Queen Victoria's matchmaking : the royal marriages that shaped Europe / Deborah Cadbury.

Map on lining papers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-369) and index.

An engrossing and adept exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother By the 1890s, Queen Victoria had over twenty grandchildren. She knew she had to secure a series of dynastic marriages if she was to maintain and increase royal power in Europe, and so in her sights were prospective princes and princesses from across the world. Yet her matchmaking coincided with tumultuous international upheavals, and after her death, her most carefully laid plans fell to ruin. Queen Victoria's Matchmaking is an intimate portrait of the royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the power, love and duty that shaped the marriages that Queen Victoria arranged. It travels from the glittering palaces of Russia and Europe to the concentration camps of the Second World War.