Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich

Remembering Grand Duke Serge (- the much maligned and often misunderstood husband of Grand Duchess Elizabeth -) who was murdered on 17th February 1905.

"All I Can Repeat Is that I am Perfectly Happy." More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters...

When Victoria of Hesse married Louis Battenberg in April 1884, Queen Victoria had more on her mind than the aberration of the bride’s father and the unforeseen romance between Beatrice and Liko. Though, of course, she had been informed in advance, the announcement of Ella’s engagement to a Russian Grand Duke sent a shiver of terror down a fond grandmother’s spine.
Since her formal entry into society three years previously, nineteen-year-old Ella might have had her pick of several European princes. Renowned as one of the most beautiful women in Europe, word of her charm, intelligence and gentleness brought proposals from many quarters. While Cousin Willy was still smarting at her rebuttal, Uncle Leo entreated her father not to throw her away on a dull Scandinavian prince who was earnestly seeking her hand. Ella herself had turned down the son of the Duke of Manchester and in 1883, Queen Victoria was mildly disappointed to hear that she had declined the proposal of her childhood friend, Fritz of Baden. The Queen’s disappointment turned to horror when she discovered that Ella had rejected him in favour of ‘a Russian!’
Apart from his great wealth, there was little to commend Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich to the Queen. Not only was he a Russian and a Romanov - the younger brother of Tsar Alexander III and Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh - but his highly-strung nature and unyielding reactionary views had created many enemies in his native St. Petersburg. His natural reticence had always given him a haughty air and the assassination of his father, Alexander II, had filled him with such a deep hatred of revolutionaries that he would mercilessly oppose any reform that might undermine the Romanov autocracy. Even in Russia, where the power of the Tsar was unlimited, Serge was commonly viewed as a sadistic despot.
Nor was the Grand Duke’s appearance particularly appealing to a Queen. His niece, Ella’s cousin, Missy of Roumania, thought him strikingly handsome, but noticed too the coldness in his steely-grey eyes. The French Ambassador, Maurice Paleologue observed that his face was disagreeable, ‘distinguished by greyish-white eyebrows and a hard look.’ Tall and extremely thin, he accentuated his gaunt figure by wearing whalebone corsets that showed through his clothes.
As if that were not to disenchant the Queen, she may well have heard the more insidious rumours, emanating from St. Petersburg.
“Try as I will,” wrote his cousin Sandro Mikhailovich, “I cannot find a single redeeming feature in his character…obstinate, arrogant, disagreeable, he flaunted his many peculiarities in the face of the entire nation, providing the enemies of the regime with inexhaustible material for calumnies and libels.”
Stories of his alleged ‘peculiarities’ were to haunt the Grand Duke all his life. As a young man, his devotion to the officers of his beloved Preobrazhensky Regiment led to speculation that he was homosexual and his apparent reluctance to marry, added further fuel to rumours.
What on earth, Queen Victoria wondered, could attract ‘dear lovely Ella’ to such an unpleasant man? It was true that Princess Alice had been fond of the shy little boy who, throughout Ella’s childhood, had often accompanied his consumptive mother on her recuperative visits to her native Hesse-Darmstadt. It was equally true that he was so different from bombastic Willy that Ella had responded with affection to his friendship; but now, surrounded by so many more sparkling suitors, the aloof Grand Duke seemed a most unlikely choice. He had made little impression upon her when he accompanied his mother on her final visit to Darmstadt in 1879, and Ella had even confessed to her sister that she found him ‘rather boring.’ Yet, when he returned to Hesse after his father’s assassination, her opinion changed dramatically.
Perhaps it was his heartfelt sorrow at the loss of his father that convinced her that his brittle exterior concealed a more sensitive nature. Having lost her own mother Ella empathised with his grief and, spending more time in his company, gradually came to realise that in spite of their disparate political and religious opinions, they shared the same aesthetic interest in music and art, inspired by a deeply spiritual temperament.
Gossip spread quickly through the family and by the time of Victoria’s engagement, word of Ella’s growing attachment to the Russian had reached a horrified Queen Victoria in Scotland. Summoning her granddaughter to Balmoral, the Queen earnestly attempted to dissuade her from the match. Princess Alice, she claimed, would never have wanted her daughter to marry a Russian. The vast Romanov wealth would ‘turn Ella’s head’; the country was very unstable and St. Petersburg society, immoral. The thought that ‘our sweet but undecided and inexperienced Ella, with her lovely face,’ may be led astray by the unscrupulous Russians was more than the Queen could bear. And if that were not disconcerting enough, Ella need only think of the cold Russian climate that would ruin her health, as it had that of several German princesses including Serge’s own mother.
Chastened by the lecture and unwilling to distress her grandmother, Ella assured the Queen that she had no intention of marrying Serge and that she would ‘hate to live in Russia.’ She returned to Darmstadt in the early autumn determined to put him from her mind and when Serge proposed, she refused him. Though the Russians, including Serge’s sister, the Duchess of Edinburgh, considered the refusal an insult, the relieved Queen was filled with admiration:
“I never gave Ella credit for so much independence of character.”
She had yet to discover quite how independent her gentle granddaughter could be.
Serge’s proposal had come at a time of great upheaval in Darmstadt. The New Palace was buzzing in preparation for Victoria’s wedding and her father was on the point of marrying Madame de Kolomine. Within a month of Ella’s departure from Scotland the Queen was alarmed to hear that Serge had received a further invitation to Hesse and could only pray that, in his presence, Ella would ‘remain firm.’
Her hopes and warnings were in vain. Whether it was the sense of romance in the air, or she had truly fallen in love, when Serge proposed for a second time Ella accepted him. It was left to Victoria to break the news to the Queen, before Ella dared pick up her pen to write to ‘dearest grandmama’ with some trepidation:
“…I am afraid this letter will not give you as much pleasure as I should wish but as it concerns my happiness and you have always been so kind to me, I wish you to know what I think about Serge…though he may have opinions you do not like, do you not think, dear Grandmama, that I might do him good?
…I shall try to keep to the right path and will always keep those I love in my mind and follow their good example...I think I know what I’m doing and if I am unhappy, which I am sure I never will be, it will all be my doing, as you know. Please forgive me if you are vexed with what I shall do, and although I will have to begin a new life, I will always cling to those who have been dearer to me than I can say.”
Queen Victoria could only shake her head in despair:
“Dear Ella, she really is so changeable and unaccountable, she told me how she hated all Russians, she refused Serge three weeks ago and now she takes him and forgets all.”

