Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918

by Christina Croft

On 6th July 1868, when told of the birth of her seventh granddaughter, Queen Victoria remarked that the news was ‘a very uninteresting thing for it seems to me to go on like the rabbits in Windsor Park.’ Her apathy was understandable – this was her fourteenth grandchild, and, though she had given birth to nine children, she had never been fond of babies, viewing them as ‘frog-like and rather disgusting…particularly when undressed.’ The early years of her marriage had, she claimed, been ruined by frequent pregnancies; and large families were unnecessary for wealthy people since the children would grow up with nothing worthwhile to do. Nevertheless, her initial reaction to the birth of Princess Victoria of Wales belied the genuine concern that Queen Victoria felt for each of her twenty-two granddaughters. ‘As a rule,’ she wrote, ‘I like girls best,’ and she devoted a great deal of time to their wellbeing and happiness, showering them with an affection she had seldom shown her own children.
By 1914, through a series of dynastic marriages, the Queen’s granddaughters included the Empress of Russia, the Queens of Spain, Greece and Norway, and the Crown Princesses of Roumania and Sweden. As their brothers and cousins occupied the thrones of Germany, Britain and Denmark, Prince Albert’s dream of a peaceful Europe created through bonds of kinship seemed a real possibility. Yet in little more than a decade after Queen Victoria’s death, the Prince Consort’s dream would lie shattered in the carnage of the First World War. Royal cousins and even siblings would find themselves on opposing sides; two of them would die horrifically at the hands of revolutionaries and several others would be ousted from their thrones. They had lived through the halcyon days of the European monarchies but their lives, like the lives of millions of their peoples, would be changed forever by the catastrophe played out on the battlefields of France.Through all the upheavals, tragedies and conflicts one person had bound them together and, even when wars had divided their nations, to the end of their lives, they would look back and remember ‘dearest grandmama’ with love.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Royalty, Russia, British Literature, European History

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Christina Croft was born in Warwickshire, England, and grew up in Yorkshire. Educated at Notre Dame Grammar School, Leeds, she graduated in English and Divinity in Liverpool and obtained teaching and nursing qualifications. She began her writing career as a poet but moved on to biography and novels as well as giving talks about the Romanovs, Habsburgs, Queen Victoria and other late 19th and early 20th century royalties. Her other interests include general history, spirituality, herbs, nature and animals.

Reviews

[The Audiobookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I came across Christina Croft's Queen Victoria's Granddaughters, I immediately thought it was too good to be true. It felt just like hitting the jackpot. I love learning about European history, particularly European royal history. But it's difficult to find information about royals outside of the primary players, especially on audiobook. Excuse me, but one can only hear so much about Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, or Princess Diana. I've been a royal fan for so long that it's become increasingly hard to find new information about these figures, so I've begun to expand my interests into the lives of more minor royals. I find them far more interesting, possibly because the information available to me about them is so much more scarce.

Considering how many figures Croft covers in this book, the level of detail concerning each of them is astounding. What's more is how Croft managed to tie them altogether. I'll admit that (on more than one occasion) I had to pull up a family tree to maintain my orientation within the book, but that's not surprising considering the family or the tangled branches of the tree. Biographical information about Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and even a few of their children is relatively easy to come by, but information regarding the generation of grandchildren and so on becomes much tougher to find, especially beyond the direct line of the throne. Queen Victoria's Granddaughters may be the only chance I get to hear about the majority of these individuals, so I'd like to thank Christina Croft for not only writing this title, but especially for turning it into an audiobook.

Croft covers a wide variety of royals in Queen Victoria's Granddaughters and, while the depth of information on each of them isn't what it would be in singular biographies, the breadth of information is well-defined. I appreciated the way Croft listed the names of the figures to be discussed (and brief identifying factors) at the beginning of each chapter. It made it much easier to track the vertigo-inducing Who's Who of European royalty and how they were all connected to each other, if only for the next chapter. I suspect this would have been much more effective if I had been reading the physical book and could have referred back to the list throughout the chapter. Still, it was a nice gesture and I'm sure those reading the physical book appreciated it much more.

The highest compliment I can give Croft is that she actually managed to surprise me with several new facts and details, which was a delightfully refreshing experience. Too often when I am listening to biographies of those with whom I am already familiar, I begin to zone out after hearing the same details over and over again. But in Queen Victoria's Granddaughters, every chapter held details of the lives of several new (to me) historical figures and I inhaled them all. For example, I've heard (several times over) that Queen Alexandra called Edwards VII's mistress Alice Keppel to his deathbed. However, Croft asserts that Edward requested that the two women (his wife and his mistress) kiss! Queen Victoria's Granddaughters is the first place I've ever heard that and I think I would remember having heard it before!

