Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (3 page)

Introduction
 

(May 24, 1913)

T
he city of Berlin was alive with joyful exuberance. Thousands of people filled Unter den Linden from the Brandenburg Gate up the thoroughfare to the Stadtschloss, the imposing royal palace. In the skies above, the brightly decorated zeppelin
Hansa
buzzed loudly as it circled the palace, dropping large bouquets of flowers. Inside the Stadtschloss was one of the largest gatherings of royalty in the early twentieth century. They had come from the four corners of Europe to celebrate the wedding of Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia, the youngest child of Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany, to Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover. At 5:00 p.m., a long line of pages, heralds, court officials, and military leaders led the bridal procession from the Electress’s Hall to the palace chapel. The procession entered the chapel, with its marble walls, Roman arches, and high-domed cupola ceiling, led by the bride and groom. Immediately behind the young couple came an unprecedented collection of kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, and duchesses led by the imperial rulers of Germany, Great Britain, and Russia. Noticeably absent was eighty-two-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.

Hosting so many reigning monarchs at one time was a first for Germany since its unification in 1871. At the wedding feast that night, some twelve hundred guests watched in awe as the blushing bride danced the
Fackeltanz
, the traditional candlelight Prussian royal wedding dance. As candelabras flickered, reflecting off the diamonds, emeralds, and medals of the enthralled guests, Victoria Louise danced with her father. The king of England and the tsar of Russia had the honor of dancing with her next. As radiant as the princess was that day, there were three women whose presence not only outshone the bride but also captured public attention. The three individuals in question were the highest-ranking women in the world at that time. They were the bride’s mother, Augusta Victoria, German empress and queen of Prussia (1858–1921); Queen Mary of England, empress of India (1867–1953); and Tsarina Alexandra of Russia (1872–1918).

What was it about these women that caused such a stir? How did they manage to steal the spotlight at the biggest royal wedding of the decade? The wedding of Augusta Victoria’s daughter marked the first and only time in history that these three women—the reigning consorts of three of Europe’s four imperial powers—were together at the same time. Many historians have speculated what must have been going through their minds on that warm, sunny day in May 1913, for what would be the last gathering of the “royal mob” before the cataclysm of the First World War only fourteen months later. It is doubtful that they had any prescience about the disasters that lay ahead for each of them.

As I delved into the lives of the empress, the queen, and the tsarina, I could not help but reflect on what they each experienced as they stood witness to the decisive collapse of Europe’s empires in the first half of the twentieth century. The rule of the tsars was brought to an end by the blood-soaked Russian Revolution in 1917, replaced with the equally repressive Soviet Union. The German Empire was dissolved and reorganized into a republic at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918. Without a doubt, Great Britain enjoyed the easiest—though by no means a bloodless—transition from a vast overseas empire to a commonwealth of nations, the provenance of which began at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and culminated after 1945. As I pondered these women’s lives and their roles as the last empresses, my mind could not help but be drawn to the story of a lesser-known imperial consort whose life was just as impacting as her counterparts and whose legacy has made a profound impact on European affairs. This individual was Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma, empress of Austria, queen of Hungary, Bohemia, Croatia, and so on (1892–1989). Her husband’s reign—and her role as empress—came to an end when Austria-Hungary—like Germany—collapsed in 1918. With Zita’s life and experiences coming into focus, I undertook to write this, my latest book. It is the tumultuous story of Europe’s imperial past, a story that will take readers from the opulent world of nineteenth-century royalty to the catastrophic Great War, the various revolutions that swept the continent in its aftermath, and the decades of instability that followed.

For almost a century, historians, academics, novelists, and journalists have intricately studied the end of the imperial era. Equally scrutinized have been the significant lives and reigns of the husbands of these women—King George V, Emperor Wilhelm II, and Tsar Nicholas II. Despite this incomparable body of literature, there has never been a book that looks at the women who sat on the thrones of these great empires. To that end,
Imperial Requiem
is a collective narrative of the destruction of Europe’s four empires—Austria-Hungary, Germany, Great Britain, and Russia—the turbulent aftermath, and the birth of the modern world, all filtered through the experiences of the last women who ruled them.

For all the political, diplomatic, and military factors that are brought to bear in this book, at its heart it remains the story of four extraordinary women. There were, of course, other imperial consorts who were contemporaries of these protagonists. However, my decision in choosing the empresses I did was deliberate. Initially, I had chosen to include Empress Eugénie, wife of Emperor Napoleon III, the last French monarch. Their deposition and exile in 1871 marked the permanent end of monarchy in France. After much thought, I chose to exclude Eugénie because there was a significant generational chasm between her and the other four women—she was already eighty-eight when World War I began, but her counterparts were relatively young women. There is also a generational gap between Zita and the other three. When she became empress, she and Augusta Victoria’s daughter were the same age, but her role in the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and subsequent European events in the postwar period were too significant to be overlooked.