Six weeks after Victoria’s wedding, the royalties migrated to St. Petersburg where, on 15th June 1884, Ella and Serge were married according to both the Lutheran and Orthodox rites in the chapel of the Winter Palace. Cousin Willy, having made tactful excuses for his absence, missed the beautiful spectacle of his first love, draped in Russian Court dress and the jewels of Catherine the Great, walking down the aisle ‘on the arm of haughty Sergei.’ Even so, the Prussians managed to use the celebrations to humiliate the Battenbergs. Still angered by Moretta’s attachment to Sandro, Bismarck whispered a word in the right Russian ears to ensure that during the wedding banquet Louis was placed as far away as possible from the top table where his wife, Victoria, was seated near the bride.
After the wedding, the celebrations continued for a further ten days before Ella, now Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna Romanova, bade goodbye to her family. She and Serge travelled east for a honeymoon on his country estate, Ilinskoe, not far from Moscow, where her generosity and eagerness to learn everything about her new homeland, quickly endeared her to the villagers. In the autumn, the couple returned to the magnificent Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg for ‘the season,’ where Ella threw herself into the social life of the capital and soon made her mark in the ballrooms and receptions of the aristocracy.
“Ravishing beauty, rare intelligence, delightful sense of humour, infinite patience, hospitality of thought, generous heart, all gifts were hers,” wrote Serge’s cousin, Sandro Mikhailovich. “Everybody fell in love with ‘Aunt Ella’ the very first moment she arrived in St. Petersburg.”
The winter days were filled with skating parties, theatre visits and balls where, dripping in the jewels that Serge lavished upon her, she often disappeared partway through the evening only to re-emerge in an entirely new gown and another set of priceless gems. Devoted to her husband, popular at Court and loved by the people, life appeared idyllic for the naïve Grand Duchess but, within months of her wedding, rumours began to surface, that would plague her for the next twenty years.
Marriage had done nothing to improve Serge’s reputation. On the contrary, Ella’s calm passivity contrasted so sharply with his shortness of temper and dictatorial manner that her very presence at his side seemed to highlight the many flaws in his character. Observers, disgusted by the way he criticised and humiliated her in public, were convinced he must be still more cruel when they were alone. It was said that he was so jealous that he spied on all her movements, refused to allow her to go out without his permission and that he even read all her letters.
While Ella could not deny that Serge made every decision affecting their lives - even to choosing her partners at balls - the rumours of his unkindness were greatly exaggerated and caused her far more pain than his supposedly cruel treatment of her. But, however vehemently she protested that she ‘adored’ her husband and was ‘perfectly happy’ in Russia, increasingly outlandish stories spread not only through Russia but via the large family network to all the Courts of Europe.
“These tiresome reports about Ella being divorced etc. are all over the place; and in everyone’s mouth.” Vicky wrote to her mother only six months after the wedding, “I think it would be very good to have them contradicted.”
Queen Victoria was deeply troubled. She had dreaded this marriage from the start and now the rumours that she heard convinced her that her fears were well-founded. Ella’s letters repeatedly assured her that all was well but protestations of happiness served only to increase the Queen’s doubts.
“Ella’s constantly speaking of her happiness I don’t quite like. When people are very happy they don’t require to tell others of it.”
What was more, as the Queen could not fail to observe, there was evidence enough that something was awry in the marriage: many months had passed since the wedding yet Ella showed no sign of conceiving a child. In a family where children were as numerous ‘as the rabbits in Windsor Park’ her childlessness proved to Serge’s detractors that he was homosexual and had no interest in his wife. Increasingly salacious stories proliferated. Some claimed, without justification, that Ella refused to yield to Serge’s ‘unnatural’ perversions while others, more charitably but no less humiliatingly, believed that the shock of his father’s death had left him impotent.