Although it is a non-fiction work, Queen Victoria's Granddaughters is written in a way that held my attention quite easily. It did not seem like an endless barrage of names and dates, like so many other biographical titles do. Queen Victoria's Granddaughters is an audiobook I'm glad I purchased instead of renting or borrowing from a library because I fully intend on returning to it. So much information is provided on so many people that I'm not sure I was able to properly process, let alone retain, all of it. I certainly regard Queen Victoria's Granddaughters as a reference material that I will refer back to in the future.

Narration review: The only real hestitancy I have about this listening experience was that I didn't fully enjoy the narration, provided by Fleur Edwards. Edwards seems more suited to narrate fiction titles, which was initially offputting, but I must say that I rather think this eventually worked toward better holding my attention. It took some getting used to and I definitely was a little annoyed by the few production errors I noticed, such as hearing the narrator clear her voice, which I felt should have been removed in post-production. But, in fairness, these complaints soon fell away as I became more immersed in the content being read and less in how it was being read. It wasn't the best narration or production of an audiobook I've ever heard, but it certainly would not stop me from hearing this title again, nor would it prevent me from recommending it to anyone else. ♣︎

[Quinby6696 Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queen Victoria had 22 granddaughters. Before he died, Prince Albert's vision was to create a great peaceful Europe by marrying his family into all the ruling families. Everyone would be related and love each other - right? Not so much. It's as well he didn't live to see the devastation of World War I and the complete ruination of his dream. This was a fascinating book, but even with the help of all the nicknames it was impossible to keep them all straight!

[CB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting information for those already interested in Victoria although at times there are so many characters it gets a little confusing and I found myself having to backtrack. First two thirds moved along v well but seemed to peter out towards the end- unfortunately the Kindle version of this I read had so many spelling and grammatical errors that it took the shine off the experience of reading this.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read. I learned so much about how through the marriages of her grandchildren, all of Europe, Russia and Norway were all bound together and how significant Queen Victoria's death affected the peace that was enjoyed throughout Europe and Asia. Historical but written in a captivating way.

[Susie Fiorito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! Wonderful writing, just clipped right along.
Very thorough research by Ms. Croft on a very interesting topic.

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A biography of Queen Victoria's 22 granddaughters, emphasizing the influence of Queen Victoria over her extended family. The most interesting parts of the book are the comparisons between the royal relatives and the connections between them. For example, the Czarina Alexandra was inspired by the work of her aunt, Princess Helena, to open nurse training schools in Russia. The author is most interested in the personal lives of their subjects and devotes much of the book to their experiences of marriage, motherhood, widowhood and health problems. Their public roles prior to the First World War receive less attention and activities outside Europe, such as Princess Patricia's time in Canada as daughter of the Governor General, are summarized in a few sentences. The book ends quite abruptly in 1918 and I would have been interested to read the author's analysis of the lives of the surviving granddaughters after the First World War. The audiobook narrator has difficulty with Russian names and there are some clear typos that are distracting in the narrative. An interesting read but could have longer, more detailed and more closely edited.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Queen Victoria, for all her protest-ions about the horrors of childbirth, managed to have nine (9) children with her beloved husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. In turn, her 9 children managed to create a "Royal Mob", that thru marriage managed to rule nearly every European dynasty and Russia for the better part of the 19th century and early 20th century when many of the ruling dynasties were destroyed either by World War 1 or the Russian Revolution.

Queen Victoria, though a mostly aloof mother, was vitally interested in the lives of her grandchildren, especially the girls.

Christina Croft has made "The Queen's Granddaughter's" (1860-1918) quite easy to follow. This is no mean feat when you consider that most of them were named Victoria, Alice and Louise.

Each chapter starts with a list of House, parents & progeny. When you are trying to keep the Hesse's straight from the Hohenzollern's, this is a gift.

Though the family was plagued by hereditary hemophilia (passed from mother to son), poryphoria ( most like the cause of George III's madness), infant mortality, homosexuality, their people at war with each other, the rise of Republicanism, bad marriages and a few bad children, considering that the dynasty begun by QV and Prince Albert still stands in the UK today, not to shabby.

Each chapter explores different sets of the Queen's grandchildren, their Royal Shyness's, the Wales children, the motherless Hesse's, the Duke of Edinburgh's Grand Duchess wife and their children, Vicky's Prussian brood, most notably pompous Cousin Willy, soon to be Kaiser Willhelm II, a Queen of the Hellenes, a Russian Grand Duchess turned martyr, the Empress of All Russia's, the Queen of Roumania and that is just a sample.

