious position.

But strangely, one obvious obstacle
to Nicholas marrying Alix

was never mentioned. Haemophilia.

It seems extraordinary that, given
Alix's only purpose, really,

is going to be as a breeding machine

that this potential defect isn't
raised.

Haemophilia is an hereditary
condition

that prevents the blood from
clotting.

It afflicts primarily men,
but is passed through women

and had entered the royal family
through Queen Victoria herself.

Alix's brother Fritz

had died from the condition at
the age of just two.

Queen Victoria's own son, Leopold,
had died at the age of 30.

But European royalty appeared to
be in a state of denial.

By the 1890s, doctors
understood that it was inherited,

but are you going to tell the Queen,

or the Tsar that all their children's
futures might be compromised

because they might just be
carrying haemophilia?

The whole business of royalty
is heredity.

You have to produce healthy children
to produce healthy children.

The Russian royal family,

related to the British through
the Danish connection,

were at this stage
free of haemophilia.

The failure to confront
the possibility

that Alix might be a carrier

would have tragic consequences
for the Romanov dynasty.

But in 1894, the principle obstacle
to Nicholas and Alix's wedding

was a religious one.

Marriage to the Russian heir

would require Alix to convert
to Russian Orthodoxy.

Deeply religious, she was loathe
to abandon her Lutheran faith.

She was in love with Nicholas,

she would have married him readily
if he had not been Russian.

The relatives who tried to persuade
her on the grounds of,

it's a formality,
it doesn't have to mean anything,

were reading her completely wrong.

Because if she converted, she would
do it wholeheartedly, completely.

Alix initially rejected Nicholas.

Then, in 1894,
they were brought together again

when the royalty of Europe gathered
for a wedding in Coburg, Germany.

Nicholas and Alix spent hours
alone together.

He pleaded with her to change her
mind until, finally, she relented.

"I cried like a child
and she did too.

"But her expression had changed.

"Her face was lit by a quiet
content."

The next day,

Queen Victoria's extended family
gathered for a group photo.

An extraordinary
snapshot of European royalty.

Nicholas and Alix
were stood side-by-side.

Also present were the Queen,
her daughter Vicky,

Bertie the Prince of Wales,

and the German Kaiser,

who believed he had played a key
role

in bringing
the happy couple together.

Wilhelm always liked to put
himself at the centre of every story

and this was no exception.

In his memoirs, he claimed that it
was he who had, basically,

bolstered Nicholas's courage,
taken him off to his room,

put a bouquet of flowers in his hand,

dusted him off and said,
"Go on, ask for her!"

By now, Kaiser Wilhelm had
been on the throne almost six years

and was proving
an alarming, unpredictable

if energetic presence
on the European stage.

His reign had begun

with a catastrophic trip
to Saint Petersburg in 1888.

Wilhelm had hoped to seal
a conservative alliance

with his hero, Tsar Alexander III.

Instead, he had offended Alexander

by his lack of grief at the death of
his own father, Fritz,

just a few weeks before.

Himself a devoted family man,
the Tsar was appalled.

He is a rascally young fop who
throws his weight around,

thinks too much of himself and
fancies that others worship him.

Wilhelm, though,

retained a disastrous confidence
in his own diplomatic abilities.

Determined to control German
foreign policy himself, in 1890,

he sacked Otto von Bismarck,
the architect of German unification.

Within months, the German alliance
with Russia had disintegrated,

Russia signing, instead,
an alliance with France,

the first stage of the encirclement
of Germany

Bismarck had always dreaded.

By now, the erratic young Kaiser
was veering wildly

back in the other direction
towards his British family.

Suddenly, Wilhelm turns round
and says,

"Oh, Grandmamma,
I really want to come and visit you

"and I really want
to come and visit you at Cowes."

Cowes is this famous regatta

which takes place once a year
in August on the Isle of Wight.

It is a gathering place
of the richest people.

It's as if all the oligarchs
and zillionaires

and rich Eurotrash gathered to show
off their Learjets in one place.

Wilhelm desperately wants to
be invited.

Queen Victoria doesn't really want
him to come,

but her Prime Minister,
Lord Salisbury, says,

"Look, we need to be friendly
with the Germans."

So she says, "OK, you can come."

And he comes and loves it.

To his delight,

the Kaiser was made an honorary
admiral in the Royal Navy.

Fancy wearing the same uniform
as St Vincent and Nelson,

it is enough to make one quite
giddy.

Wilhelm returned to Cowes regularly
through the early 1890s.

But prolonged exposure did nothing
to improve relations

with his British family.

Wilhelm, the Kaiser, could never
understand the English royal family

who see Cowes and Osborne,
basically, as a picnic by the sea.

They're not on show in the way that
William is. He gets it wrong always.

