QUEEN VICTORIA'S FAMILY TREE

Over the course of her 63 year reign, Queen Victoria made an indelible impact not only on Britain, but on the world. And while many effects of her rule are still present in modern society, perhaps one of the most obvious remains the impact of her massive family tree on the current monarchies of Europe. After all, with nine children, 42 grandchildren, and 87 great-grandchildren, she more than earned the title "the grandmother of Europe."

Born on May 24, 1819, Alexandrina Victoria was quite literally born to be queen. The daughter of Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent—fourth son of King George III—and German widow Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Victoria was the result of a succession crisis that left her as the only legitimate heir to the throne. Just a month after her 18th birthday, the petite princess (she was barely five feet tall) became queen following the death of her uncle, King William IV.

In 1840, she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, with whom she had a famously passionate connection. Though Albert had no official state powers as Prince Consort, he nonetheless had a major impact on the monarchy. An intellectually driven man—Albert prescribed himself an educational regiment requiring nine hours of study a day during his teen years—he not only served as regent during his wife’s nine pregnancies, he also had a significant role in encouraging scientific and technological innovation, and even helped organize the Great Exhibition in 1851.

Albert likewise played an active role in his children’s lives, seeking to mold their family into an example to the world of what royal families should be. Though he died at age 42 from what many scholars now believe to have been stomach cancer, his values carried down through many of the European royal lines through his children and grandchildren with Victoria.

After Albert died in 1861, Victoria remained in mourning for the remaining 40 years of her life, becoming the longest reigning monarch in British history until her great-great granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II.

Here is how their genetic legacy has shaped the royal families of Europe.

The English Royal Descendants of Queen Victoria

King Edward VII

The second child and firstborn son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Edward VII (born Albert and better known to his family as Bertie) was the longest serving heir to the throne prior to King Charles III. Despite his position, Edward VII had developed a reputation as a playboy and a contentious relationship with his parents; Victoria blamed him for the death of his father in 1861, and largely prevented him from having political position or influence until the end of her life. He ascended the throne on January 22, 1901, upon the death of Victoria, reigning for nine years until his own passing in 1910.

Princess Alice

The third child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Alice’s life was marked by tragedy. Not only did she serves as a nurse to her father in the later days before his death, she also had an apparently unhappy marriage to Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse, and several of her children suffered tragic ends: Princess Marie from diphtheria at age four and Prince Friedrich at two as a result of hemophilia. Her youngest surviving daughter, Alexandra, became the last Empress of Russia and, like Alice’s other daughter Elisabeth who was also married into Russian nobility, was executed by the Bolsheveks in 1918.

King George V

The second son of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, George became third in line to the throne after the death of his older brother Prince Albert Victor in 1892, and later, the Prince of Wales when his father took the throne in 1901. Reigning from 1910 to 1936, George V officially changed the royal family’s name during WWI from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the less German-sounding House of Windsor, making him the first Windsor monarch.

Victoria Mountbatten

The eldest daughter of Princess Alice, Victoria was named in honor of her grandmother Queen Victoria, who was present for her birth at Windsor Castle. She married her first cousin on her father’s side, Prince Louis of Battenburg, though the family later changed their surname during WWI to the anglicized Mountbatten. Her daughter Louise would go on to become Queen of Sweden, and her daughter Alice, the future mother of England’s Prince Philip, married into the Greek royal family before they were deposed. Her son Louis would also become a significant figure in the British Navy and a close confidant to Prince Philip.

King George VI

Like his father, George VI was a second son, not expected to take the throne. However, when his older brother—King Edward VIII, later known as the Duke of Windsor—abdicated less than a year after inheriting the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, the then-prince was crowned. Coronated in 1937, he ruled over England through WWII and saw it through the struggles of post-war life. With his wife, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon he had two daughters, Princess Margaret and the future Queen Elizabeth II, who took the throne after George VI’s death in 1952 following a battle with lung cancer.

Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark

Born at Windsor Castle in 1855, Princess Alice lived a dramatic life. Named in honor of her grandmother, Princess Alice (herself the daughter of Queen Victoria) Alice was evidently born deaf and learned to speak by lip reading. At age 18, she married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the son of King George I, the last king of Greece, and with him had five children, including Prince Philip, the future husband of Queen Elizabeth II. In 1922, her family fled Greece, and toward the end of the decade, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia—Sigmund Freud reportedly prescribed the use of ovarian X-rays to induce menopause as a treatment. She later returned to Greece where she performed charitable work, and during WWII hid a Jewish family in her home to protect them. She founded a Christian sisterhood in the late 1940s and adopted the habit of a nun. In ailing health, she spent the later years of her life living with her son Prince Philip and his wife Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace before her death in 1969.

Queen Elizabeth II

Both the longest-reigning and longest-lived monarch in British history, Elizabeth carried on the legacy of Queen Victoria in a myriad of ways. By the time Elizabeth inherited the throne at age 25, she was already a mother of two, including her eldest son, the future King Charles III. She and her husband, Prince Philip, would go on to have two more children, eight grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren, which might not have made her the “grandmother of Europe” as Victoria was known, but certainly gave her an impressive family tree. The queen served out her public duties to the end of her life, progressively slowing down in her later years until her passing in September 2022 at the age of 96.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Though he may have been known for being Queen Elizabeth’s Prince Consort, Philip was royalty in his own right—and a descendant of Queen Victoria on his mother’s side. Though he and his family were exiled from Greece during his childhood, he became a naturalized citizen of England and served in the British Navy before he married then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947. When he passed away in 2021 at the age of 99, he was the longest-lived male British royal in history.

King Charles III

The current reigning monarch, Charles became king upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in 2022. Before that time, he was the longest-serving Prince of Wales in history, having been heir to the throne for 70 years. Born in 1948 at Buckingham Palace, Charles served in the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy; he also graduated from Cambridge, making him the first British monarch to have a university degree. In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer, later known as Princess Diana, with whom he had two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. Charles and Diana divorced in 1996 and in 2005 he married his longtime girlfriend Camilla Parker Bowles, now Queen Consort Camilla.

Prince William

King Charles’s eldest son, William took over the title of Prince of Wales when his father became king in 2022. After attending Eton College and St Andrew’s University, he trained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and served in the Royal Air Force where he became a search-and-rescue pilot. In 2011, he married Catherine “Kate” Middleton in a royal wedding watched worldwide. The couple have three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis.

Prince George

Second in line for the throne, Prince George is the oldest child of Prince William and Kate Middleton, born on July 22, 2013.

The Danish Royal Descendants of Queen Victoria

Prince Arthur

The seventh child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Arthur spent the better part of his life in the military, serving as an officer in numerous conflicts and as an advisor even up to the start of WWII. In the late 1800s, the previously defunct title of Earl of Sussex was created for him by his mother—he was also Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.

Princess Margaret of Sweden

Prince Arthur’s eldest child Margaret had an outsized impact on leading Queen Victoria’s descendants to the throne. In 1905, after a whirlwind romance, she married Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, who would later become King Gustaf VI Adolf. Though her husband did not take the throne until 30 years after her death, through their five children she became the grandmother not only of the reigning queen of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II, but also Sweden’s current king, Carl XVI Gustaf

Queen Ingrid of Denmark

The only daughter of King Gustaf VI Adolf and Princess Margaret of Sweden, Ingrid married the future King Frederick IX of Denmark in 1935 and became queen in 1947 when he acceded the throne. Together, they had three daughters, the eldest of whom, Margrethe, inherited the title upon Frederick’s death in 1972.

Queen Margrethe II

When Margrethe took the throne in 1972 at the age of 31, she became the first female monarch to rule over Denmark in more than 500 years (the law of succession was changed when she was 13 to allow a woman to become first in line to the throne.) Since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she is also Europe’s longest-reigning living monarch. Despite her long service, Margrethe has been far from a conventional monarch. Known for her painting and illustrations, the queen has designed costumes for the Royal Danish Ballet, contributed drawing to the Danish edition of Lord of the Rings, and was hired by Netflix as a set designer for the fantasy movie Ehrengard. The royal has also made waves with her controversial decision to remove the the title of prince and princess from the children and all future descendants of the second of her two sons, Prince Joachim.