Queen Victoria took an abiding interest in her 22 granddaughters, even though she once described their conceptions & birth's as more prodigious than the rabbits in Windsor Great Park.


I liked
"The Queen'sGranddaughter's" for several reasons. It made Queen Victoria more human and I finally have a sense of what all the Grand Duchies in Germany used to be.

3 stars

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who else is watching Victoria on PBS? I am loving it! I have always known that Victoria had a large family that married throughout all of the monarchies of Europe, but this book has been an easy-to-read explanation of each of her granddaughters and who they were. Each chapter is set-up with a quick list of who all is in the chapter and how they're related to the Queen and each other, which is necessary since many of the cousins shared names! I really enjoyed reading about the less well known granddaughters and understanding a bit more of how the fall of the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia happened - that was really heartbreaking to read about Tsarina Alix isolating herself from her sisters and family, even when they were trying to warn and protect her. It was also sad to read how Europe was so united under Victoria's legacy, then with her death it fractured, and with her son's death it seemed to break. The family dynamics were really interesting, especially when it came to understanding which cousins were close, which siblings were close and how those relationships shifted and changed as marriages were made or broken and as alliances changed. If you have any interest in the royal family, this book was a quick and easy read.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an avid reader of historical biographies I thought this book provided a worthwhile overview on the family branches of Queen Victoria. It's a great starting point to further reading on any of the subjects presented. My only complaint is that the Kindle version did not provide any photos. This was very disappointing. The author wisely prefaced each chapter with the royalties names and family branches that were the subject of the particular chapter making it easier to follow as there were many Alices, Victorias and family nicknames.

The life of the princesses were not always enviable ones and the roles they played in history in such a dramatic time are varied and sometimes tragic.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, Queen Victoria, you were quite the gal. Nine children, 42 grandchildren, and 85 great-grandchildren. Those family reunions must have really been occasions to remember--especially given all of the different personalities. This book is a good introduction to the daughters and granddaughters of Queen Victoria and the lives that they led. Many of the stories I already knew and I found myself interested in the lives of some of the more ignored granddaughters. More reading is definitely required in this area.

[Yvette · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did a great job at keeping the family members "straight", as in, who belonged to which parents, etc. No easy task when discussing the family of Queen Victoria! I thought each family member was given more or less equal billing, also, even though some obviously had more "story" than others. Easy to read and easy to remember.

I base my rating entirely upon the content of the book, but I cannot ignore the abundant presence of spelling, grammar and punctuation errors in my copy.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew a lot of the information in the book, but it was good to be reminded of it again. Queen Victoria and her descendants were my entry point into studying royalty. Queen Victoria had 42 grandchildren and 22 of them were grandchildren. All of the granddaughters are dealt with in the book, some, of course, receive more space than others. Some photos would have been a nice addition.

[Susanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good snapshot of many lives! A family tree would have been helpful, as would have reading this in book format - sometimes I find nonfiction on the Kindle a bit weird. I also have a feeling I may have missed out on some photographs. The Kindle edition also had some typos/spelling errors that were a bit irritating.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast reading with full of superficial information. If you are new to Queen Victoria's family you'll find this book interesting. After reading this I would like to read specific books about Queen Marie of Romania and Princess Victoria Mountbatten.

[Viki Heagy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone interested in the English monarchy will love this book. It covers the history of Queen Victoria's family, but especially that of her granddaughters - the royal families they married into, where the lived and their legacy.

[Brenda Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!

[MissyLynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read. As someone with a strong interest in Queen Victoria's family this book covered a lot.

Especially loved reading about the Hesse family and Marie of Roumania.

[Diane Slaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Granddaughters

There's much history in this book. Always interesting and never dry or boring I would recommend it to anyone interested in the great monarchies of Europe.

[Gwen Janitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read

Enjoyed it very informative yet not too dull or uninteresting- a little hard to follow since many of the names are the same.

[Zosi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and yet extremely detailed read that manages to cram in a lot of history. I appreciate its completeness in focusing on all of Victoria’s granddaughters (no easy task) rather than just the most famous.

[Beth Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title says it all.