It is possible that Ella was simply unable to have children. Since her adolescence, her grandmother had often commented on her frailty and, with her usual euphemistic references to her ‘health,’ implied that as a young girl Ella suffered from gynaecological problems. Advising Victoria not to ride too quickly or too often she added:
“For Ella it would be bad for her health as well, but then she cannot…ride just now.”
Conversely, though Ella frequently went to great lengths to defend her husband, she never made any attempt to explain away her childlessness. It was not simply a matter of coyness - after all, her Aunt Louise, Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, also remained childless but had openly sought a cure in various European spas. Other members of the family were equally candid in the correspondence with the Queen, who for all her professed distaste for the subject, was remarkably inquisitive about the married lives of her daughters and granddaughters. Ella’s refusal to discuss the matter seems simply to confirm what the gossips had surmised: due to some failing on Serge’s part, the marriage remained unconsummated.
As the rumours continued unabated, the Queen seized every opportunity to cast a concerned eye over her precious granddaughter. When they met for a christening in Darmstadt in 1885, she was able to observe:
“They seems quite happy and comfortable together but Ella is looking pale and thin – which however they say is caused by the heat.”
Two years later Ella arrived in London for the Golden Jubilee celebrations, totally unprepared for the grilling she was about to receive. It was humiliating enough to hear the rumours and ‘disgusting lies’ that circulated through St. Petersburg, but mortifying to discover that the most intimate details of her marriage were being discussed as far away as Windsor. Deeply embarrassed by the Queen’s probing questions she could only reply with increasing desperation:
“All I can repeat is that I am perfectly happy.”
Ella’s heartfelt protestations were sincere. She loved Serge enough to endure a celibate marriage, but with each passing year the pain of her childlessness became harder to bear. Ella loved children and longed for a child of her own. During a visit to Ilinskoe in 1886, her Aunt Marie of Edinburgh noticed how readily she spoiled her eight-year-old cousin, Sandra, and she could not have been more thrilled to hear of the birth of her first niece, Alice. In Russia, too, she delighted in the company of her friends’ children, whom she frequently entertained by hiding gifts and sweets for them to seek out in the rooms of her palaces. Among the many charitable organisations that she patronised, the dearest to her heart was the ‘Elizabethan Society,’ which she had established to take care of orphans and neglected children. In the early years of her marriage, she entertained the forlorn hope that eventually something would change and she might have a child of her own, but with each passing season her optimism gradually faded.
For an intelligent, well-educated woman dogged by scandalous rumours, the trivial hours in the ballroom soon lost their appeal. She been raised to a life of service and duty, yet now she was little more than a beautiful ornament to a husband who showed her no physical affection and denied her any say in the decisions affecting her life. Had she sought them, the beautiful and charming Grand Duchess would have had no shortage of lovers in the infamously decadent Russian Court, but, believing that vows made before God were binding for life, Ella could not contemplate infidelity. Instead, like her mother before her, she devoted herself to her charities and, with ever greater fervency, to her religion•.
Although stories of Serge’s ‘perversions’ and sadism continued until his death and beyond Ella never spoke so much as one word of criticism against him. If the rumours of his homosexuality were true, she accepted the situation without complaint or self-pity and remained convinced that in his own peculiar way, he loved her. In that, at least, she found the comfort that was denied to one of her cousins, for out of all Queen Victoria’s granddaughters none suffered greater humiliation at the hands of a homosexual husband than the desperately unlucky Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein.

Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich

In memory of Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, murdered 105 years ago today, this is an extract from Most Beautiful Princess. Ella and Serge are sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, after the consecration of the Russian Orthodox church in Jerusalem.

“It sometimes feels to me,” he said, “as though there is a gap, like a great well, inside us. A sort of wound, an inner loneliness and, no matter how close or intimate our relationships, the wound is so deep that nothing on earth can alleviate it. Do you ever feel that?”
“Yes,” she murmured, “I do.”
“Perhaps everyone does. Some people run around trying to assuage the pain of it; the pain of being alive. Some try to numb it with vodka or opium or laudanum and all kinds of excesses. Others fill every spare moment with activity or seeking out company, small talk, chatter, noise, any noise, being so afraid of silence and solitude because when we’re alone and silent we feel it most deeply. But no matter how we try to avoid it, we know it’s there and there is nothing we can do to be rid of it.”
“Perhaps it’s a reminder that we’re not simply creatures of the earth. We’re pilgrims passing through, longing for heaven.”
“Longing for death?” he frowned.
“No, not death but the Infinite. Perhaps it is a kind of death, though I cannot think that God would create all this beauty, nature, oceans, skies, dawns, sunsets, flowers and creatures to be so ephemeral. I can only believe that what we see here is the reflection of an even greater beauty beyond this life.”
“For here,” he said, “we see ‘but darkly as through a glass’. Isn’t it strange how desperately and deeply we feel this longing that can only be satisfied when our souls are free of these bodies, and yet, faced with prospect of death, we cling to life how ever mundane, dull, empty and meaningless it seems. Even those who live in the most abject poverty, whose lives are nothing but drudgery and misery, would, if faced with the prospect of death, cling with all their might to this existence how ever painful or sad.”
“Perhaps they’re afraid of what is beyond.”
“Or perhaps they fear there is nothing beyond except total annihilation.”
She moved closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Are you afraid of death, Serge?”
“Not now. Not in this moment when everything is peaceful. Heaven seems so close that I would happily step out of my body and into that life. But,” he sighed, “when we’re back in the city, amid all the clamour and routine and petty irritations, death will no longer seem like a radiant angel welcoming us home, but rather a dark spectre hovering menacingly over our shoulders. That is what I fear, being caught unprepared as my father was. One minute there, walking, talking, breathing...the next minute, blown to pieces.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “If it were not for my faith, I don’t think I would have been able to live with that. For those who don’t believe, such times must be unbearable.”

Glib Lines Without Meaning

I wonder why it is that multi-faceted people find it so easy to write off other people of the past in glib one-dimensional lines. Imagine if someone were to describe you in one short phrase - your whole life experience with all its ebbs and flows narrowed down to that - and worse, if that short phrase were so often repeated that it became generally accepted as 'truth'.

How many times have I read such phrases regarding the last Imperial Family of Russia? "Nicholas was a weak Tsar." "Alexandra was psychologically unsound." Serge was gay." "Ella was cold." These things are written on blogs and websites all over the place and they are as far from the whole truth as the popular (and untrue) myth that Queen Victoria was puritanical and seldom amused.

Happily, there are also many people who are not so trite in their descriptions and understanding. Most of the people whom I know who have any depths of understanding of that family, eventually come to a point of giving up trying to refute these easy statements so the glib lies continue uncontested. It would be possible to write at length of all the reasons why these statements are inaccurate but there is little point in doing that among people who prefer to make everything black and white and are constantly seeking someone to blame for all the errors of the past.