Crown Prince Frederik

The older of Queen Margrethe’s two sons with her husband, Prince Henrik, Frederik was only a toddler when his mother took the throne. As a student, Frederik studied political science at the University of Aarhus and Harvard as well as a military education (he holds rank in the Danish army, navy, and air force.) In addition to his role as crown prince, he has also served at the Danish UN Mission in New York and the Royal Danish Embassy in Paris. In 2004 he married Australian ad exec Mary Donaldson, now known as Crown Princess Mary, with whom he has 4 children.

Prince Christian

The firstborn child of Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, Christian was born in 2005 and currently attends Herlufsholm Boarding School. He is currently third in line to the throne.

The Swedish Royal Descendants of Queen Victoria

Prince Arthur

The seventh child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Arthur spent the better part of his life in the military, serving as an officer in numerous conflicts and as an advisor even up to the start of WWII. In the late 1800s, the previously defunct title of Earl of Sussex was created for him by his mother—he was also Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.

Prince Leopold

Named for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's mutual uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, Leopold was the eighth of the couple's nine children and their youngest son. Leopold suffered from hemophilia, preventing him from serving in the military like many of his brothers, however, he was noted for his cleverness, studying at Oxford (he left before graduating.) At the age of 30, he became the youngest of Victoria's children to die after a fall led to what may have been a brain hemorrhage caused by his disorder, leaving behind his pregnant wife, a daughter, and an unborn son.

Princess Margaret of Sweden

Prince Arthur’s eldest child Margaret had an outsized impact on leading Queen Victoria’s descendants to the throne. In 1905, after a whirlwind romance, she married Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, who would later become King Gustaf VI Adolf. Though her husband did not take the throne until 30 years after her death, through their five children she became the grandmother not only of Sweden’s current king, Carl XVI Gustaf, but also the reigning queen of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II.

Charles Edward

Born Prince Charles Edward, the Duke of Albany (he inherited the title from his father, Prince Leopold, who died shortly before Charles's birth) Charles became the ruling prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a teenager. Close with his uncle Wilhelm II, he supported Germany during WWI, which ultimately led to the removal of his British titles. He was a member of the Nazi party during WWII and was briefly imprisoned for a time post-war, living the remainder of his life in poverty.

Prince Gustaf Adolf

The first of King Gustaf VI Adolf and Princess Margaret's five children, Gustaf Adolf was second in line to the Swedish throne for much of his life. Military trained, he came a cavalry officer, and even competed as an equestrian in the 1936 Olympics. In 1947, he was killed in an airplane accident, leaving his only son, Carl Gustaf, to inherit his titles and position.

Princess Sibylla

The second of Charles Edward's five children, Sibylla was born a princess of the United Kingdom, but lost the use of the title when her father was stripped of his after WWI. She gained a royal title once again, though when she married her cousin, Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden, the eldest son of King Gustaf VI Adolf, in 1932. Together, they had five children, before her husband's death in a plane crash in 1947. She continued to serve as a working royal for the remainder of her life, passing away just a year before her son King Carl XVI Gustaf took the throne.

King Carl XVI Gustaf

Though he was the youngest of his siblings, being the only boy, Carl inherited the position of second in line to the Swedish throne upon his father's death in 1947, when Carl was less than a year old. In 1950, when his grandfather became king, he in turn, was made Crown Prince, and later, in 1973, took the throne himself. As a young man, he trained with the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and worked with the Swedish UN Delegation. In 1976, he married Queen Silvia, with whom he has three children. He is now the longest reigning monarch in Swedish history.

Crown Princess Victoria

Born in 1977, Victoria became the heir apparent to the throne in 1980, when an Act of Succession was put in to act to make the eldest child of the monarch, regardless of gender, the next in line. Among her long educational career, the princess has studied political science and history at Yale, political science at the Swedish Defence University and Stockholm University, and received military training at the Swedish Armed Forces International Centre, In spring 2009, The Crown Princess got her bachelor's degree in peace and conflict studies at Uppsala University. The following year, she married Daniel Westling—they have two children.

Princess Estelle

The eldest daughter of Crown Princess Victoria, Princess Estelle was born in 2012. She currently lives at the Haga Palace in Solna and attends Campus Manilla on Royal Djurgården in Stockholm.

