George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

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Overview

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.

Miranda Carter uses the cousins’ correspondence and a host of historical sources to tell the tragicomic story of a tiny, glittering, solipsistic world that was often preposterously out of kilter with its times, struggling to stay in command of politics and world events as history overtook it. George, Nicholas and Wilhelm is a brilliant and sometimes darkly hilarious portrait of these men—damaged, egotistical Wilhelm; quiet, stubborn Nicholas; and anxious, dutiful George—and their lives, foibles and obsessions, from tantrums to uniforms to stamp collecting. It is also alive with fresh, subtle portraits of other familiar figures: Queen Victoria—grandmother to two of them, grandmother-in-law to the third—whose conservatism and bullying obsession with family left a dangerous legacy; and Edward VII, the playboy “arch-vulgarian” who turned out to have a remarkable gift for international relations and the theatrics of mass politics. At the same time, Carter weaves through their stories a riveting account of the events that led to World War I, showing how the personal and the political interacted, sometimes to devastating effect.

For all three men the war would be a disaster that destroyed forever the illusion of their close family relationships, with any sense of peace and harmony shattered in a final coda of murder, betrayal and abdication.

Editorial Reviews

Dwight Garner
Ms. Carter…relates history on a large canvas here, and it's a story she mostly tells with vigor and parched wit…George, Nicholas and Wilhelm is an impressive book. Ms. Carter has clearly not bitten off more than she can chew for she—as John Updike once wrote about Gunter Grass—"chews it enthusiastically before our eyes."
—The New York Times
Miranda Seymour
As a study of three equally significant figures, Carter's book was perhaps always doomed to failure. But as a study of the kaiser…and of his passionate love-hate relationship with England, George, Nicholas and Wilhelm succeeds magnificently.
—The New York Times Book Review
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Historian Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives) delivers an irresistibly entertaining and illuminating chronicle from Queen Victoria's final decades to the 1930s through linked biographies of the emperors of England (George V), Germany (Wilhelm II), and Russia (Nicholas II). Anachronisms presiding over courts that were “stagnant ponds of tradition and conservatism,” the three possessed average intelligence and little imagination. All were unprepared for their jobs and didn't improve with on-the-job training. Most fortunate was George, who performed his purely symbolic royal role dutifully, avoided scandal, and, alone of the three, reigned until his death, in 1936. More colorful but also tactless and unpredictable, Wilhelm took the German throne in 1888, dismissed his long-serving, brilliant chancellor, Bismarck, and launched an erratic reign that contributed to the onset and loss of WWI. Czar Nicholas showed little interest in governing except to oppose reform. In the end, the most violent reformers, the Bolsheviks, murdered him and his family. Readers with fond memories of Robert Massie and Barbara Tuchman can expect similar pleasures in this witty, shrewd examination of the twilight of the great European monarchies. 32 pages of photos, 2 maps. (Mar. 28)
Kirkus Reviews
Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives, 2002) examines the well-worn but endlessly fascinating history of the tight, treacherous ties that bound the royal families of Europe in the early 20th century. Queen Victoria's "secret weapon" had been to manage world affairs through the intricacies of her far-flung familial relationships, and all three reigning monarchs by the start of World War I were bound to her by blood and marriage: Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, was her first grandchild via daughter Vicky; George V, King of England, was another grandson, via her son Edward VII; and Tsar Nicholas II was married to one of her granddaughters, Alexandra. All three cousins spent time together when they were young, and more or less got along. Carter creates elucidating snapshots of their respective dysfunctional upbringings. Wilhelm, who resented his pushy English mother, exhibited symptoms of "narcissistic personality disorder" and went through a period of Anglophobia (he had insulted his grandmother and the English regarded him as a "bumptious Prussian"), before relations improved with his accession to emperor in 1888. Nicholas had suddenly become tsar with the early death of his father in 1894; terrified and wholly unprepared, he was comforted by his English royal cousins before his inscrutability and "opacity" isolated him in Europe in terms of affairs in Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Manchuria. George, probably dyslexic as well as given to bursts of private rage, became the reluctant king in 1910 and was deeply attached to his entitlement and hostile to change such as socialism and trade unions. When the war in the Balkans broke out, the three cousins found themselves entrenched in"deepening cracks of mistrust and tension," as events slipped beyond their control. Carter sharply sorts history in terms of the personal ruling styles of these three fallible monarchs. First printing of 50,000
Library Journal
Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives) offers a multiple biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, and King George V—not to mention George's father, Edward VII—in a heavily researched effort to prove that the relationship among the German, Russian, and British cousins was largely responsible for the advent of World War I. Carter is insightful about the different personalities of her protagonists, with Wilhelm in particular coming across as an utter lunatic and boor with a tendency toward Anglophilia that ebbed and flowed. Nicholas's aversion to being tsar and willful disinterest in Russia's socioeconomic problems clearly led to distrust, dislike, and eventually the murder of his entire family. Nicholas's mother was the aunt of George V, and Queen Victoria was the grandmother of both George and Wilhelm. Her influence on these men is felt throughout this book. VERDICT Carter's is not a new topic; nor does she truly succeed in laying new responsibility for World War I on these monarchs. While the use of primary sources and of modern methods of assessing personalities does help, readers may also want to consider Catrine Clay's King Kaiser Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War. Carter's book is good for research assignments and general readers alike. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09; previewed as The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires, and the Road to World War I.]—B. Allison Gray, Santa Barbara P.L., CA

