Today’s announcement of the engagement of Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales and Ms. Rachel Meghan Markle reminds me of an interesting genealogical tree that recently entered the Society’s collection. Bought by D. Brenton Simons from an antiquarian book dealer in the United Kingdom, it is a print from the 1900 edition of Mrs. Oliphant’s Queen Victoria: A Personal Sketch.[1]
A simpler version of the royal family tree published for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the print treats the Queen (but not her late husband, Prince Albert, who had died as long ago as 1861) as the trunk of the tree, with her eldest children as the most established branches. Rather than use dates of death, the tree’s artist has chosen to treat some of the Queen’s deceased children as living (Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, had died in 1878, and Leopold, Duke of Albany, in 1884), and some of her late grandchildren, who died unmarried, are shown as cut branches.
By 1900, the year before Queen Victoria’s death, her family included the German Emperor and his sister the Crown Princess of Greece; George, Duke of York (later King George V), and Princess Charles of Denmark (the future Queen Maud of Norway); the Grand Duke of Hesse and his sisters Princess Louis of Battenberg, Grand Duchess Serge of Russia, and (confusingly) Empress Alexandra of Russia, married to Grand Duke Serge’s nephew; the Crown Princess of Romania; Princess Margaret of Connaught (the future Crown Princess of Sweden); the current Duke of Albany, who would succeed his uncle as Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in July 1900; and Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, the future Queen of Spain.
Prince Harry of Wales is descended from Queen Victoria and two of her children: “Alb. Ed. P. of Wales,” later King Edward VII, and the late “Alice, Gr. Duss of Hesse.” The chart shows the next two generations as well: “George D. of York” and his second son, Prince Albert (the future King George VI), and “Victoria (Pss Louis of Battenberg),” and her daughter, “Vic. Alice,” who would marry Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903.
Prince Harry is also descended from King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark, the parents of “Alexandra of Denmark” (wife of the future King Edward VII) and King George I of Greece, the father of Prince Andrew of Greece and (as a junior member of the royal house of) Denmark. This carte de visite, by Disdéri of Paris and London, is interesting in showing how much Prince Harry’s grandfather – born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, the son of Prince Andrew and of Princess Alice of Battenberg – resembles his grandfather, King George I.
The marriage of Prince Harry’s grandparents, Princess Elizabeth (today’s Queen Elizabeth II) and Prince Philip, since 1947 Duke of Edinburgh, is by no means the only marriage between descendants of Queen Victoria (or King Christian IX), but it has certainly been a success, as suggested by the fact that the royal pair celebrated their seventieth wedding anniversary on 20 November.
[1] Margaret Oliphant Wilson (1828–1897) married her cousin Frank Oliphant in 1852.
