Behind the Palace Doors (37 page)

Leopold’s daughter Alice wrote in her memoirs of the impressive forbearance her uncle showed in the face of the queen’s gross unfairness: “[He] was, of course, aware of the assistance which my father [Leopold] was giving to the Queen and knew that his younger brother had access to State papers which he, though Prince of Wales, was not allowed to see. He was understandably indignant at such treatment, and I cannot help being filled with admiration for his magnanimity, for he bore no grudge against my father and was always kindness itself to my mother and me.… I consider he showed real greatness of spirit in his attitude towards my family.”

King Edward VII showed that same greatness of spirit toward Queen Victoria, despite all the indignities she heaped upon him. “It was evident from all he did and said that he greatly admired his mother,” wrote Giles St. Aubyn, “and with that discriminating forgetfulness which is the measure of a generous mind he held her memory sacred.”

George V succeeded his father, Edward VII, in 1910. Four years later Britain was drawn into the bloody conflagration that became known as World War I. Unlike many other European monarchs in the aftermath of that war, King George managed to keep his crown—even in the midst of great social upheaval at home. He remained a well-regarded king, and was genuinely surprised and moved by the outpouring of affection he and his wife, Queen Mary, received during the celebration of his Silver Jubilee, which took place the year before his death in 1936. The king’s cousin and friend, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, on the other hand, never got to celebrate his Silver Jubilee—thanks in part to a momentous decision made by George V in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution
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They were first cousins who looked more like twin brothers, bonded since childhood in an enduring friendship. To their family, and each other, they were Georgie and Nicky. To the rest of the world they were King George V of Great Britain and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Though they saw each other only occasionally, the two monarchs were in constant correspondence, strengthening their ties through mutual support and encouragement—particularly as they faced their unstable
and bellicose cousin Willy, better known as Kaiser Wilhelm II, in World War I. In the end, though, when Nicky needed Georgie most, friendship and family ties were not enough.

George V and Nicholas II were part of a vast network of interrelated European royals. Their mothers were Danish princesses: Alexandra, the elder sister, married the future king of England, Edward VII; the younger sister, Dagmar, married Russia’s future emperor, Alexander III. The family gatherings that sometimes brought the two young princes together cemented their friendship. “Nicky has been kindness itself to me,” George wrote to his grandmother Queen Victoria from Russia, where he attended Nicholas’s wedding to another of Victoria’s grandchildren, Alexandra of Hesse.
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“He is the same dear boy he has always been and talks to me quite openly on every subject.… He does everything so quietly and naturally; everyone is struck by it and he is very popular already.”

The uncanny resemblance of the two cousins often caused people to confuse them when they were together, as happened at George’s wedding, when Nicholas was congratulated on his nuptials and George was asked about events in Russia. The confusion seemed to delight the normally dour Queen Victoria. There was “no end of funny mistakes,” she remarked gaily, “the one being taken for the other!”

When they weren’t with each other, Georgie and Nicky kept in constant contact. Nicholas, who inherited the Russian throne in 1894 after the death of Alexander III, wrote a touching letter to his cousin when George’s father, Edward VII, died in 1910: “Just a few lines to tell you how deeply I feel for you the terrible loss you and England have sustained. I know alas! by experience what it costs one. There you are with your heart bleeding and aching, but at the same time duty imposes
itself and people & affairs come up and tear you away from your sorrow. It is difficult to realize that your beloved Father has been taken away. The awful rapidity with which it all happened! How I would have liked to have come now & be near you!”

The same letter also illustrated how closely intertwined family relationships were with national interests. Georgie and Nicky were now both sovereigns, after all.

King George and Tsar Nicholas were bonded even more closely, politically and personally, as they faced their common cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II in World War I. The German emperor had always been a troublemaker in the family, alienating his English relatives by his monstrous treatment of his mother (Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky) and unsettling them with his belligerent saber-rattling. “Oh he is mad and a conceited ass,” Georgie’s mother wrote to him about the kaiser—“who
also says that Papa [Edward VII] and Grandmama [Victoria] don’t treat him with proper respect as the Emperor of old and mighty Germany. But my hope is that pride will have a fall some day and won’t we rejoice then!”

Willy, as the emperor was known in the family, was jealous of the friendship between Georgie and Nicky, and came to believe that they were plotting against him. His paranoia was particularly apparent at the wedding of his daughter, Victoria Louise, in 1913. King George recalled that every time he and Nicholas tried to have a conversation, the kaiser was lurking about with his ear “glued to the keyhole.” Wilhelm, for his part, believed that the king and tsar had planned the destruction of Germany at the wedding. His former chancellor Bernhard von Bülow recorded the Kaiser’s rant: “History showed no greater perfidy.… God would punish them some day!… The Tsar’s ingratitude was revolting: he had always been the Tsar’s close friend. As for ‘Georgie,’ all the emperor had to say was that Queen Victoria, their grandmother, must have turned in her grave at the spectacle of her English grandson flinging down the gauntlet to the German.”

The nuances of the British Constitution and the constraints on the monarch were clearly lost on the kaiser, who believed that his cousin actually had the power to declare war. Ultimately, none of the three monarchs, Georgie, Nicky, or Willy, would have much control over the great conflagration that would consume Europe and knock two of them off their thrones. As war approached, Tsar Nicholas wrote to King George: “We both have serious and grave times before us and my earnest prayer is that both our countries may meet them with calm and trust in Divine Providence, God bless and protect you, Georgie.” The two cousins would remain closely united, at least for a time.

“My dear Nicky,” King George wrote from Windsor Castle on August 8, 1915,

Despite his protestations otherwise, Georgie’s devotion had its limits, as Nicky was soon to learn. A succession of crushing losses and severe wartime deprivations contributed to a revolution in Russia that forced the tsar to abdicate in 1917. “Events of last week have deeply distressed me,” King George telegraphed his cousin. “My thoughts are constantly with you and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I have been in the past.” The message never reached the fallen emperor, which was probably just as well, given how empty Georgie’s sentiments proved to be.

The provisional government established in Russia in the wake of the revolution was eager to protect the ex-tsar and his family from the more radical Soviet faction, which was braying for Nicholas’s blood. Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador in Russia, reported to London that the provisional government was “most anxious to get the Emperor out of
Russia as soon as possible,” and was seeking asylum for him in Britain. Buchanan was authorized to extend the invitation, which seemed to settle the matter—until King George stepped in.

The monarchy in Britain was in a precarious position during the war, and George V was particularly sensitive to the implications. It was in the midst of anti-German fervor, when his own patriotism was questioned, that he changed the royal family name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the very English Windsor.
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And with a rise in republicanism, he worried about his government’s offer of sanctuary to Russia’s royal family—“a gesture,” wrote the king’s biographer Kenneth Rose, “that would have identified him with Tsarist autocracy and imperiled his own repute as a constitutional monarch.” Survival was the king’s paramount concern in 1917, which may explain his vigorous campaign to revoke the offer of asylum to cousin Nicky.

“Every day, the King is becoming more concerned about the question of the Emperor and Empress coming to this country,” wrote George’s private secretary, Arthur Bigge, to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.

Georgie eventually got his way, while Nicky and his family remained prisoners in Russia and were subsequently slaughtered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. “It was a foul murder,” the king recorded in his diary. “I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men and a thorough gentleman: loved his country and people.”