Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives) delivers an irresistibly entertaining and illuminating chronicle from Queen Victoria's final decades to the 1930s through linked biographies of the emperors of England (George V), Germany (Wilhelm II), and Russia (Nicholas II). Anachronisms presiding over courts that were "stagnant ponds of tradition and conservatism," the three possessed average intelligence and little imagination. All were unprepared for their jobs and didn't improve with on-the-job training. Most fortunate was George, who performed his purely symbolic royal role dutifully, avoided scandal, and, alone of the three, reigned until his death, in 1936. More colorful but also tactless and unpredictable, Wilhelm took the German throne in 1888, dismissed his long-serving, brilliant chancellor, Bismarck, and launched an erratic reign that contributed to the onset and loss of WWI. Czar Nicholas showed little interest in governing except to oppose reform. In the end, the most violent reformers, the Bolsheviks, murdered him and his family. Readers with fond memories of Robert Massie and Barbara Tuchman can expect similar pleasures in this witty, shrewd examination of the twilight of the great European monarchies. 32 pages of photos, 2 maps. (Mar. 28) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The slippery slope into horrific armed conflict is a tale often told about World War I, but this author's take on the antecedents of the European war of 1914-18 is distinct. Carter views the shifting alliance entanglements of the Great Powers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and especially the growing animosity and rivalry between Britain and Germany, with particular focus on the attitudes and actions of three royal first cousins: Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, and King George V of Great Britain (who also reigned as emperor of India, hence the book's title reference to three emperors). Rich in concrete detail, elegant in style, and wise, fresh, and knowledgeable in interpretation, the author's account observes a profound anachronism at play: that these three monarchs, in what they didn't realize were the waning days of the institution of monarchy, handled foreign diplomacy as if it were a family business. Despite the reality of growing fissures separating their countries, each emperor continued to paper over the cracks with cousinly gestures, each increasingly irrelevant. Europe plunged over the precipice of war in August 1914, revealing in stark terms the inability of royal familial ties to control and contain national disagreements; as the author has it, the fact that Wilhelm, Nicholas, and George were out of touch with actual politics could not have been more apparent. An irresistible narrative for history buffs.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
The cousins who reigned over Europe before World War I. IN July 1917 - the point at which Miranda Carter opens this enterprising history of imperial vicissitudes and royal reversals - George V, king of Great Britain and emperor of India, resolved to change his name. In that scorching summer, King George was a worried man. His Russian cousin, Czar Nicholas II, had recently lost his throne and was under house arrest. In Germany, another imperial cousin, Wilhelm II, had been stripped of his proudest title, "supreme warlord." Deprived of power, Wilhelm discovered a hitherto absent sense of humor. Hearing that the English king had decided to bury his German connections by proclaiming himself a member of the newly formed House of Windsor, the emperor pondered the possibilities for a forthcoming Shakespearean production: "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha." George V also attempted lightheartedness in the face of adversity. Accused by H. G. Wells of presiding over an "alien and uninspiring court," the king retorted that while he might be uninspiring, "I be damned if I'm an alien." But, as Carter takes care to remind us, King George was as alien in England as was his German cousin. It had been their grandmother, the half-German Victoria, who had conspired with their entirely German grandfather, Albert, to swamp (and thereby unify) Europe by planting members of their extensive family in every duchy, state and kingdom the House of Hanover might conceivably aspire to bring under control of the queen. This strategy, back in 1859 - the year Victoria and Albert's eldest daughter gave birth in Prussia to the future kaiser - was the way the royal world worked. Intermarriage was seen as the key to sound international relations, and thus to international peace. As we all know, the scheme failed spectacularly. The collapse of that grand dynastic plan, by which Britain could comfortably preside over (and exploit) an age of rapid technological progress and expanding international markets, provides the narrative structure for "George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I." Many historians have examined the prewar links between England and Germany; fewer have attempted to incorporate Russia, a major player in the conclusive defeat of Victoria's dream of a royal, unified Europe. Carter's emphasis on the three cousins allows her to give full attention to Russia's role in the story. Her difficulty is that the links between Nicholas, Wilhelm and George, whether