The Norwegian Royal Descendants of Queen Victoria

King Edward VII of England

The second child and firstborn son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Edward VII (born Albert and better known to his family as Bertie) was the longest serving heir to the throne prior to King Charles III. Despite his position, Edward VII had developed a reputation as a playboy and a contentious relationship with his parents; Victoria blamed him for the death of his father in 1861, largely preventing him from having political position or influence until the end of her life. He ascended the British throne on January 22, 1901, upon the death of Victoria, reigning for nine years until his own passing in 1910.

Queen Maude of Norway

King Edward VII's youngest daughter, Maude was already closely connected to the royal family of Denmark when she married Prince Carl of Denmark (later King Haakon VII of Norway) in 1896—her mother, Queen Alexandra, was the sister of the then Crown Prince, making Maude and her new husband first cousins. In 1905, when the union between Sweden and Norway dissolved, Prince Carl became king of Norway, and Maude, the queen. Though she was dedicated to her adopted country, she maintained close ties with England; one of her last public appearances was for the coronation of her nephew, King George VI.

King Olav V

Born Prince Alexander at Appleton House on Sandringham Estate, Olav was renamed at the age of two when his father became king of Norway in 1905. Because of the nature of the union between Sweden and Norway, Olav was the first heir to the Norwegian throne to be raised in Norway in generations, and became an extremely popular leader over the course of his three decades on the throne. In 1929, he married his cousin, Princess Märtha of Sweden, with whom he had three children.

King Harald V

The youngest of King Olav V's children and his only son, Harald took the throne in 1991 following the death of his father. Born in 1937, he spent portions of his childhood in exile in Sweden and the United States with his mother and sisters during the German occupation of Norway during WWII. He later attended the Norwegian Cavalry Officers’ Training School, and then Oxford where he studied social science, history, and economics. In 1968, he made waves when he received permission to marry a commoner, Sonja Haraldsen, with whom he would go on to have two children. An avid sportsman, Harald has competed and won in numerous international sailing competitions before announcing his retirement from the sport in 2022.

Crown Prince Haakon

The youngest of King Harald and Queen Sonja's two children (the Norwegian constitution was amended in 1990 to allow the oldest child to inherit the throne, regardless of gender, but the action was not retroactive) Haakon is a working royal and philanthropist. In 1999, he received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley—he also studied law at the University of Oslo and got an Masters in international politics from the London School of Economics. In 2001, he married Crown Princess Mette-Marit. At the time of their marriage, Mette-Marit already had a son, Marius, from a previous relationship who is not eligible for the line of succession, and she and Haakon went on to have two more children.

Princess Ingrid

Born in 2004, Ingrid is the second in line to the throne and eldest child of Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

The Spanish Royal Descendants of Queen Victoria

Victoria, Princess Royal

The first of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's children, Victoria (known as Vicki to her family) was much loved and doted upon by her parents—thousands of letters between her and Queen Victoria written throughout her life were preserved. At age 17, she married Prince Frederick of Prussia, who would go on to briefly become German Emperor Frederick III. Though Frederick died less than a year before taking the throne, he was succeeded by the eldest of he and Vicki's eight children, Wilhelm II. Vicki herself lived until 1901, just a few months after her famously long-lived mother passed.

Princess Beatrice

The youngest of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's nine children, Beatrice was perhaps the most closely devoted to her mother, for whom Beatrice was both secretary and constant companion. It was said that Victoria went so far as to ban the discussion of weddings in Beatrice's presence, fearing that she might one day marry and leave Victoria, and indeed she only agreed to an eventual match to Prince Henry of Battenberg when Beatrice was 28 on the condition that the couple would continue to live with Victoria. Beatrice and Henry went on the have four children before his death in 1896, after which Beatrice remained at her mother's side for the rest of Victoria's life.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

The last ruler of Prussia and the German Empire, Wilhelm II was the firstborn grandchild of Queen Victoria—the eldest son of her daughter Vicki. Wilhelm's rule was characterized by aggressive and expansionist tactics, and he quickly alienated many of Germany's most powerful allies, despite his close blood ties with many of Europe's royal houses, factors which many historians believe contributed significantly to the start of WWI. After the war, his political support dramatically weakened and he was ultimately forced to abdicate the throne in 1918. He went into exile in the Netherlands thereafter, where he remained until his death in 1941.

