By the 53rd year of her reign, Queen Victoria had acquired 38 living grandchildren, and it became her hobby to marry them in a series of dynastic alliances designed to strengthen Britain’s place in the world.
Like a glorified puppeteer, he encouraged romance among his young relatives. And, if romance doesn’t work out, well, let them get married anyway!
What does love have to do with it?
You could call it the most exclusive dating agency in the world, and the only condition to enter was to be a member of royalty.
But as with all ventures of this type, Victoria suffered more than its share of disasters.
Queen Victoria with some members of her vast family. She would eventually have 38 living grandchildren.
Prince Albert Victor, eldest son of Edward V II and grandson of Queen Victoria, photographed with his fiancée, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. Albert Victor would die in 1892 before he could marry.
The wedding of George V, younger brother of Albert Victor, and Princess Mary of Teck in the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace in 1893.
Princess Mary of Teck photographed around 1895. She would eventually become Queen Consort of King George V.
His main concern at first was healing his grandson Eddy. The son and heir of Bertie, who would become King Edward VII, Eddy was known more formally as Prince Albert Victor.
He was bisexual.
The royals were so concerned about Eddy’s disastrous involvement in the Cleveland Street scandal, in which Post Office telegram messengers acted as rent boys, that the future king was “forced” to marry the staid Princess Mary. from Teck.
He had already gotten into trouble for a scandal related to the death of a showgirl and another for his relationship with a blackmailer, Maude Richardson.
According to his own confession, he was a carrier of a sexually transmitted disease.
Mary, eager to please, was either unaware of this exotic lifestyle or willing to ignore it and stepped forward when an arranged marriage was discussed.
Eddy did not want to get married but, under enormous pressure, he reluctantly agreed to propose.
Only his sudden death at the age of 28 from pneumonia put an end to the subterfuge. Mary left and married her younger brother, George.
Then there was Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, daughter of Victoria’s third daughter, Princess Alice.
It seemed like a great match when she became engaged to Grand Duke Sergei Romanoff of the Russian imperial family, but it was a disaster from the start.
Her supposedly devoted husband was having affairs with junior officers in his regiment.
Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, granddaughter of Victoria, became Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse with her husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia
Princess Elizabeth of Hess, pictured, established her own convent in Moscow dedicated to the Order of Martha and Mary following the murder of her husband, Grand Prince Sergei.
He bravely pretended to the family that everything was fine, but Victoria got the idea: “When people are very happy, they don’t need to tell others.”
Isabel became a nun. So that was another failure.
Equally disastrous was the so-called love match between Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Mary of Edinburgh, and King Ferdinand of Romania.
Marie, known as Missy, was a headstrong and extremely beautiful young woman who, at the age of 16, rejected the marriage proposal of her cousin George, who would later become King George V.
Queen Victoria had given her blessing to the romance, but later wrote: “George lost Missy by waiting and waiting.”
Even so, before she turned 17 she was engaged to the anonymous Ferdinand.
It wasn’t a love match, especially in the bedroom: “A cruel trap of innocence,” Missy described it.
And to her husband she wrote: “It is a shame that we have had to waste so many years of our youth simply learning to live together.”
However, the couple had children, although when she asked for chloroform to ease the pain of her first birth, she was denied by her Romanian doctors, who declared that “women must pay in agony for Eve’s sins.”
Missy took revenge on a series of lovers, including the country’s prime minister, a swashbuckling Canadian adventurer named ‘Klondike’ Joe Boyle, and the owner of The Observer, Lord Astor.
She became a formidable spokesperson for her adopted country and, despite her remoteness, became world famous and was immortalized by the American ingenue Dorothy Parker, who quipped:
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of songs, a mixture of extemporaneous; And love is something that can never go wrong; And I am Maria from Romania.
Marie, known as Missy, was a headstrong and extremely beautiful young woman who, at the age of 16, rejected the marriage proposal of her cousin George, who would later become King George V.
The 1893 wedding of Princess Mary of Edinburgh and Prince Ferdinand of Romania in Sigmaringen, southern Germany.
Things didn’t start too well for Princess Victoria Eugenia and her arranged marriage to King Alfonso of Spain in Madrid.
Someone threw a bomb disguised as a bride’s bouquet into her open carriage and, although she was unharmed, 15 other people were killed and many more were injured.
Her wedding dress was splattered with the blood of a mounted guard riding alongside the carriage.
By way of introduction to her magnificent royal future, 18-year-old Victoria Eugenia, known as Ena, had enjoyed, if that’s the word, a three-day romance with Alfonso at a secret location on the Spanish border before he he would take her. She goes home to meet her mother.
Things went well enough for an engagement to be announced, but only after Ena agreed to convert to Roman Catholicism.
That decision cost her her place in the order of succession to the British throne, but as Ena was about to become Queen of Spain, it mattered little.
Unfortunately, things in the marriage quickly took a turn for the worse after she gave birth to their first child, who was discovered to be hemophiliac.
The royal wedding of King Alfonso and Queen Victoria Eugenia in Madrid had a catastrophic start: with an assassination attempt
This condition, sometimes known as the royal disease, frightened Alfonso so much that, although the couple had five more children, he became a serial womanizer.
And when General Franco declared Spain a republic in 1931, the couple escaped the country and separated forever.
There would be many more disasters – and some successes – to emerge from Queen Victoria’s exclusive marriage office.
It took a while for Europe to recover.