Royal Web: The Story of Princess Victoria and Frederick of Prussia

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but incomplete...
Review: If ever there was a royal web, it was spun by Queen Victoria. Between her children and her grandchildren, they occupied almost every royal house in Europe. The Royal Web: by Ladislas Farago and Andrew Sinclair chronicles just one small part of Victoria's web-the royal house of Prussia.

Princess Victoria (Vicky) was Victoria and Albert's oldest child. She was probably the most intelligent and politically astute of all the children. Knowing that she would never be a monarch in he own right, her parents recognized that an advantageous marriage would allow her to become queen, or even empress of another power. Albert had visions of a united Germany, and from the time Vicky was still an infant, he set his sights on Vicky marrying into the Prussian Royal Family. With this goal in mind, he set out to educate Vicky in a way that he never did his oldest son, Bertie (later King Edward VII). While Vicky was still a teen, she married the Prussian prince, Frederick . Fritz was the son of Emperor William I, and spent much of his married life as the Crown Prince.

The marriage of Fritz and Vicky was a love match-one of the few among royalty in the 1800's. Both had a liberal vision for the future of Germany. Unfortunately, Emperor William I and Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck did not share this view. In fact, they did everything possible to suppress the liberals, and Vicky was even accused of being an English spy. This was also a turbulent time for the Prussians as the war-hungry Bismarck goaded Prussians into war with the Danes, Austrians, French and even fellow German states. By the time Fritz became emperor, it was too late to make any major changes.

At first, I thought this was going to be a basic biography on Fritz and Vicky. But it was short on personal history (little is mentioned about their children except for William, who became Kaiser William II). It also gets bogged down in battles, wars, espionage, and political intrigue. While the authors try to simplify the history of Germany during this time (which consisted of 38 independent German states), it would have been helpful to include a map of Europe and Germany.

Overall, Royal Web was an interesting work. One thing that the authors had at their disposal was the many volumes of letters between Victoria and Vicky (they wrote almost daily). The relationship between the future Kaiser and his parents is also fascinating and disturbing. Also, while Vicky and Fritz were born into the wealth and privilege of royalty, their lives were filled with tragedies and disappointments. Things didn't quite play out as expected. So while I wouldn't discount Royal Web, if you're looking for a straight biography of these two, there are many better books to be found.