Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires

by Justin C. Vovk

  In her moments of despair, Alexandra turned to her faith. She was convinced that all was in God’s hands, and according to Anna Viroubova and some of the other mystic members of the Romanovs, so was Rasputin. Father Gregory, as they called him, reputedly had the power to perform miracles. These included (but were not limited to) curing disease, healing wounds, and even stopping the flow of blood. This ability, combined with his own personal endorsement as a supposed miracle worker from God Himself, made this Siberian monk, this cipher, invaluable to Alexandra of Russia.

  With Crown Prince Willy married, it was not long before the Prussian royal family expanded again. In February 1906, Dona’s son Eitel-Fritz married Sophie-Charlotte (“Lotte”) of Oldenburg at the Stadtschloss. At both the civil and religious ceremonies held on the wedding day, the bride wore a pearl-white silk dress with a four-yard-long train and a crown of diamonds set in green velvet. The couple had met at Willy and Cecilie’s wedding when they were introduced to each other by the empress. Augusta Victoria considered Lotte a suitable choice for her son because not only was Lotte’s mother a Prussian princess but the empress considered the Oldenburg women to be “quiet, inoffensive, and suitable for a prince.”574 Their engagement was announced in October 1905 at Glücksburg, where the emperor and empress were attending the wedding of Dona’s niece to Wilhelm’s cousin the Duke of Coburg. Unlike Willy and Cecilie, Eitel-Fritz and Lotte were mismatched from the beginning. Since reaching adulthood, Wilhelm II had been concerned about rumors surrounding the wayward and immoral Eitel-Fritz. Dona was equally troubled. She even encouraged her son Oscar, who was by then serving in the Prussian army, to avoid visiting Potsdam too often because she was afraid that Eitel-Fritz would be a negative influence on him. The only remedy Dona and Wilhelm could think of was for Eitel-Fritz to get married as quickly as possible.

  There was no facade that his marriage to Lotte was a love match. It was one of convenience over anything else, especially for the attractive and wealthy bride. Lotte had lived most of her life under the watchful eye of her burdensome stepmother, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg. Eager to escape her life in Oldenburg, the prospect of marrying into the Prussian royal family appealed to her greatly. But it became clear within a matter of weeks of the wedding that the union was not a happy one. Eitel-Fritz continued his dalliances with other women, leaving his wife to occupy herself for days at a stretch. Gracious and proud, Lotte did not utter a word of complaint or animosity toward the prince or his family at the time. She simply retreated to her castle in the Tiergarten and painted, read, and entertained a few close friends. According to one contemporary, when Lotte “found out what a sorry personage she had linked her fate with she withdrew into a kind of haughty reserve, from which she has never emerged.”575

  While Eitel-Fritz and Lotte were on their honeymoon, Augusta Victoria and Wilhelm celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The actual date of their anniversary fell on the day Eitel-Fritz and Lotte were married, so festivities were postponed for a few days. The royal publicity machine was hard at work producing memorabilia to commemorate the milestone. The most popular item created was a photograph of the emperor and empress “in a sort of cloud floating above a bird’s-eye view of Berlin, with the palace and the cathedral dimly seen below.”576 The official celebrations in Prussia were suitably grand. King Edward VII sent his brother-in-law Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg as his personal representative. As Dona’s uncle, the choice of Christian was a personal one designed to highlight the bonds between their two empires. On February 26, the emperor and empress received deputations from the Reichstag and several other government organizations offering their best wishes. In lieu of gifts, the couple asked for money to be donated to German charities. The mayor of Berlin proudly told Wilhelm that the city raised $125,000 for a number of charitable organizations.

