Queen Victoria Family Tree

Victoria and Albert

Victoria became queen in 1837 at the age of 18, the only child of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. In 1840 she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They had nine children in seventeen years. When Albert died in December 1861, Victoria went into mourning for the rest of her life and wore black until her death in January 1901, after a reign of 63 years, then the longest in British history.

Queen Victoria’s nine children

Victoria and Albert planned their children’s marriages to bind Britain to the other royal houses of Europe, especially Protestant Germany. Their children, in birth order:

• Victoria, Princess Royal (1840–1901), married Frederick III, German Emperor; mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• Albert Edward, later Edward VII (1841–1910), married Alexandra of Denmark; father of George V.
• Alice (1843–1878), married Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse; mother of Empress Alexandra of Russia.
• Alfred (1844–1900), Duke of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; father of Queen Marie of Romania.
• Helena (1846–1923), married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
• Louise (1848–1939), a sculptor, married the Marquess of Lorne, later Duke of Argyll.
• Arthur (1850–1942), Duke of Connaught, Governor General of Canada.
• Leopold (1853–1884), Duke of Albany, who had haemophilia.
• Beatrice (1857–1944), married Prince Henry of Battenberg; mother of Queen Victoria Eugenie of Spain.

Why Victoria is called the grandmother of Europe

Victoria had 42 grandchildren and 87 great-grandchildren. At the start of the First World War three of her grandsons or grandsons-in-law led the main powers: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (both grandsons) and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, who had married her granddaughter Alix of Hesse. The cousins called each other “Georgie”, “Willy” and “Nicky”, yet their countries went to war in 1914.

Other granddaughters became queens of Norway (Maud), Greece (Sophia), Romania (Marie) and Spain (Victoria Eugenie). Today the monarchs of the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Spain all descend from her.

The royal disease: haemophilia

Victoria carried the gene for haemophilia B, a disorder that stops blood from clotting. Her son Leopold had the disease, and two of her daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers who passed it into the royal families of Russia and Spain. Alice’s daughter Alix passed it to her son, Tsarevich Alexei of Russia, whose illness drew the family to the mystic Rasputin; Beatrice’s daughter Ena passed it to two Spanish princes. The British royal line, descended from Edward VII, was not affected. A family tree is the natural way to follow an inherited condition from one generation to the next.

How Elizabeth II and Prince Philip descend from Victoria

The chart shows two lines meeting at the bottom. Elizabeth II descends from Victoria through her eldest son: Victoria → Edward VII → George V → George VI → Elizabeth II. Prince Philip descends through her daughter Alice: Victoria → Alice → Victoria of Hesse → Alice of Battenberg → Philip.

Both were therefore great-great-grandchildren of Victoria, which makes them third cousins. When two lines of a family tree meet like this, the shared ancestors appear twice in a pedigree chart of their children, something genealogists call pedigree collapse. The modern branch of the family continues on the British royal family tree.