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781400079124
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 3/8/2011
  • Pages: 560
  • Sales rank: 98,599
  • Series: Vintage Series
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.20 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Miranda Carter is the author of Anthony Blunt: His Lives, which won the Orwell Prize for political writing and the Royal Society of Literature W. H. Heinemann Award, and was chosen as one of The New York Times Book Review’s seven Best Books of 2002. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.

Read an Excerpt

Ten Surprising Facts from GEORGE, WILHELM AND NICHOLAS
by Miranda Carter

1. King George V of Great Britain was first cousin through his mother to Tsar Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, and first cousin through his father to Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser of Germany. In fact, by the time he was 31 his grandmother Queen Victoria had ensured that he was related by blood or marriage to every royal family in Europe.

2. The British admired Queen Victoria, but the rest of Europe was less keen. In the 1880s a member of the Imperial German court described her as 'an undersized creature, almost as broad as she was long who looked like a cook, had a bluish-red face and was more or less mentally deranged. But she is very rich…' On the streets of Berlin an old lady told an English journalist that everyone knew Victoria was an inveterate tippler who drank whisky out of a teapot.

3. 'I look upon you…as one of my oldest and best friends,' George wrote to Nicholas, though they met only infrequently and for much of their lives their two countries were arch-enemies. They also looked extremely alike: when Nicholas came to George's wedding in London in 1893 he was constantly congratulated on his upcoming marriage, while George was asked how he liked London!

4. When Wilhelm was fourteen a group of doctors concluded he would never be 'normal,' but would succumb to rages when he would be 'incapable of forming a reasonable or temperate judgment on the subject under consideration,' and while 'it was not probable that he would actually become insane, some of his actions would probably be those of a man not wholly sane'.

5. Nicholas and his German wife Alexandra (another granddaughter of Queen Victoria) spoke and wrote to each other in English.

6. George's greatest passion-apart from stamp collecting-was shooting. The quantities of game shot at his home, Sandringham, were positively obscene, and he personally could bring down 1,000 pheasants in a single day.

7. Though George's father King Edward VII is now primarily famous for his extramarital adventures, by the end of his reign he was regarded as a highly successful international statesman, and credited with having revolutionized British foreign policy. Edward and Wilhelm utterly loathed each other, and the Kaiser became convinced his British uncle was out to get him. 'He is a Satan, you have no idea what a Satan he is,' he ranted to his entourage after one argument.