I also chose to exclude Queen Mary’s daughter-in-law Queen Elizabeth, consort of King George VI. While technically she did become empress of India upon her husband’s accession in 1936, it was a title she was forced to relinquish upon Indian independence eleven years later. Queen Mary rarely ever used her imperial title. She and the other consorts of British rulers almost exclusively referred to themselves as queens. Mary’s role as empress of India and her de facto position as imperial consort of the British Empire made her inclusion in this book an obvious choice. I also did briefly consider including the beautiful yet tragic Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Franz Joseph’s wife, who was assassinated in 1898, but she was not the last empress of Austria. Like Empress Eugénie, she did not have a place in the story of
Imperial Requiem
.

Throughout their lives, mostly after marrying, these women stayed in contact with one another. Their husbands wrote to each other, passing along news between their wives. They visited one another, sometimes on official state visits, sometimes on private holidays, and often for royal weddings, which at that time seemed to occur at least once a year. Some of the empresses—like Alexandra and Mary—were fond of each other. In other cases, such as with Augusta Victoria and Alexandra, they loathed their counterparts. Along with their shared experiences as consorts, these women were also connected through bonds of family, both by blood and marriage. Augusta Victoria, Mary, and Alexandra all had ties to Queen Victoria. Augusta Victoria’s mother was Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, daughter of the queen’s elder half sister, and Frederick VIII, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Mary was the daughter of Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, Queen Victoria’s cousin and a granddaughter of King George III, and Francis, Duke of Teck. Both Mary and Augusta Victoria would marry grandsons of the queen as well. Alexandra had a direct link with the British matriarch. Her parents were Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter, and Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse. Zita was on a peripheral orbit when it came to familial connections with her three counterparts. Her parents were the deposed duke Robert I of Parma, and Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal, one of Augusta Victoria’s second cousins.

Each of these women came to occupy one of the four imperial thrones spread across Europe. In the far corners, there was Great Britain in the west and Russia in the east, where Europe merges into Asia. In the center, Germany was situated in the north, occupying the land between France and Russia. The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary stretched toward Russia in the east and into the Balkans in the south. The countries and courts that these princesses married into bore striking similarities in spite of their differences, which could also be said of the women themselves. By the late nineteenth century, every European nation was governed by hereditary royalty, save for France and Switzerland. These royal states saw the rest of the globe as a frenzied game of imperialist conquest, with every Great Power scrambling to build an empire, both at home and overseas. This invariably led to conflicts, especially between Britain, Germany, and Russia, who were each struggling to become the ultimate power. But what drove these imperial monarchies? Why was it so important for them to be set apart as empires? One modern historian answered these questions this way:

[In] the 1870s, Britain and Russia, along with the other Western Great Powers, had launched themselves into a violent phase of territorial acquisition, carving up the globe beyond Europe into colonies and “spheres of influence.” There are many complex and conflicting arguments as to why the (mostly) Western, (relatively) developed powers all decided they needed an empire: the natural evolution of global power politics made it inevitable that the few rich, militarily superior, technologically developed powers would dominate and exploit the other, more “backward,” weak territories; the need of the industrialized nations for raw materials, and for new places to put their capital; a sense of fierce competition among the Great Powers and a perception that new territories were the way to steal a march on their competitors. All these aspects played their role.
¹

These ideas were critical factors in the events that shaped Europe in the decades leading up to 1914. They also fueled the leaders who instigated the First World War. As we will see, in the end, it proved to be the imperial ambition itself that helped bring these empires down.

When I began writing this book in 2009, the issues I encountered were legion. Along with the normal burdens an author carries, I also found myself shouldering the legacy of my first book,
In Destiny’s Hands
. It was an account of five children of Empress Maria Theresa—two were reigning emperors, and the other three were reigning consorts. In the months that followed that book’s release, I was contacted by several readers who expressed concerns over the accuracy of the facts I presented. There are many factors an author has to take into account when writing nonfiction.

In compiling a biographical narrative, one always tries to use as many primary sources as possible—direct quotes from protagonists or contemporaries are an author’s favorite source. But even into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contemporary accounts of people or events have not always been trustworthy. They can be biased, hyperbolic, misleading, or all of the above. One witness may have recorded a series of events one way, but another witness may have a had a totally different recollection of the exact same event. It can be challenging for an author to discern which piece of information is most accurate. More than once was I forced to make a judgment call when sources were vague or contradictory.

Another important consideration is the concept of publishable materials. In this age when media is pervasive, information has never been more accessible than through the Internet. I received several correspondences from readers citing a fact on a website or forum that contradicted information I had presented. Simply because a piece of information is widely disseminated does not make it accurate. Furthermore, when a nonfiction author submits his or her manuscript, publishers and editors often examine the bibliography to ensure that credible sources are used. Websites—with exceptions, such as governmental, official, or academic—are rarely acceptable.