There are many examples to illustrate that Nicholas was not weak. There are many examples of Alexandra's strength of mind and character, and happily other people write of these with such knowledge and insight. Very few people have even heard of Serge and Ella, and it is so unjust to see how often they are passed off with those lines: "Serge was gay. Ella was cold." Personally, though I don't give two hoots about whether he was or he wasn't, I don't believe that Serge was gay. Nowadays, a person's sexual orientation is happily a matter for that person and not anyone else's business. In late 19th century Russia (as elsewhere) it was a criminal offence and to accuse someone of being homosexual was a means of shaming them. So many accusations were levelled against Serge because of his political stance. It was difficult to contradict his views politically and so much easier to make such an accusation about his sexuality simply to demean him! That aside, it must be remembered that his servants were utterly devoted to him. Not many people inspire such devotion in their staff. The diaries of Css. Tolstoy - no great fan of the Grand Duke - include references to his kindness when she asked for help for her son to gain a commission in a particular regiment. She also writes of how, trying to make a request to him in St. Petersburg, she couldn't reach him because he had made the very long journey to Moscow simply to attend the wedding of one of his servants, to which he had been invited. But Serge, according to the myth was 'gay, a sadist and a control-freak' - Funny that, since all the gay men that I know are far from being control-freaks or sadists. So, please would those who make up or repeat these stories decide which stance they are taking before making such glib accusations?

Then, 'Ella was cold'. What is cold? Numbed and shocked to the core by witnessing the horrific death of her husband? Crikey!! Wouldn't you be cold with shock and horror if you saw someone you loved in such a mutilated state? Obviously, the glib accusation of 'cold' cannot apply simply to that moment. So she was generally cold? Hmm....Ella, who, on being parted from her sisters 'cried like a child'...Ella, who wrote to Nicholas in such extremely effusive tones: "Darling boy, dearest, darling Nicholas, may I call you so?" Ella, who 'sobbed' after her final meeting with Alix. Ella, whose letters are filled with effusions: her descriptions of her feelings in the Holy Land or at Sarov; her 'boundless' love, her 'longing'...are these the words of a cold person?

If people dislike people of the past, that's fair enough. If people have issues or disagreements with people of the past, that's fair enough too. But to narrow a person down to an often repeated statement is just so shallow! Nicholas was weak, Alix was psychologically disturbed, Serge was gay, Ella was cold...take it back further, Richard III (so loved by the people of Yorkshire!) was just the wicked uncle who killed his nephews (yeah right!! where was Henry Tudor in this?)...King John was evil; Richard the Lionheart is a hero (though he virtually bankrupted England and spent hardly any time here)....Please, if we write of people, let's at least get the wider picture....

Unless A Seed Falls Into the Ground and Dies

When Ella - Grand Duchess Elizabeth - went to the prison to forgive her husband's killer, he told her that on a previous occasion he could have killed her, too, but spared her life. Ella replied that in killing her husband, Serge, he had killed her, too.
Considering it was only three days since she had gathered Serge's bloody remains in her own hands, the shock and horror of what she had witnessed must have been so traumatic as to render her almost incapable of thinking straight but there was something in those words to which subsequent events bear testimony.
The Ella whom people had known as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', the Ella who had stunned every man in every ballroom, who had disappeared partway through an evening to reappear in a completely different set of jewels and attire, who won the hearts of the same people who despised her husband, suddenly was no more.
Instead there was the real Ella: the person who had been raised in an atmosphere of beauty and service to the poor; the Ella who had 'longed since childhood to help those who suffer, especially those in moral suffering' - the Ella to whom beauty meant something more than superficial appearances.
It seems very much a visible example of 'unless a seed falls into the ground and dies...'
Ella's whole life changed through horror and tragedy but it wasn't destroyed - on the contrary, after twenty years as a stifled and passive wife, it returned her to herself.
Perhaps, had she not been raised in an atmosphere of tragedy and suffering, she might have learned that lesson in happier circumstances. It seems to me that when we believe suffering is necessary, we find it and it can change us for the better, if we so choose, but the greater lesson is to know that suffering isn't necessary and was never part of the Divine Plan. The only thing we die to is the false notion of the need to be anything other than our true selves. If we learn that lesson through suffering, good comes of it. If we learn that lesson through joy, so much the better!

"Acts of God"

An interesting thought about how our thoughts affect our bodies...

Vicky's husband, Fritz - Emperor Frederick III - spent much of his young life being 'gagged' by his father. Every time he raised an opposing thought, he was silenced. At the same time, Vicky was urging him to speak out. He was in a very difficult position. As the time drew near for him to take up his position as emperor, he was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Vicky felt that she bore the weight of the world on her shoulders. She tried to balance so many things but the strain was so great that she couldn't bear it. Nor could she express it. She suffered greatly, too, over the way her children were raised and how the older ones seemed to reject her. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and spinal cancer.

Alice was never allowed to express her grief at the death of her father as she was too busy caring for her mother and helping to keep 'the firm' running. When her little daughter, May, died, she was compelled to keep that silent, too....she died of diphtheria, which affects the throat.

