![]() ![]() "As they could only marry each other, the choice often fell on German nobles," with the result that "practically all European royal dynasties are related to the Germans", he said. "While there was a king in Britain, Spain or France, in Germany there were at least 30 regional rulers," Michael Hartmann, a sociologist specialising in elites at the Technical University of Darmstadt, told AFP. But above all, he became a 19th-century influencer for his home country by helping to organise the 1851 Great Exhibition, the first in a series of World's Fairs.Īs the mother of nine children who produced countless offspring, Victoria forged family ties throughout Europe by marrying her children to other members of the continent's nobility.Įlizabeth II and Prince Philip, Charles's parents, were distant cousins, not least because of their hereditary ties to the woman who was dubbed the "grandmother of Europe". The Prince Consort was credited with popularising the Christmas tree tradition on the island. The pair regularly wrote to each other in German. Queen Victoria was one of his descendants and after her marriage to Albert, the family changed its name from Hanover to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The first German king to be crowned King of Great Britain was George I in 1714.īorn into the House of Hanover in northern Germany, he did not speak English, and his accession to the throne was due solely to his religion: Catholics were excluded from the line of succession, and he was the closest Protestant relative of the late Queen Anne. In the face of increasingly hostile public opinion, the quintessentially British king, who had suddenly fallen under suspicion due to his family heritage, decided to cut ties with Germany and adopted the name of a famous castle, the royal residence, near London. Nearly eight decades later, their grandson George V disowned the cumbersome patronymic while his country was fighting Germany in the Great War. The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha stemmed from the marriage in 1840 of Queen Victoria to Albert, the scion of a modest royal dynasty from northeastern Bavaria. ![]()
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