Deborah Cadbury's Queen Victoria's Matchmaking: How Royal Marriages Helped Shape Europe's History

Berengaria: Very well written upon an excellent labor of research. Even though it is historical, it flows easily. A great book that makes history delightful.

Mexico on Aug 14, 2023

Kate: I’ve read a lot about Victoria over the years but I found this book to be quite illuminating as it is a very personal glimpse in their lives. The only criticism I have is there should have been an extensive family tree included for this very fertile family! The author makes use of the extensive supply of letter writing within the family. So rather than just the authors conjectures we have their own words. Loved it.

United States on May 28, 2023

Stephen Bishop: This work of narrative history doesn't really say much new but focuses in particular on the activities of QV (and some of her many relations) in their attempt to construct a series of marriages which would reinforce through 'soft power' the agenda of liberal government - or at least what passed for liberal government at the end of the 19th century. Many of the attempts were unsuccessful, either in achieving a wedding, or if they did, in making successful marriages. But there is a good deal of human interest in the stories. Although the book is divided into chapters named after two people, the intersecting stories cannot be divided up so neatly and so each chapter actually has more than one part of the jigsaw.

It is written in a readable style, although those unfamiliar with the relationships involved might need to refer often to the family tree which is included in the endpapers. There are some good illustrations, but it is a pity that there is no picture of one of the main players, Princess Helene of Orleans. I only found a couple of factual errors (in one place describing Wilhelm II's eldest sister as his older sister, which she was not since he was the first child of his...

United Kingdom on Jun 20, 2022

TomboyLili: Lecture pas encore faite mais le contenu semble très intéressant.

Canada on Apr 26, 2022

Bayard B.: This is a great personal story of Queen Victoria's extended family. It especially focuses on the marriages of several of her most important children and grandchildren such as Bertie's and Alexandra's son Prince George (the future King George V), Albert and Victoria's oldest daughter Victoria and her marriage to Frederick William of Prussia and their oldest son the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, the marriage of grand-daughter Alexandra to the future Czar Nicholas II of Russia and the ensuing personal and national political disasters, the sad marriage of grand-daughter Marie to the future King of Roumania, amd several other matrimonial adventures and misadventures.

They all led glittering and luxurious lives. In many cases it all came to an end by 1918. The Russian Empire, Imperial German Empire, and Austo-Hungarian Empire all collapsed by the end of WW I. The many German dukedoms to whose rulers several of Victoria's children and grandchildren were married also collapsed in 1918. More monarchies ended after WW II.

An interesting genealogical tidbit: the current King Phillipe VI of Spain is a direct descendent of Queen Victoria through her daughter Princess Victoria...

United States on Aug 08, 2020

CathyR: Overall this is an enjoyable and informative read.
Deborah Cadbury does a good job in juxtaposing the personal histories of Victoria's extended family with the turbulent (and increasingly anarchic) political environment of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The book throws up several fascinating and very different female characters, particularly the spirited sisters Ella and Alix of Hesse (daughters of Victoria's daughter Alice), of whom the Queen was particularly fond. Both married into the Russian royal family - Alix in particular, married for love in stubborn defiance of the Queen's wishes - thus ignoring Victoria's prescient misgivings about Russia being a dangerous place to end up. At the other end of the spectrum, May of Teck (the future Queen Mary) played the role of dutiful daughter and bride with aplomb, no doubt grateful for having been plucked from relative obscurity in the marital stakes, and was even willing to be passed from one brother to another when her first fiance Eddy died weeks before their marriage.
By contrast, most of the male members of the clan are portrayed as ineffectual, with the notable exception of Victoria's least favourite grandson,...

United Kingdom on Feb 16, 2019

Joanna D.: Excellent history of Europe around the time of the Franco-Prussian War and World War 1--as seen through the lens of royal marriages. Queen Victoria had 42 grandchildren; her own nine children produced a herd of marriageable princes and princesses who were auctioned off on the European royalty marriage market to cement alliances and spread English influence throughout the continent. And there was the problem; the marriages in Russia were viewed as troubling (Russia was in ferment, the poverty-ridden peasants were the catalyst for an anarchist movement of bombers and assassins. Tsar Alexander II was just one of the monarchs to be blown to bits.) The grandson Kaiser Wilhelm was probably insane--either brain-damaged in a difficult birth or made insane by painful treatments as a child. He and Bismarck ruled the German alliance of kingdoms into a Prussian powerhouse that challenged his grandmother's empire and led to the horrors of the Great War. French princesses were no good--they wouldn't convert from Catholicism, the Russians demanded Russian Orthodoxy, and this caused more divides. And there was the usual intrigue, mis-matches and unsuitable mates, either from sexual preference...

United States on Jun 08, 2018

John D. Cofield: Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert were the parents of nine children who all lived to adulthood, in those days a rarity even in royal families. Victoria and Albert were dutiful though not overly affectionate parents, and they saw in their brood a chance not only to encourage successful marriages but to influence the political development of Europe as well. Albert died just as their plans were beginning to unfold, but Victoria kept them firmly in mind during the remaining forty years of her life. By the time she died in 1901 her descendants were either on the thrones or in line to inherit the thrones of Britain, Germany, Russia, Greece, and sundry grand duchies and principalities, and by the late twentieth century more distant descendants also reigned or had formerly reigned over Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Deborah Cadbury's history of Queen Victoria's matrimonial efforts on behalf of (sometimes in spite of) her children and grandchildren is an interesting and often amusing (though sometimes tragic as well) account of a period when a royal marriage sometimes influenced alliances and high politics.

Cadbury's book examines several of the...

United States on Dec 15, 2017

S Riaz: Prince Albert and Queen Victoria saw dynastic marriages between their children and European royalty as a safeguard against war, and as a way of creating a balance of power, in Europe, as well as spreading British values across the continent. With Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria was determined to make his vision come true and, with forty two grandchildren, the ‘cousinhood’ formed a unique club at the very top of European society. This book looks at Queen Victoria’s desire to be involved in matchmaking marriages for her grandchildren and looks, in greater depth, at seven of her grandchildren who were elevated to the throne at a crucial time in Europe’s history. These include Kaiser Wilhelm (her oldest, and most troublesome, grandson), Sophie, Queen of Greece, George V, Princess Maud, Queen of Norway, Alix, Empress of Russia, Marie ‘Missy’ Queen of Romania and Victoria Eugenie or ‘Ena’, Queen of Spain.

There is no doubt that Queen Victoria felt that, through her grandchildren, she could shape the political landscape of Europe. Although much of this book was familiar to me, such as Victoria’s desperate attempts to stop the marriage of Nicholas and...

United Kingdom on Sep 07, 2017