#Queen victoria family tree cousins series#

Queen Victoria once said the fourth Earl Spencer, Frederick, (1798-1857), had the best legs she’d ever seen on a man, according to The Spencers: A Personal History of an English Family, written by Diana’s journalist brother Charles. The family was there for the royals during good times and bad. Within a cover package on Charles and Diana’s engagement published the following month, one article delved into her illustrious family tree even further: Said a consultant to Burke’s Peerage, the Who’s Who of British aristocracy: ‘There cannot be another family so stiff with royal connections.'” Her maternal grandmother, Lady Fermoy, is a lady in waiting to the Queen Mother. “Her father, the very wealthy eighth Earl Spencer, is the late Queen Mary’s godson, as well as former personal aide to both King George VI and the present Queen. “Diana’s brother, Charles, 16, is Queen Elizabeth’s godson,” the magazine added. TIME reported in 1981 that, over the years, royals befriended various members of the Spencer family, who served as courtiers to the Crown. Long before she was actually a Princess, Lady Diana Spencer was connected to the royal family.īorn Diana Spencer in 1961, she earned the title “Lady” in 1975 when her father inherited the title of Earl. That home, which has been in her family since 1508, is just one of the reminders that, while Diana was often characterized as “the girl next door” at the time of her fairytale wedding to Prince Charles, that door would have been located - literally and metaphorically - in an unusual neighborhood. 31, 1997, many of her admirers may make a pilgrimage to her burial site at Althorp, her childhood home in Northamptonshire, England. The newspaper said the footage offered 'a fascinating insight in the warped prejudices of Edward VIII', the precise nature of whose links to the Nazis is still debated in Britain.Įdward met Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1937, a year after he abdicated so he could marry a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson.Ī photograph shows him and his wife smiling radiantly and shaking hands with the F ührer.This year, to mark the 20 years since Princess Diana’s death on Aug. It was taken from a never-before-published amateur film of about 20 seconds, shot in 1933 or 1934 at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. The image was published by 'The Sun' tabloid under the headline 'Their Royal Heilnesses'. In 2015, a rare photograph shocked the British public: It showed the young Elizabeth, aged six or seven, practising the straight-armed Hitler salute with her mother and sister, apparently encouraged by her uncle, Edward VIII. 'As they could only marry each other, the choice often fell on German nobles,' with the result that 'practically all European royal dynasties are related to the Germans', he said. 'While there was a king in Britain, Spain or France, in Germany there were at least 30 regional rulers,' Michael Hartmann, a sociologist specialising in elites at the Technical University of Darmstadt, told AFP.

Queen Elizabeth II during the celebrations for her Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

#Queen victoria family tree cousins series#

But above all, he became a 19th-century influencer by helping to organise the 1851 Great Exhibition, the first in a series of World's Fairs.Īs the mother of nine children who produced countless offspring, Victoria forged family ties throughout Europe by marrying her children to scions of the continent's nobility.Įlizabeth II and Prince Philip, Charles's parents, were distant cousins, not least because of their hereditary ties to the woman who was dubbed the 'grandmother of Europe'. The Prince Consort was credited with popularising the Christmas tree tradition. The pair regularly wrote to each other in German. Queen Victoria was one of his descendants and after her marriage to Albert, the family changed its name from Hanover to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The first German to be crowned King of Great Britain was George I in 1714.īorn into the House of Hanover in northern Germany, he did not speak English, and his accession to the throne was due solely to his religion: Catholics were excluded from the line of succession, and he was the closest Protestant relative of the late Queen Anne.

In the face of increasingly hostile public opinion, the quintessentially British king decided to cut ties with Germany and adopted the name of a famous castle, the royal residence, near London. Nearly eight decades later, their grandson George V disowned the cumbersome patronymic while his country was fighting Germany in the Great War.