This is of interest to anyone who wants a somewhat personal view of relationships of rulers of pre WWI and its families that were first cousins at war against each other. The sheer number of Victoria's descendants can make it confusing at times and this book is quite sympathetic to all sides.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable and informative. Other reviewers have commented on the many typos, and indeed they are distracting and annoying to pedants like me. I appreciated the chapter headings detailing the characters and their relationships but would really have liked a big family tree. The cast of characters is enormous. Forty two grandchildren plus their spouses are a lot to keep track of. I read this on my Kindle, but kept the iPad at hand to look up pictures of these people. At first it seemed that there was nothing but births and marriages, with very little of the political scene. All those births and marriages set the scene for the great convulsion of the first decades of the twentieth century, covered in the last third of the book. It was fascinating to view history through such a family focus. In addition to the major characters such as Nicholas and Alexandra, Edward VII, and Kaiser Wilhelm, the minor royals included the fascinating Ella, murdered by the Russian revolutionaries and subsequently canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church. Then there was Thora, Toria, Ducky, and many others.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author has a number of books out detailing the lives of Queen Victoria's children and grandchildren. Not surprisingly, there is doubtless some overlap as granddaughters have brothers who are grandsons, etc. This book appeared to be well-researched using at least some primary sources. Each chapter begins with a list of the family members described therein, but a real family tree chart would have been useful, even though it would have been hard to use in the Kindle format. The lack of photographs was also a downside. But the stories of Victoria's granddaughters (many of whom were named for her, so family nicknames like Ducky and Missy are used to avoid confusion) are fascinating and, eventually, tragic in many cases. I must mention that, perhaps because of the way books are transferred to Kindle format, there are numerous (practically one per page) typos, repeated words, and other annoying errors. I read this book for the 2017 Ultimate Popsugar Challenge here on Goodreads; it's for the prompt in the Advanced section, "A book with a family member term in the title." Recommended if this is a subject that interests you.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having 9 children, with 8 of them having their own children, Queen Victoria had a lot of ancestors. I had known that her ancestors were spread across Europe and Russia, but this book gives you glimpse at the individuals who married into those other noble/royal families. It's good that Ms. Croft starts each chapter with identifying each person...though with this many granddaughters and great-granddaughters, names overlap. I was kind of surprised that Queen Victoria wasn't as eager for her granddaughters to marry as I expected should would have been. She seemed like a better grandmother than mother.

[Debbie Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to like this book so much. I had expected it to be very dry and boring. On the contrary, I found it fascinating. There were so many players in the book that it was complicated, but the author helped by identifying the main players at the beginning of each chapter. My only suggestion would have been to include a family tree diagram that the reader could have accessed easily.
I learned so much about Britain's royal family, but also Europe's royal families. I learned about the Russian revolution, the demise of the Romanovs and about WWI. The author did an excellent job in keeping the hefty amount of information moving along quickly.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well researched. The novel focuses very well with little unnecessary detail. Alice was a key focus in earlier chapters. I felt that some daughters however were barely mrntioned : Sandra Edinburgh, Mossy Hohenzollern, Patsy Connaught, Irene Hesse, and Alice Albany. I cannot figure out why. Additionally, I wish the book continued until the end of the granddaughters as later on certain lives got more interesting. It was nice to read about Ella rather than Alix as she was more interesting than the over mentioned Tsaritsa.

[Susan Liston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good basic overview. This seems to be self-published and there are a lot of errors--typos, Louise-instead-of-Louis type errors and the illustrations are poor, but it is easy reading and I certainly learned a lot. One wonderful thing the author did was start each chapter with a list of who will appear and a reminder of who these people are, which keeps the brain-dead like myself from constantly having to look back and figure it out. (these dad burn royals repeating names so incessantly, combined with the English tendency to funky nicknames)

[Jenny Housley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction to the Victorian Royal Family and it's involvement in European history. Some interesting insights into Queen Victoria and her vast collection of family members. Not always easy to keep up with the Mossy and Fritz's and Baby Bee's and endless marriages but I am still looking forward to further reading on some of the cast. Thanks has to go to Wikipedia and Pinterest flipping up numerous photos and slowing the reading to a snails pace

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot - and probably would have liked it even more if I had read the print version (so I could have easily flipped back often to the family trees to remind myself just who everyone was and how they were related) - or had had a printed version of the tree to refer to while I was reading the Kindle version. Maybe it would have helped if I had read it all in a couple of sittings - or if I had a better memory! In any event, it was a good read.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read books about Queen Victoria's descendants before. There are so many of them, it doesn't hurt to read about them many times. I still can only remember the details of the lives of some of them. Their privilege did not protect them from any of life's tragedies. Of her nineteen granddaughters, virtually all of them suffered from the hereditary ill-health in their family and the ravages of WWI.