8. Wilhelm only ever wore military uniform-often four different ones in one day. He collected hundreds of them, and was constantly fiddling with and redesigning details. Even his closest entourage thought he took it too far and was 'obsessed…with clothes and externals'.

9. In March 1917 the Russian Provisional government asked the British government if it would grant asylum to the ex-Tsar and his family. The British government at first said yes. It was George, scared that his unpopular cousin's arrival would cast him in a bad light, who personally campaigned to have the invitation withdrawn-and it was.

10. Wilhelm took Germany to war with Britain, but during the war and even afterwards he couldn't shake off his life-long addiction to all things English: he read English papers, drank English tea, laughed at P.G. Wodehouse, and wore a tie pin with a miniature of his dearest Grandmama, Victoria.

Table of Contents

Family Trees ix

Maps xiii

List of Illustrations xv

Author's Note xix

Introduction xxi

Part I Three Childhoods, Three Countries

1 Wilhelm An Experiment in Perfection 1859 3

2 George Coming Second 1865 28

3 Nicholas A Diamond-Studded Ivory Tower 1868 50

Part II Family Ties, Imperial Contests

4 Wilhelm Emperor 1888-90 75

5 Young Men in Love 1891-94 100

6 Wilhelm Anglophile 1891-95 125

7 Perfidious Muscovy 1895-97 150

8 Behind the Wall 1893-1904 180

9 Imperial Imperatives 1898-1901 205

Part III A Bright New Century

10 The Fourth Emperor 1901-4 235

11 Unintended Consequences 1904-5 260

12 Continental Shifts 1906-8 280

13 A Balkan Crisis 1908-9 306

14 Edward's Mantle 1910-11 321

15 Celebrations and Warnings 1911-14 334

16 July 1914 357

Part IV Armageddon

17 A War 1914-18 379

Epilogue 415

Notes 427

Bibliography 469

Acknowledgements 479

Index 481

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 49 Customer Reviews

  • Posted June 26, 2011

    more from this reviewer

    The IMpact of Queen Victoria on History

    Queen Victoria of England not only had one of the longest reigns in royal history (her reign of 63 years and 7 months, which is longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history) but her progeny produced leaders in disparate countries that focused on three names in the pre-world War I period - King George V of Great Britain (an India), Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany. In a manner of relating history more as a fascinating novel than as a history book author Miranda Carter manages to explore the personalities of these three men and more importantly the dissimilarities in these three cousins. She slowly but surely allows us to see how thoroughly apolitical King George and Tsar Nicholas were and how the paranoid Emperor Wilhelm used the relationships to foster the growing embitterment between Germany and England. In fact, Carter creates the atmosphere of the times to document how inept and out of touch with not only their duties of governance but also with the situation of the world as it developed in this curious time.

    The fact that the interaction (or lack thereof) among these three descendants of Queen Victoria brought to an end the concept of Monarchy in Europe makes Carter's beautifully documented book well worth the read. There is so much history and recreation of the milieu of the times in this book that reading it more closely resembles a terrific film or stage play than a book. For those who enjoy exploration of personalities as they influence world events, then this book is bound to please. Few writers have been as consistently readable as Carter in that strange gap in our history - 1914 - 1918 - that changed the globe forever.

    Grady Harp

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted March 16, 2012

    Excellent book. However, its transcription into an ebook format

    Excellent book. However, its transcription into an ebook format leaves a lot to be desired. Odd characters are imbedded, punctuation is missing or incorrect

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  • Posted October 23, 2011

    Good but not great

    Interesting and very thoroughly researched. But gets bogged down in too many details about politics. Started skipping multiple pages to grt past boring sections.

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  • Posted August 6, 2011

    Very thorough

    I always thought that 1871-1914 in Europe must have been a wonderful time to live, with democracy either emerging or established in most places and peace. Now I see otherwise- with Germany led by a nutcase, Russia led by an absolute monarch closed off from his country and more. Fascinating book with a very thorough description of the era and its leaders. The author does a good job of being unbiased- only once (on pg. 290) does she give away her political views.

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