  After a quarter of a century, Dona and Wilhelm enjoyed a strong marriage. They endured difficulties that other couples would not have been able to weather. As they grew older, they became more devoted to one another, realizing their need for each other’s strengths. When they attended a banquet during a visit to Dona’s ancestral homeland of Schleswig-Holstein in 1890, the emperor presented a speech in which he devotedly sung his wife’s praises: “The bond that unites me to this province, and chains me to it in a manner different from all others of my Empire, is the jewel that sparkles at my side—Her Majesty the Empress. Sprung from this soil, the type of the various virtues of a German princess [sic] it is to her that I owe it that I am able to meet the severe labours of my office with a happy spirit, and make head against them.”577 On another occasion, Wilhelm proudly called his wife a “pearl among women … [forged] from her works of charity to the poor and suffering, and from her strengthening and fostering of the security and domestic life of our people.”578

  In some ways, their relationship mirrored that of Nicholas and Alexandra, who wrote touching love notes to one another. Though Dona and Wilhelm were not given to public displays of affection, they were deeply emotional in their private letters. “Last night I dreamt of you so vividly, darling,” Dona wrote in one such letter. “At first you were quite out of my reach, then you came to me and I clung to you so tightly so as not to let you go again. You were wearing something very strange on your head, but in my dream I told you how well it suited you, and then of course you had to go away again.”579 One historian noted that, even after so many years, the emperor and empress were still “very good friends. They have two things in common, an intense love of religion and their children.” Dona shone as an example of strong moral character: “Intellectually she is not the Kaiser’s equal, but she is a good mother and is ever busying herself with work among the poor. The Kaiser is very proud of her; he still believes her beautiful.”580

  The revelry for Wilhelm and Augusta Victoria’s silver wedding anniversary created a celebratory atmosphere in Prussia that helped remind the public of their interest in the royal family. The birth of the emperor and empress’s first grandchild on their twenty-fifth anniversary year helped further cement the monarchy’s popularity that year. On July 4, 1906, Crown Princess Cecilie gave birth to a son that was named—what else?—Wilhelm. At the time, the crown prince and princess were living at the Marble Palace until their new home, the Cecilienhof Palace, could be completed. At the time of the delivery, the emperor was on a Norwegian getaway, and the crown prince was off on a hunting trip with his friends. Willy returned home when Cecilie went into labor but made his annoyance at having to leave his friends apparent to everyone. In the end, the only person who was there “to encourage and soothe” the crown princess “during her trial” was Dona.581 When the infant was only a few hours old, the crown prince left the Marble Palace and returned to his hunting trip, leaving the empress to comfort her exhausted daughter-in-law and new grandson. The succession to the Prusso-German throne was now secure for another two generations. The fact that Dona’s first grandchild—and a boy, no less—was born on the twenty-fifth anniversary of her wedding to her beloved Wilhelm helped to assuage, somewhat, the guilt of seeing Eitel-Fritz’s marriage collapse. Dona’s growing guilt over his marriage came from the role she played in getting the couple together.

  Something else that helped take Dona’s mind off her son’s failing marriage was yet another visit to Britain. Unlike in previous years, this time Wilhelm had no desire to see his British relatives. Anglo-German relations were at an all-time low, and the emperor tried to get out of the visit by using the false excuse of suffering from bronchitis. Edward VII was not amused by his nephew’s antics. “Your telegram has greatly upset me,” he wrote to Wilhelm, “as your not coming to England would be a terrible disappointment to us all—my family—and the British nation. Beg of you to reconsider your decision.” The emperor knew Edward’s telegram was an attempt to discredit him diplomatically, so Wilhelm relented. The original plan was for the emperor to go alone; his daughter was sick with chicken pox, and the empress in
sisted on caring for her herself. At the last minute, when Sissy showed some improvement, Dona “changed her mind … and decided at a late hour to-night to accompany Emperor William on his visit to England.”582

  He and Dona arrived at Victoria Station on November 13, 1907. Prince George, dressed in his Prussian field marshal’s uniform, met them. Despite the ebbing relations between the German and British monarchies, the people of London gave the emperor and empress a hearty welcome. “There were great crowds in the street and they got a splendid reception,” George wrote.583 Wilhelm recalled the visit in his memoirs more than a decade later: “In the late autumn of 1907 the Empress and I paid a visit to Windsor, at the invitation of King Edward VII. We were most cordially received by the English royal family and the visit went off harmoniously.”584

  The English visit became a royal affair en famille, with a horde of other royals coming to Britain at the same time. Visiting Windsor Castle at the same time as Wilhelm and Dona was Queen Maud of Norway, Edward VII’s daughter; Queen Amélie of Portugal; and King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain. The New York Times described it as “a larger assemblage of royalties than had ever taken place” at Windsor Castle.”585 In a formal portrait taken at Windsor to commemorate the visit, Dona is seated between the much-younger queens Ena and Amélie. She is turned away from the camera, in what is most likely an attempt at striking a formal stately pose. Unlike Wilhelm, who could still charm his relatives, Dona’s haughty demeanor made her no friends among the queens of Norway, Spain, or Portugal.

