These Two Kings Changed The Course Of History – And Here’s Why No One Could Tell Them Apart

Both George V and Nicholas II had blue eyes, while even their dark beards were styled in the exact same fashion. Town & Country notes that they stood at the same height, with each man measuring 5 foot and 7 inches. The resemblance was uncanny, and they could have easily been mistaken for twins.

The two monarchs were also close confidants, which is evident from their correspondences. According to the magazine, they’d call one another “Nicky” and “Georgie” in letters. Apparently, George once remarked to Nicholas in 1894, “I look upon you... as one of my oldest and best friends.” Things, however, wouldn’t always stay so smooth between them.

As things turned out, the 1913 wedding in Berlin was actually the final time that George and Nicholas would ever see one another. The following year World War I erupted – descending Europe into darkness. Every person living across the continent was deeply affected, and that included the monarchs. 

World War I would go on to totally transform Europe. Borders were redrawn and some monarchies met their end. And while George and Nicholas were allied on the same side as the conflict raged, their personal relationship was tested and ultimately ruined. But it turns out that this breakdown was actually a failure of a much greater plan formulated by Queen Victoria!

Before the 20th century many countries in Europe were firmly under the control of royalty. And as a consequence of imperialism, this monarchical rule extended to much of the wider world. Yet as time passed and the world entered into the new century, this state of affairs began to disintegrate.

The early 20th century saw an array of complex economic and social processes put pressure on the monarchies of Europe. The continent’s great powers consequently began to form alliances and make enemies with each other. In short, Europe and the rest of the globe was descending into World War I.

Britain, Russia and Germany were major players in WWI, and naturally their monarchs were central to how things played out. On the one hand, Britain’s George V and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were on the same side – in opposition to Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II. But the crazy thing is that all these men were actually closely related!

To one degree or another, each of the three kings was a cousin to the other. George, for instance, was first cousins with both Wilhelm and Nicholas. Those two, meanwhile, were third cousins. But just to make things more confusing, all three men were also fifth cousins!

George and Wilhelm were both grandsons to Britain’s Queen Victoria, yet their respective empires of Britain and Germany nonetheless ended up as mortal enemies during World War I. And even though the processes leading up to the war were complex, some people can’t help but consider the family dynamics that were at play during this period.

According to some accounts, Wilhelm hated his British uncle King Edward VII. This has led some historians to speculate that this animosity partly fueled his military adventurism in Europe. Yep, Miranda Carter suggests as much in her book The Three Emperors: Three cousins, Three Empires and the Road to World War One. She writes that Wilhelm possessed an “adolescent touchiness and almost oedipal desire to outdo the British.”

Of course, it’s certainly overstating things to suggest the outbreak of World War I can be wholly traced back to a royal family feud. There were, after all, a huge number of factors at play. Plus, in the case of Britain, the king didn’t actually have the ability to declare war. This power was instead reserved for a prime minister.

But the family ties between the major monarchs can’t be ignored, either. Britain and Russia were allies during World War I, and their respective monarchs were first cousins and close friends. As we mentioned earlier, King George V and Tsar Nicholas II even looked identical to one another. And to make the relationship between Britain and Russia even closer, Nicholas even married Princess Alix of Hesse, who was said to be the favored granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

As third cousins, meanwhile, Nicholas and Wilhelm also had a close link. In fact, the two monarchs contacted one another as the empires looked increasingly likely to slip into conflict with one another. According to the Sky History website, Nicholas wrote to his relative in 1914, “To try and avoid such a calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies from going too far.”

Despite such proclamations of friendship, though, it seems that Nicholas actually disliked Wilhelm on a personal level. When he and George attended Wilhelm’s daughter’s marriage ceremony in 1913, they both did so more out of familial obligations than anything else. Apparently, neither had a particular fondness for the German king.

This wedding in Berlin, as things turned out, was the last time that the three monarchs were all together in person. Not much more than a year later, World War I broke out and many of Europe’s monarchies were totally transformed forever. Russia under Nicholas and George’s Britain were now in direct conflict with Wilhelm of Germany.

Nicholas faced further turmoil in 1917 as the chaos of WWI rumbled on. Though this time the trouble came from within his own kingdom. The royal lost his grip on the Russian Empire and was forced into hiding alongside his family. With few options, Nicholas reached out to George and requested asylum in Britain.

George was said to be extremely worried about his doppelgänger and cousin Nicholas, but the situation was delicate. Nicholas was widely despised as a despot – even by regular people in Britain. If George sided with his friend, then he potentially ran the risk of rebellion from within his own kingdom.

George eventually reasoned that giving Nicholas asylum would have been too risky. Britain, after all, was a constitutional monarchy. This meant that the king could in some way be held to account by his people, and they hated Nicholas. Allowing him entry might have sparked outright revolution.

For many decades, historians presumed that it was the British government which had denied Nicholas entry. But during the 1980s historical evidence started to circulate that highlighted George’s personal responsibility for the decision. Despite the close family connection between the two men, George had acted against his cousin when push came to shove.

Naturally, the repercussions were huge. On July 16, 1918, Nicholas and his family were rounded up and executed. It’s been argued that George never believed the situation would actually play out the way it did. Though regardless of what he’d thought might happen, his cousin died and the Russian Empire was dissolved.