in their character or in their personal relationships, are fragile. The friendship between them was, at best, tenuous. George and Nicholas exchanged emptily affable letters two or three times a year; the kaiser, meanwhile, charged in and out of their sedate courts like a runaway actor in search of a stage, blustering, boasting, seizing whatever limelight was available for his approval-hungry spirit. The three men were together on only two occasions, both family weddings: the marriage of Wilhelm's sister Sophie in 1889 and that of his daughter, Victoria, in 1913. On this last occasion, George convinced himself that whenever he exchanged a word with the czar, Wilhelm was near at hand, an ear "glued to the keyhole." Months later, as Europe came closer and closer to war, the kaiser would swear that his imperial cousins had been guilty of conspiracy, hatching plots against him. Wilhelm's accusations were absurd, since two more thoroughly unpolitical men than King George and Czar Nicholas would be hard to find - or two more ill suited, as Carter makes clear, to occupying positions of power. "Oh such a piteous, good, feeble, heroic little figure," the satirist Max Beerbohm remarked at George's coronation in 1911. Nicholas, sharing his cousin's fearful conservatism (matched, as Carter notes, by "a fierce sense of entitlement"), was happier going for walks or fretting about niceties of dress than addressing the multitude of social problems that afflicted his Russian subjects. As a study of three equally significant figures, Carter's book was perhaps always doomed to failure. But as a study of the kaiser (one that admittedly benefits from John Röhl's monumental three-volume biography) and of his passionate love-hate relationship with England, "George, Nicholas and Wilhelm" succeeds magnificently. The kaiser has always been a fascinating figure. His spectacular gaffes didn't prevent the English crowds from cheering the dashingly moustached German emperor through the London streets. English hearts were perhaps won over by the gallant sprint Wilhelm made from Berlin to kneel at the bedside of his dying grandmother, holding the queen for two and a half hours in his arms (or arm, as Carter unkindly interpolates, reminding us of the child-size limb he'd carried since birth, the result of a botched delivery). But while the English crowds may have enjoyed the kaiser's passion for display, Queen Victoria, treated to the spectacle of Prussian sailors strutting across the manicured lawns of her home on the Isle of Wight during one of Wilhelm's yachting visits, had been less than charmed. Instilling within her little Prussian prince a passion for England had been (in her own considered view) possibly the most important project of the kaiser's mother, Victoria's eldest daughter, the princess royal. Dressed, while still a toddler, in an English-style sailor suit, Wilhelm was made to understand that his grandmother's navy had no rival. He grew up hungering both to belong to this grand tradition and to outshine it. But the bestowal upon her imperial grandson of the honorary title admiral of the Royal Navy gave the queen (if not Gilbert and Sullivan) cause for regret. A delighted Wilhelm promptly announced that he would be advising and guiding her fleet. The problem grew more dire when the emperor decided to develop a superior navy of his own, enabling Germany to compete for trade with and - while Wilhelm never quite stated it - threatening the country he professed to adore. THOUGH it has been described often before, the jockeying for positions of relative prestige between Wilhelm and his cigar-puffing, bed-hopping, life-loving British uncle, Edward VII, never fails to engage. Carter writes well about the agonizing diplomatic standoff when Wilhelm (unforgivably) forbade his royal uncle to visit Vienna while he, the new emperor of Germany, was also in town. She tells the story of this titanic battle of personalities with humor and authority. It is the best part of her book. Set beside that absorbing tale and those considerable personalities, Wilhelm's cousins George and Nicholas appear diminished. The czar is presented as colorless, a timid yet authoritarian little man. And his German-born wife, Alexandra (yet another of Victoria's grandchildren), emerges as the most likely cause for George's final meanspirited denial of the sanctuary that might have saved the imprisoned, dethroned couple's lives. Nicky, as George coolly noted in his diary, had betrayed weakness, but "Alicky is the cause of it all." Alexandra's mad cleaving to Rasputin had scandalized Europe, and her potential for causing trouble in England during difficult times remained considerable. Cautious George is viewed today as a founder of the modern monarchy. Wilhelm, while endlessly interesting, remains a disgraced figure. The disastrously ineffectual czar, on the other hand, along with his murdered family, has been improbably elevated. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church declared that the murdered Romanovs would henceforth be known as saints. As Miranda Carter reminds us, George V was as alien in England as was his German cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. Miranda Seymour is the author, most recently, of "Chaplin's Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill," and a memoir, "Thrumpton Hall."