One year he brings
this enormous bloody band

which plays all over the place all
the time and is incredibly noisy.

Another year, he brings two warships
which shoot endless gun salutes,

get in the way of all the boats
and everyone goes...

"Why doesn't he just go home?"

His cousin Prince George
dreaded the Kaiser's visits,

as he wrote to his wife.

"I am just off now with Papa

"to pay Wilhelm a visit
on board the Hohenzollern.

"I hope he will be out."

But Cowes became, above all,

the stage for a growing rivalry

between Wilhelm and his Uncle
Bertie, the future King Edward VII,

now entering his 50s
and as rakish as ever.

I think Edward VII is perhaps one
of the most attractive characters.

He was a bon viveur,
which is something attractive.

He loved the theatre, he liked life,
he enjoyed himself,

he had lots of friends, people liked
him, he was fun to be with,

he was widely respected.

And here was Wilhelm,
who has always this feeling

that someone is laughing at him,
that he's not being taken seriously.

He tries to throw his weight around
and make people like him

and, of course, that makes people
dislike him even more.

Far from encouraging friendship,

for the Kaiser,
Cowes became a competition.

With national prestige at stake.

Each year, he comes along
with a more and more expensive boat

because each year
he failed to beat Bertie.

And the year he actually beat Bertie,

Bertie sold his boat because clearly,

actually, he'd quite enjoyed
beating Wilhelm

and once the battle was over
and Wilhelm had won it,

he didn't want to play that
game any more.

"The regatta at Cowes was once
a pleasant holiday for me,

"but now that the Kaiser has taken
command there,

"it is nothing but a nuisance."

I think this rivalry,
it's incredibly interesting

because it encapsulates

not only the relationship between
Wilhelm and his uncle,

this constant jostling and jousting
for position,

but also the relationship
between England and Germany

and the English fleet
and the German fleet.

It prefigures
so much of what is later to come.

By the mid-1890s, the erratic
young Kaiser was veering once more

away from Britain
and back towards Russia.

In 1894, Tsar Alexander III died.

The coronation of his son Nicholas

provided the first moving
images of any royal figure.

But beneath the pomp and grandeur,
the new tsar, just 26,

was desperately insecure,
as he told one of his cousins.

"What am I to do?
What is going to happen to me?

"To Alix, to Mother, to all of
Russia? I'm not prepared to be Tsar.

"I never wanted to become Tsar,

"I know nothing of the business
of ruling."

Nicholas II is very badly
prepared to be tsar in terms

of having played an effective role of
any sort in government.

He is also, simply, emotionally
younger than his age of 26.

And just by character,

here is a man whom fate has placed
in the middle of politics,

here is also a man who dislikes
politics and politicians.

But Nicholas's beautiful young wife,

Queen Victoria's favourite
granddaughter,

now the Tsarina Alexandra,
was already on hand,

offering a combination of sugary
devotion and steely resolve.

"Darling boysy, me loves you,
oh so very tenderly and deeply.

"Be firm and show your own mind and
don't let others forget who you are.

"Forgive me, lovey."

I think Alexandra is like people
who convert to another religion,

they often overdo it.

She underwent this tremendous
emotional struggle,

did convert to Russian Orthodoxy

and I think became more Russian than
the Russians,

became more orthodox than
the orthodox.

She invests her husband with this
sort of quasi-divine character

which doesn't allow him
ever to compromise.

If you are a representative
of God on Earth,

then you can't be told what to
do by anybody else.

Adrift and uncertain,

Nicholas also clung to Russia's
authoritarian traditions.

"I shall maintain the principle
of autocracy

"just as firmly and unflinchingly

"as it was preserved
by my unforgettable, dead father."

Kaiser Wilhelm thoroughly approved

of his young cousin's
anti-democratic instincts.

He wrote to Nicholas,

complaining that his own German
parliament was...

"Behaving as badly as it can,

"swinging backwards and forwards
between the Socialists,

"egged on by the Jews,
and the Catholics.

"Both parties being soon fit to be
hung,

"all of them, as far as I can see."

The two men would meet

during summer cruises
on their royal yachts in the Baltic.

For the Kaiser, Nicholas's
accession provided the opportunity

for a fresh start in Russo-German
relations.

But like most people, Nicholas
found his German cousin difficult.

Wilhelm had this very
unfortunate manner.

He would go around smacking
people on the bottom

and playing practical jokes,

turning all his rings inward

and then squeezing your hand
very tightly so it really hurt.

The Kaiser's sense of humour was
crude and infantile.

In this Christmas card, he has drawn
in the bodily functions himself.

On his yacht, he would force
his ageing entourage

to perform morning gymnastics,

snipping their braces
so their trousers fell down...

and sitting on them.

He was invariably delighted
by his own wit,

as one British statesman observed.