In tandem with the wider conflict of World War I, this episode illustrated once and for all that the familial ties that existed between Europe’s monarchies didn’t mean much in times of crisis. Greater forces were at play in the 20th century, and eventually the families and their kingdoms would turn on one another. 

The word “plan” is appropriate when discussing the family ties that existed between Europe’s monarchs. It was, in fact, no accident that so many of them were cousins. This situation occurred because of careful meddling and matchmaking – all with the explicit aim of trying to bring order to the continent.

At the center of this great scheme was Britain’s Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert. The pair sought to create unity within Europe, with their specific vision for the future at this project’s core. To make their plan work, though, they’d have to utilize their matchmaking skills and powers of persuasion.

According to Historia magazine, Victoria and Albert’s plan was to send their descendants across Europe to marry into the continent’s various ruling families. In doing so, Britain would have strong familial ties to all the different European kingdoms. And that, in turn, would allow the British monarchy to exert its power more widely.

It seems that Albert may have been the driving force behind this plan in its early stages. He had a vision for a Europe that would be made up of multiple countries, each of which was bound together by their monarchies. If they were all from the same bloodline, then surely their interests would be the same? Anyway, in pursuit of this goal, Albert and Victoria managed to arrange for eight of their kids to marry into other royal families across Europe.

Though when Albert died, it was down to Victoria to continue with the plan by herself. As the years went by, her children had families of their own and the queen became a grandmother to more than 40 kids. Most of these lived into adulthood, so Victoria went about trying to match them with other royals around Europe. And the details of this endeavor have been meticulously laid out in Deborah Cadbury’s book Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking.

One of Victoria’s projects involved her grandson Prince Albert Victor, who was the eldest child of Edward VII and George V’s older brother. As the first boy in the family, it was Albert Victor who was in line to be king before George. So, Victoria tried to marry him to her favorite granddaughter: Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine. The latter, of course, would later come to be known as Alexandra, Empress consort of Russia.

At the same time, Queen Victoria was also interfering in Alexandra’s sister’s personal affairs. This was Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, who was interested in marrying Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia. Ever the meddler, Victoria didn’t want this union to happen, as she had plans of her own.

When it came to the princesses Alexandra and Elisabeth, though, Victoria’s plotting didn’t bear any fruit. The queen had failed to get her way this time. Alexandra, on the one hand, refused to marry Albert Victor. For her part, Elisabeth went ahead and tied the knot with Sergei – throwing a spanner in the works of her grandmother’s great scheme.

Victoria had to readjust her plans. Now that he’d been shunned by Alexandra, Albert Victor still needed a wife. It was then arranged that he would marry Mary of Teck, who was from Britain. According to Cadbury’s book, Victoria seemed happy with this arrangement, as she viewed Mary as an appropriate woman to one day become queen.

This time, however, fate intervened. Just over a month before Albert Victor and Mary were due to be wed, the prince passed away from illness. Yet another one of Queen Victoria’s matchmaking schemes had failed – though new arrangements were swiftly made. Mary would now marry Albert Victor’s brother George, who was now set to inherit the British throne.

George had been infatuated with the woman who would one day become Queen Marie of Romania, though that union had never come to fruition. So, he and Mary got married and later ruled as king and queen of Britain. This was one of Queen Victoria’s schemes that had actually worked out as she’d planned.

Through manipulation and careful planning, Victoria had managed to spread her bloodline all across Europe. But the stability that she and her late husband had believed would result from this situation never played out. Things started to go wrong, like when Alexandra of Hesse – who Victoria had wanted to become a British queen – instead married Nicholas II of Russia.

Victoria viewed Nicholas as a weak person, so she was terrified when he inherited the Russian throne. The British monarch was an old woman at this time, and she was beginning to see her plan for Europe fracture. According to Cadbury, Victoria wrote of Nicholas’ rise to power in the Russian Empire, “May God help them.”

In the years that followed, the dire problems for Europe’s monarchies began to mount. Empress Elisabeth of Austria was assassinated in 1898, while the Italian King Umberto I was killed two years later. That same year, an attempt was made on Victoria’s son Edward VII’s life, though he managed to survive.

In 1905 Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia was killed – leaving Elizabeth of Hesse as a widow. Another of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters – Princess Victoria Eugenie – was then personally targeted in 1906. Apparently, this happened when an assassin tried to take the royal out at her wedding to Spain’s King Alfonso XIII. She escaped injury, but the wedding dress was left speckled with blood.

One of the most dramatic episodes from this period, of course, was the execution of Nicholas II and Alexandra in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Royal family ties could do nothing to avert this event from occurring, as George V turned his back on his cousin Nicholas. Yep, Victoria’s plan had failed.

Victoria and Albert had believed that spreading their family all over Europe would bring stability to Europe. The continent’s countries would undoubtedly have their differences, but with one family in control, issues would be easier to work out. World War I, of course, clearly illustrated how wrong they’d been about that.

Queen Victoria’s vision for Europe was in tatters after WWI’s conclusion. Though the British monarchy remained intact, Nicholas II of Russia was killed and Wilhelm II of Germany was forced to surrender his crown. The monarchies of Germany, Russia and many other European kingdoms were abolished. A new age had begun – one that Victoria surely would not have approved of.