Royal Cousins at War

The story of the emerging divisions and rivalries between the inter-related royal houses of Europe, featuring the little-known story of the two Danish sisters, Princess Alexandra and Princess Dagmar, who pulled off the dynastic coup of the 19th century by marrying the heirs to both the British and Russian thrones. Following the invasion of their native Denmark by Prussia in 1864 during the Wars of German Unification, the sisters became the core of an anti-Prussian coalition that prefigured the great anti-German alliance of 1914. Their sons, King George V and Tsar Nicholas II were also close friends. The programme also looks at the tangled relationship between the German Kaiser and his English mother, Vicky – the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria. Disabled from birth, Kaiser Wilhelm had a complex love/hate attitude towards Vicky, which transferred itself to Britain as a whole, strongly influencing his foreign policy. Part 1 of 2.