Choice Review
In this collective biography of three of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, each of whom came to reign over one of Europe's great powers (Britain, Russia, and Germany), Carter paints compelling portraits of the three men, each of whom lived in a bubble separating him from the real, rapidly changing conditions in his country. The author argues that while each of the three monarchs sought to do what was best for his country, a number of obstacles stood in the way. Not the least of these impediments was that when it came down to it, George, Wilhelm, and Nicholas were mediocrities reigning at a time when Europe needed farsighted leadership. The result was the outbreak of the Great War, a confrontation that none of the monarchs wanted. Ultimately, the conflict led to the collapse of the imperial governments of Russia and Germany, with dire consequences for Europe. An interesting and solid example of popular history for general readers, but nothing new for scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. General and public libraries. R. W. Lemmons Jacksonville State University
Kirkus Review
Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives, 2002) examines the well-worn but endlessly fascinating history of the tight, treacherous ties that bound the royal families of Europe in the early 20th century. Queen Victoria's "secret weapon" had been to manage world affairs through the intricacies of her far-flung familial relationships, and all three reigning monarchs by the start of World War I were bound to her by blood and marriage: Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, was her first grandchild via daughter Vicky; George V, King of England, was another grandson, via her son Edward VII; and Tsar Nicholas II was married to one of her granddaughters, Alexandra. All three cousins spent time together when they were young, and more or less got along. Carter creates elucidating snapshots of their respective dysfunctional upbringings. Wilhelm, who resented his pushy English mother, exhibited symptoms of "narcissistic personality disorder" and went through a period of Anglophobia (he had insulted his grandmother and the English regarded him as a "bumptious Prussian"), before relations improved with his accession to emperor in 1888. Nicholas had suddenly become tsar with the early death of his father in 1894; terrified and wholly unprepared, he was comforted by his English royal cousins before his inscrutability and "opacity" isolated him in Europe in terms of affairs in Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Manchuria. George, probably dyslexic as well as given to bursts of private rage, became the reluctant king in 1910 and was deeply attached to his entitlement and hostile to change such as socialism and trade unions. When the war in the Balkans broke out, the three cousins found themselves entrenched in "deepening cracks of mistrust and tension," as events slipped beyond their control. Carter sharply sorts history in terms of the personal ruling styles of these three fallible monarchs. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Carter (Anthony Blunt: His Lives) offers a multiple biography of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, and King George V-not to mention George's father, Edward VII-in a heavily researched effort to prove that the relationship among the German, Russian, and British cousins was largely responsible for the advent of World War I. Carter is insightful about the different personalities of her protagonists, with Wilhelm in particular coming across as an utter lunatic and boor with a tendency toward Anglophilia that ebbed and flowed. Nicholas's aversion to being tsar and willful disinterest in Russia's socioeconomic problems clearly led to distrust, dislike, and eventually the murder of his entire family. Nicholas's mother was the aunt of George V, and Queen Victoria was the grandmother of both George and Wilhelm. Her influence on these men is felt throughout this book. Verdict Carter's is not a new topic; nor does she truly succeed in laying new responsibility for World War I on these monarchs. While the use of primary sources and of modern methods of assessing personalities does help, readers may also want to consider Catrine Clay's King Kaiser Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War. Carter's book is good for research assignments and general readers alike. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09; previewed as The Three Emperors: Three Cousins, Three Empires, and the Road to World War I.]-B. Allison Gray, Santa Barbara P.L., CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.