  The weeklong visit was a whirlwind. The town of Windsor put on a medieval pageant for Dona and Wilhelm, who told the crowds gathered there that they made him feel as if he were “coming home.” King Edward was the epitome of hospitality. He commented on what “good health” Their Majesties appeared to be in but was greatly relieved when the visit was over. “Thank God he’s gone!” he muttered crossly as he watched the emperor and empress depart.586 Lord Esher was equally unimpressed with the German sovereigns. “Our King makes a better show than William II,” he wrote. “He has more graciousness and dignity. William is ungraceful, nervous and plain. There is no ‘atmosphere’ about him.”587 At the end of the visit, the emperor left a $10,000 tip for the staff, gamekeepers, and stable attendants at Windsor Castle. Before returning to Germany, Wilhelm went up to Highcliffe Castle in Dorset, while Dona traveled on to the Netherlands to meet with Queen Wilhelmina.

  As an attempt at improving Anglo-German relations, the British visit ultimately proved futile. Three days after Dona and Wilhelm returned to Berlin, the proposals were published for the historic German Navy Bill that the Reichstag passed in 1908. The controversial legislation raised eyebrows across the continent and was one of imperial Germany’s most significant steps toward provoking a war with Britain for mastery of the seas. The bill called for an increase in the production of battleships and a shorter lifespan on vessels, so they could be replaced more frequently. During this period, Dona paid little attention to domestic politics because her energies were focused on another family wedding. Her son Auwi married his first cousin Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg on October 22, 1908—Dona’s fiftieth birthday. The wedding, held at 5:00 p.m. in the Berlin palace, was attended by more than eight hundred guests. Like previous Prussian royal weddings, a civil ceremony was carried out in one of the palace’s private apartments. When this ceremony was completed, Dona placed the bridal crown upon Alexandra Victoria’s head, and everyone proceeded to the chapel for the religious service. The bride wore “a white silk dress trimmed with lace, and her train, which was richly embroidered with silver and thirteen feet long, was borne by four pages.”588 At the reception that followed in the palace’s White Hall, the number of guests swelled to two thousand.

  As the matriarch of the House of Hohenzollern, Augusta Victoria went to great lengths to see her children married to suitable partners. If the crown prince’s marriage was dynastic, and Eitel-Fritz’s was to stave off gossip, then Auwi’s was of a more personal nature. The empress herself had arranged the union, since Alexandra Victoria was her sister Calma’s daughter. Dona’s daughter Sissy admitted that though she and Calma “were vastly different personalities … they clung together with a deep, inner love which was later strengthened by the marriage of Calma’s daughter, Alexandra, to my brother Auwi.”589 Alexandra Victoria was considered the most beautiful, and the favorite, of Dona’s daughters-in-law. Princess Catherine Radziwill observed that the princess “had always shown herself willing to listen to her mother-in-law. She is a nice girl—fair, fat, and a perfect type of the ‘Deutsche Hausfrau’ dear to the souls of German novel-writers.”590 But after being married for a short time, Alexandra Victoria quickly earned a reputation for being sarcastic and snide. Beyond the empress’s circle of friends, who were watching Alexandra Victoria closely, most people at court were concerned about the serious blow that Anglo-German relations suffered with the creation of the Navy Bill. Any pretext of amity between the two empires was fading, marking the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between London and Berlin that would only get worse over the next six years.