"If the Kaiser laughs, which he
is sure to do a good many times,

"he will laugh with absolute
abandonment, throwing his head back,

"opening his mouth
to the fullest possible extent,

"shaking his whole body,
and often stamping with one foot

"to show his excessive enjoyment
of any joke."

The Tsar found his cousin's
visits an ordeal.

And the Tsarina Alexandra
was no more fond of him.

The Kaiser considered her a German,

but she considered herself
an Englishwoman

and had always been part
of the anti-Prussian club.

A whole new generation of royals
was now holidaying in Denmark.

For the Tsar and Tsarina,

it was an escape from the stifling
atmosphere of Saint Petersburg.

This footage dates from 1899.

In it, Tsar Nicholas can be seen
fooling around with royal relatives.

In this company, Tsar and
Tsarina could truly relax.

Play the fool even.

In a way that was unthinkable
at home.

Nicholas's mother and aunt,
the Danish sisters Minny and Alix,

seen here on the right,

continued to be the centre of this
boisterous,

anti-Prussian grouping of cousins.

A grouping of which the Tsarina was
very firmly a part.

And from which the Kaiser
remained excluded.

He is paranoid.

He sees a conspiracy

and it's the Russian and the British

and then all these funny little
German cousins and principalities

all ganging up against him

and talking behind his back.

The Tsarina made little attempt to
conceal her contempt for the Kaiser.

He thinks himself a superman,
but he's really nothing but a clown.

Wilhelm was the cousin
no-one wanted to play with.

The Kaiser's paranoia worsened
as it became clear

Nicholas's accession had led
to a thawing of relations,

not with Germany, but with Britain.

In 1896, Nicholas
and Alexandra visited Balmoral.

They can be seen here walking either
side of Queen Victoria's carriage.

Victoria was enchanted
by the new Tsar.

I think if one is looking for a case

where actually personal chemistry

does matter in international
politics,

Victoria's fond attitude towards
Nicholas is very clearly one of them.

"Nicky is charming
and wonderfully like Georgie.

"He always speaks English
and almost without a fault.

"He is very unaffected."

In 1899, Queen Victoria wrote to
Nicholas

to warn him
about his German cousin Wilhelm.

"I am afraid William may go and tell
things against us to you,

"just as he does about you to us.

"If so, pray tell me
openly and confidentially.

"It is so important
that such mischievousness

"and unstraightforward proceedings
should be put a stop to."

Tsar Nicholas immediately
wrote back.

"I am so happy you told me
in that open way about Wilhelm.

"It is a dangerous double game
he is playing at.

"As you know, dearest Grandmamma,
all I am striving at now

"is for the longest possible
prolongation of peace in
this world."

In the evening
of Queen Victoria's life,

a slow motion reversal
of traditional power relationships
was under way.

Britain was drawing closer
to its former enemy Russia

and away from its traditional
ally, Germany.

It was a process driven primarily
by politicians
and national interest.

But the Kaiser's tangled
relationship

with his British
relatives had played a key part.

For the old Queen, the distancing
between the two nations was painful.

During the Boer War,

she was subject to vicious
attacks in the German press.

Her daughter Vicky wrote to
Kaiser Wilhelm to protest.

"You can imagine my feelings

"when I see her made the subject of
gross and insulting caricatures.

"Her mother was German, her husband
was German,

"her sons-in-law
and daughters-in-law nearly all.

"Her sympathies always were German."

The Kaiser, too,
for all his occasional hostility,

never lost his affection for his
grandmother.

"People have no idea how much
I love the Queen,

"how profoundly she is interwoven

"with all my memories of childhood
and youth."

I think the Kaiser,

as much as he could love
anyone except for himself,

really loved Queen Victoria.

She was his grandmother.

He had very happy memories of going
to stay with her

and she was good with him.

He listened to her when
he would not listen to other people.

She is very clever at handling him,

getting him to do what she wants,

by being firm but affectionate,

and he responds to that.

But Victoria was now 81

and at Osborne at the start of 1901,
she entered her final illness.

The Kaiser dashed to her side.

He came rushing over when it was
clear she would not last much longer.

And he was actually beside her
as she died.

He held her in his arms and said how
little and how light she was

and I think he was genuinely very
moved.

Queen Victoria died in the arms
of the German Kaiser

and he helped lay her body out

beneath the portrait of her beloved
German husband, Prince Albert.

A few days later,

Wilhelm rode side-by-side
with his old sailing rival,

now King Edward VII,

behind Queen Victoria's coffin,
uncle and nephew united in grief.

But everyone present knew
the old Queen's passing

meant the end of an era.

The Grandmother of Europe,

the woman who held the extended
royal family together was dead.

A chilly, uncertain new century
was dawning.