Queen Sophia of Greece

The daughter of Victoria, princess Royal and Emperor Frederick III of Germany, in 1899 Sophia married Crown Prince Constantine of Greece, who would later become King Constantine I. Though the couple had a complicated marriage, they would go on to have six children together. Sophia's close German ties (her older brother was Kaiser Wilhelm II) caused distrust of the queen, and this, along with other political issues, led to her and portions of her family being exiled twice from the country.

Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain

Named in honor of her iconic grandmother, Victoria Eugenie was the youngest grandchild of Queen Victoria, via her daughter Beatrice. In 1906, the 19 year old princess married King Alfonso XIII—the couple has seven children (one stillborn), but later separated after going into exile in 1931 under the rumblings of civil war in Spain. the deposed queen lived most of the rest of her life abroad, though she did return to Spain for some royal events later in life and was even present for the baptism of her great-grandson, the current King Felipe VI, in 1968.

Prince Juan

Though Juan was the third son of King Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain, he became the heir apparent to the defunct throne after his two older brothers renounced the position. While the prince asserted his rights tot he throne after the monarchy was symbolically reinstated by General Francisco Franco in 1947, Franco passed him over in favor of Juan's son, Juan Carlos.

Princess Viktoria Luise

The only daughter of Wilhelm II, Viktoria and her husband had five children together, including the future Queen Frederica of Greece. In her later life, Viktoria wrote a number of books, including an autobiography of her childhood as the daughter of the last German emperor and biographies of several of her family members.

King Paul of Greece

The third of Sophia of Greece and King Constantine I's sons, Paul inherited the throne after the death of his two older brothers. Prior to acceding the throne in 1947, he had lived many years in exile due to the shifting political conditions in Greece, spending a great deal of time in London, including with his first cousin, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Paul and his wife Frederica—who was also a cousin—had three children, including the future Queen Sofia of Spain.

Queen Frederica of Greece

Carrying on the tradition of her mother, Viktoria Luise, Frederica was also her parents only daughter (she had four brothers.) In 1939, she married the future King Paul of Greece, with whom she would have three children. Not a popular queen, Frederica spent many years in exile around WWII and the Greek civil war, and after the Greek monarchy was abolished.

King Juan Carlos I

The controversial former king of Spain was born in exile during the Spanish Civil War in 1938. As a young man, it was decided that Juan Carlos would serve as General Francisco Franco's heir—bypassing his father, Prince Juan—when the latter reinstituted Spain's monarchy in an effort to shore up support throughout the country. Despite Franco's assumption that Juan Carlos would maintain the political climate he had created, the new king, who took the throne in 1975, instituted a number of changes that moved the country into a modern democracy and bolstered economic growth throughout the '80s and '90s. In 2014, Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in favor of his son, King Felipe VI, and in 2020 went into self-imposed exile amidst investigations to his role in a multibillion-dollar deal in which some Spanish companies were awarded the contract to build a high-speed rail line in Saudi Arabia. Though the investigation ended without charges in 2022, the king emeritus has continued to live abroad.

Queen Sofia of Spain

Born in 1938, Sofia is the eldest child of King Paul and Queen Frederica of Greece. Due to the exile of her family, Sofia spent much of her youth in Egypt, South Africa, and German before marrying Juan Carlos I of Spain in 1962. The two would go on to have three children and eight grandchildren, though the two have lived separately since Juan Carlos (who abdicated in 2014) went into self-imposed exile in Abu Dabi in 2020 amidst investigations of financial misconduct. Sofia continues to live in Spain with her son, King Felipe VI, and his family and to carry out public duties

King Felipe VI

The youngest child and only son of Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain, the current ruler of Spain took the throne in 2014 after his father's abdication. In addition to his military education, in which he became a helicopter pilot, he also holds a law degree from Autónoma University of Madrid as well a Masters in international relations from Georgetown University. He was also a member of the 1992 Spanish Olympic sailing team. In 2004, he married Letizia Ortiz Rocasolano, now Queen Letizia, with whom he has two daughters.

Princess Leonor

Born in 2005, Leonor is the current Princess of Asturias, the official title for the heir tot he Spanish throne.

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