Before then he had gained a reputation as a playboy prince, souring his relationship with the Queen.īecause his mother’s reign lasted so long, Bertie was only king for 9 years, dying from cancer in 1910. Bertie became King Edward VII – after which the ‘Edwardian period’ was named – when Queen Victoria died in January 1901. The Prince of Wales, Albert or ‘Bertie’ was Queen Victoria’s first son, born in 1841. King George V sits in the centre with his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, behind him. Wilhelm was more politically conservative than his parents Victoria had been ostracised in the German court for her liberal views favouring constitutional monarchy, modelled by her mother in Britain.Īlmost 8,000 letters between Victoria and her mother survive, detailing life inside the Prussian court between 18, the period that saw her son Wilhelm sack the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and show growing hostility to foreign powers.Ī photograph of the rulers of Europe at Windsor for King Edward VI’s funeral in 1910. Wilhelm was also the last German Emperor (or Kaiser), and abdicated in 1918. Their eldest son was Wilhelm II who assumed the throne at a young age when his father died in 1888. Aged 17, she married Emperor Frederick of Prussia and together they had 8 children. Watch Now Cousins at warīorn in 1840, the Princess Royal Victoria or ‘Vicky’ was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. BAFTA winning historian and Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley takes Dan on a tour of Kensington Palace, one of the principle royal residences since 1689 and childhood home of Queen Victoria.