  The tranquility Princess Zita experienced at her boarding school in Bavaria was shattered in November 1907 when her father died from heart disease. According to the New York Times, the Duke of Parma bequeathed his children, in addition to their many homes, a fortune in cash that was worth $40 million at the time.591 This was one of the largest cash inheritances in royal history, estimated at approximately $942 million today.592 Settling the late duke’s estate caused a serious break within the Bourbon-Parmas. The head of the family and new titular duke was Zita’s thirty-five-year-old, mentally disabled half brother Enrico. An Austrian court eventually ruled that six of the other children from Robert’s first marriage were mentally unfit to care for themselves. Prince Elias, one of Zita’s many half brothers, became the legal guardian of those six siblings, including Enrico. This meant that almost all of the Bourbon-Parma fortune was given over to Elias and the other children from Robert I’s marriage to Maria Pia. Two of Zita’s full brothers—Sixtus and René—sued Elias for a greater share of the family fortune but lost in court.

  For Zita, who was only fifteen years old, the money was of little interest. What was probably the most hurtful to her during this already difficult time was the significant schism from her older half siblings. Robert’s death and the messy court battle that followed marked a turning point in her life, effectively ending her happy childhood. In the weeks that followed the emotional funeral, Zita was at a loss, perhaps for the first time in her life. She idolized her father with great zeal. His death left her with a void with which she was unprepared to cope, but she was not alone. Her maternal grandmother, Queen Adelaide of Portugal, stepped into the fore as a second parent to the heartbroken children, reflecting Queen Victoria’s maternal concern for Tsarina Alexandra when Princess Alice died.

  Queen Adelaide urged that Zita and her sister Francesca be allowed to finish their schooling in peace and stability. She invited her granddaughters to join her at Saint Cecilia’s Abbey, which was run by the Benedictine nuns of Solesmes on the Isle of Wight, a stone’s throw away from Queen Victoria’s beloved Osborne House. Adelaide personally took charge of Zita’s education, which covered a wide range of subjects from Latin and history to philosophy and art. But as much as Zita enjoyed studying in Britain, the damp climate on the isle affected her health badly, forcing her to return to the more comfortable climate of southern Europe in November 1909.

  In August 1909, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and their family made their first visit to England in eleven years. They were received on August 2 at Spithead with full military honors. As the Russian imperial yacht Standart crossed the Solent, it was escorted by twenty-four battleships, sixteen armored cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and fifty other ships. It was a rare opportunity for George, May, Nicholas, and Alexandra to all be together. “Dear Nicky looking so well
and Alicky too,” George wrote.593 Being back in her beloved England, Alexandra was happier than she had been in years. Touched by Edward VII’s warm hospitality, she wrote how “dear Uncle” was “most kind and attentive.”594

  Much to May and Alexandra’s relief, their children got on very well. It was also the only time that the two groups of children got to meet one another. David recalled that it “was the one and only time I ever saw Tsar Nicholas.… Uncle Nicky came for the regatta with his Empress and their numerous children aboard the Standart. I do remember being astonished at the elaborate police guard thrown around his every movement when I showed him through Osborne College.” The children especially enjoyed teasing George and Nicholas about how similar they looked. The two cousins looked so alike with their deep eyes and Vandyke beards that many mistook the cousins for twins.

  Noticeably absent from the festivities was May’s son Bertie, who had come down with a nasty case of whooping cough. Fearful that if Alexei caught the virus it would lead to internal bleeding, Bertie was quarantined at his boarding school.595 Alexei was wide-eyed with enthusiasm listening to David’s stories of life at the Royal Naval School at Dartmouth. David, in turn, was smitten with Tatiana who, though only twelve to his sixteen, was tall, elegant, and exotically beautiful. More than once did Queen Alexandra hint at a possible dynastic marriage between David and Tatiana, though he was less than enchanted with the idea of Tsarina Alexandra—whom he remarked “wore such a sad expression on her face”—as his future mother-in-law.596 One of the more poignant moments of the trip came when Alexandra went to the Hampshire town of Farnborough to visit Eugénie, the octogenarian former empress of the French, who had been living in exile since her husband, Napoleon III, was deposed in 1870. The tremendous courage Eugénie had displayed facing down the hostile mobs in France as she fled to England had earned her the respect of people throughout Europe. Alexandra’s interest had long been captivated by deposed royalty, but it struck many as ironic that, though she could perceive Eugénie’s mistakes in the buildup to the collapse of the French monarchy, she remained oblivious to her own role in Russia’s deteriorating situation.