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How Are the European Royal Families Related?

Many of Europe's royal families are cousins. Most of these connections run back to two 19th-century couples: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Britain, and King Christian IX and Queen Louise in Denmark. Their children married across the continent, and their descendants still sit on several thrones.

Queen Victoria: "Grandmother of Europe"

Victoria (1819–1901) and Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha became ancestors of many members of European royalty [1]. They had nine children, and most of them married into other royal families [2]:

• Victoria, Princess Royal married Friedrich III, German Emperor. Their son was Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor [1][2].
• Alice married Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine [2]. Their daughter Alix became empress consort of Russia [1].
• Alfred married Marie of Russia [2].
• Arthur married Louise Margaret of Prussia [2].
• Beatrice married Henry of Battenberg [2].
• Edward VII married Alexandra of Denmark, daughter of Christian IX [2]. This marriage is the link to the second great family network.

These marriages earned Victoria the nickname "grandmother of Europe" [1].

Christian IX of Denmark: "Father-in-Law of Europe"

Christian IX (8 April 1818 – 29 January 1906) ruled Denmark from 1863 to 1906. With his queen, Louise of Hesse-Kassel, he became the ancestor of many European royals [3]. Louise worked to marry their children into royal families across Europe [3]:

• Alexandra married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII of the United Kingdom [3][2].
• Dagmar married Tsarevich Alexander, the future Alexander III of Russia [3].

Their grandsons included Constantine I of Greece, Nicholas II of Russia and George V of the United Kingdom [3]. George V was the son of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra [4]. He was therefore a grandson of both Victoria and Christian IX.

The Two Networks Meet: The House of Windsor

The marriage of Edward VII and Alexandra joined the two families. The link was renewed in 1947, when Princess Elizabeth, the future Elizabeth II, married Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, who belonged to the Glücksburg branch of the House of Oldenburg [5]. As a result, the children and male-line descendants of Elizabeth II and Philip also belong genealogically to the House of Oldenburg [5].

Who Shares a House Today?

The table of current European monarchies shows that some thrones are held by the same dynastic house [6]:

• Glücksburg: Denmark (Frederik X) and Norway (Haakon VIII)
• Bourbon: Spain (Felipe VI). Luxembourg's grand ducal family is listed as Nassau-Weilburg in the Bourbon-Parma male line.
• Windsor: the United Kingdom, which by male-line descent from Prince Philip is also Glücksburg/Oldenburg [5].

Why Did Royals Marry Each Other?

In the German states, a family's rank depended partly on whether it was "equal in birth" to other ruling houses. The mediatised houses kept that equality for marriage purposes after 1815 [7]. Marrying outside these circles could make a marriage morganatic, which cost the children their dynastic rights at some courts [8]. That is one reason dynasties kept marrying within a narrow group of families.

A Note on Sources

This article only states relationships that appear in the cited sources. For full charts, consult the royal household sites and the genealogical handbooks such as the Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels and its successor, the Gothaisches Genealogisches Handbuch [7].

Licence: contains material adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). This article is shared under the same licence. Primary-source material is summarised, not reproduced.