King Charles III and Queen Victoria are more closely related than you might realise.
You won’t be surprised to learn Charles is directly descended from Victoria, his great-great-great-grandmother.
But he’s actually great-great-great grandchild of the country’s second longest reigning monarch – after his mother Queen Elizabeth II – through both his mother and his father.
Royal families are notorious for marrying within tightly knit circles to preserve their wealth, power and the supposed purity of their bloodlines.
Queen Victoria, who ruled Britain and its Empire from 1837 to 1901, is one of history’s royals often dubbed ‘the grandmother of Europe’.
Charles’ paternal great-great-grandfather, King Christian IX of Denmark, is also known as the ‘father-in-law of Europe’ due to his children marrying into Europe’s royal families.
The reigning monarchs of Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Spain are all descended from him.
By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, both the United Kingdom and Germany were ruled by Victoria’s grandchildren – King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II
Russia, which fought with Britain against Germany until the revolution of 1917, was ruled by George’s first cousin Nicholas II.
The Russian tsar bore a striking resemblance to the British king and was married to George’s aunt’s daughter Alexandra Feodorovna, Victoria’s favourite granddaughter and the last Empress of Russia.
It’s Alexandra’s mother, Alice Mary Maud, who’s the link back to Victoria via Charles’ father Prince Philip.
Although Wilhelm and Nicolas were the last rulers of their lines, Britain’s royal family has remained relatively free of turbulence, making the route from Victoria to Charles somewhat simple.
Victoria was succeeded by her eldest son Edward VII in 1901 after 63 years in power.
He was followed on the throne by his second son George V in 1910.
After a slight detour via his son Edward VIII, who abdicated the crown after less than a year due to his controversial marriage to a notably non-noble American divorcee, Charles’s grandfather George VI ascended to the throne in 1936.
Then came Elizabeth II, whose 70 year reign from 1952 to 2022 meant she was the only monarch most Brits had ever known until Charles finally got his turn at the age of 73, more than 120 years since his great-great-great-grandmother reigned.
His father, Philip Mountbatten, was born to Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, a son of the Greek King George I, whose father was Christian IX of Denmark.
Prince Andrew’s wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was the daughter of Princess Victoria of Hesse and by the Rhine, who married into a German royal family.
Her mother, Princess Alice, was the second daughter of Queen Victoria, making Victoria his great-great-great-grandmother on his father’s side as well.
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