Serge lived with the horror of what had happened to his father. He also had - I think - some kind of loathing for his body, which was literally obliterated by the bomb that killed him.

There are many, many more examples and the deeper we go into our own thoughts, the more clear it is how we choose to destroy or re-create ourselves....Ho hum...It's a thought which offends many people because we all like to play victim at times. "It wasn't my fault I caught this or that...." It's not a question of 'fault' though, it's more a question of responsibility. Living in the 'image and likeness of God' , our thoughts have tremendous power - far greater than we choose to be aware of, I think. "Act of God" is a something assigned to nasty eventualities - as though a loving creator would be so petulant as to wipe out his/her people! Perhaps 'act of thought' would be more appropriate for many things. "Acts of God" - acting from our highest selves, would surely only mean life and health and freedom.

Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich

On 17th February 1905, Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich was blown to pieces by a terrorist's bomb. His wife, Ella, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, heard the explosion and hurried to the scene where she picked up what was left of him with her own hands and, having his remains placed in the neighbouring Chudov chapel, knelt in prayer as his blood trickled down the steps.
Three days later, she visited his assassin in prison, taking with her a Bible and an icon of Christ.
This event changed her life forever. Little by little, she gave away all her jewels and other possessions to create a sort of palace of the poor, where she nursed the most abject patients, built an orphanage and arranged all kinds of work for young people.
Grand Duke Serge was hated in proportion the degree to which Ella was loved. His name has been vilified through history but he was not a 'bad' man at heart. Highly strung, reactionary and probably unable to consummate his marriage, he became more intransigent each year and his treatment of the Jews in Moscow was horrendous (but he was acting, too, on the orders of his brother, Tsar Alexander III, and both of them were under the sway of the Procurator General of the Holy Synod). Serge also took a great deal of interest in the people and truly believed in Tsardom as building the kingdom of God on earth. His servants respected him and were devoted to him (which says a lot, considering 'no man is a hero to his valet'). Countess Tolstoy records in her diary how she visited him to ask for a military position for her son, and how very accommodating he was. She also wrote of his travelling all the way from St. Petersburg to Moscow for one day to attend a wedding of one of his servants.
Ella, who was so different from him, would never hear a word against him. I truly believe that he, for all his faults, was one of those people whom history turns into a monster, when he was just a man, doing his best with what he had...Blinkered he might have been, prejudiced he might have been, but cruel and nasty, he wasn't.

The Average Family Gathering

If, in the midst of organizing Christmas gatherings and accommodating various - sometimes contrary - characters in families, it is worth sparing an amused thought for Queen Victoria and the challenge she faced in the organization of her Golden Jubilee celebrations. Apart from the representatives from so many corners of her Empire, the more pressing concern was where to house and seat different members of her own family.
Buckingham Palace itself was bursting at the seams; the Duke of Edinburgh had offered the use of Clarence House, and the Prince of Wales was open to guests at Marlborough House. Nonetheless, it would require very careful and tactful planning to ensure that everyone was housed with 'suitable' companions.
Her grandson, the future Wilhelm II, was originally not invited, since his father, the future Frederick III, would be representing the Kaiser. 'Willy' however was angling for an invitation and, to keep Willy's mother, Crown Princess Victoria, happy, Queen Victoria agreed to invite him. He would have to be kept away from his aunt, Beatrice, and his cousin, Victoria of Hesse, since their husbands were 'Battenbergs' and, to Willy's mind, not sufficiently royal or 'of the blood'. His own sister, Moretta, was as that time, still hoping to marry a third Battenberg brother, Sandro - a notion which Willy and his paternal grandfather refused to even consider.
Willy's father, diagnosed with throat cancer, needed to be housed in a place where he could enjoy quiet after the celebrations; and then there was Willy's sister, Charlotte, who was known for making a scene and for whom, the Queen decided, the possibility of staying with her Uncle Bertie - with his 'fast set' - at Marlborough House was hardly appropriate.
Much as the Queen was looking forward to meeting Ella (Grand Duchess Elizabeth) again, she was certainly not so enamoured at the prospect of having to entertain Ella's husband, Serge.
On top of a myriad of other children and grandchildren and their spouses, were the Indian Maharajas and the splendid Queen of Hawaii (whose position in the order of precedence irked Willy, who ridiculously believed that a European prince should come before a black Queen!).
All things considered, the average family gathering is very easily arranged!