Photographic portraits of the six sons and one daughter of the German Kaiser. The sons pose polished, varnished and bemedaled as the military fops they were trained to be: Born in a palace; in a barracks bred. The journalist points out that even Wilhelm’s one daughter served as a Colonel in an elite cavalry regiment.
Click here to read about the royal princess colonels of of the pre-war period.
Younger brother Alexander hated dashing, erratic Crown Prince George (1887 – 1972), darling of the Serbian people, so he framed him as a loony, got him exiled, and in due course became King instead. George made the mistake of writing an insulting letter and going back home on the heels of it. Now, in a remote Yugoslavian villa, surrounded by trees, hedges, and mustachioed detectives, the Serbian Bad Boy lives in solitary confinement, doing mathematical problems to keep from getting bored.
A 1938 article which gave a brief account of the incarcerated Crown Prince George of Serbia. As the above makes clear, he was judged insane and locked up between the years 1925 through 1939. He was set free by the Nazis during their brief occupation of that country.
Click here to read about the 1922 discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
A VANITY FAIR article by Ard Choille that recalls the low key visit that Belgium’s Albert I (1875 – 1934) made to the U.S. in 1898 while in the company of his young bride, Elizabeth (1876 – 1965), formerly the Duchess of Bavaria. Published at a time when the Great War was in it’s fourth month, the journalist was mindful of the valiant roll Albert was maintaining as the Commander-in-Chief of the struggling Belgian Army in the face of the German onslaught.
Click here to read about the W.W. I efforts of Prince Edward, the future Duke of Windsor.
Assorted photographs of the assembled German, Spanish, Belgian, Russian, Norwegian and British royal families, posed as they gathered to attend the the 1894 and 1896 Royal weddings at Coburg; also pictured is the group photo snapped at the 1898 shooting party at Sandingham. Queen Victoria appears in two of the pictures, while Kaiser Wilhelm II can be seen in all of them.
The attached photograph of Queen Elizabeth in her Coronation attire is accompanied by a few select words concerning the Koh-I-Nor diamond and a few other pretty baubles worn on the occasion of her 1953 coronation:
Elizabeth II wearing the diamond-and-pearl circlet of Queen Victoria. The design incorporates the Tudor rose, Scotch thistle, and Irish shamrock. The diamond necklace was a wedding gift from the Nizam of Hyderabad.
In five short paragraphs, this writer (Ard Choille), nicely sums up the chumminess that made up the royal families of old Europe and the vital role Queen Victoria played in the creation and maintenance of that bond:
Until the outbreak of the war the royal families of the various nations made up a wonderful club, the like of which had never been known before. Judging from the society papers, most of Europe existed for their convenience, and even the variety of military uniforms was kept up in order that royalty, while at home or abroad, might have the opportunity to change its clothes as often as possible
Attached is a page from VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE depicting the ten European princesses from 1914, having benefited from full hair and make-up, posing bemedaled and amused in full military dress before the society magazine cameras.
The Royals pictured on this page were all granted the ceremonial rank of ‘Colonel’ in the household cavalry units within their respective principalities, as well as a few of the cavalry regiments outside their domains.
Several of the Royal and Imperial women in Europe, who are possessed of military rank, have lost their colonelcies in foreign regiments by the World War. Thus, the Czarina and the Russian Grand Duchess, as well as Queen Mary of England, have been deprived of their commands in the Kaiser’s army.
Will Any of These Pictures be Turned to the Wall? asked the editors of VANITY FAIR shortly after the outbreak of the W.W. I. On the attached pages are photographic portraits of the potentates representing the assorted combatant nations; French President Raymond Poincare was the only elected official to be included among the royals. Pictured are Austria’s Emperor Franz Joseph, Britain’s King George V, Germany’s Willhem II, Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, Peter of Serbia and Albert, King of the Belgians.
