George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I

Miranda Carter

Mar 2010 · Sold by Vintage

About this ebook

In the years before the First World War, the great European powers were ruled by three first cousins: King George V of Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Together, they presided over the last years of dynastic Europe and the outbreak of the most destructive war the world had ever seen, a war that set twentieth-century Europe on course to be the most violent continent in the history of the world.
 
Through brilliant and often darkly comic portraits of these men and their lives, their foibles and obsessions, Miranda Carter delivers the tragicomic story of Europe’s early twentieth-century aristocracy, a solipsistic world preposterously out of kilter with its times.

Ratings and reviews

I thought I would like this book more as I am very interested in the characters and that particular time in history, but I found it pretty repetitive and tedious. Mostly it made me thankful that royalty has effectively faded away and we can be thankful that all of these inbred European royals have no influence on the modern world.

About the author

Miranda Carter is the author of Anthony Blunt: His Lives, which won the Orwell Prize for political writing and the Royal Society of Literature W. H. Heinemann Award, and was chosen as one of The New York Times Book Review’s seven Best Books of 2002. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.