Romanovs, Windsors, and Cousins: How Europe's Royal Families Are All Related

Look at a photograph of King George V of Britain standing beside his cousin Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, taken at a wedding in Berlin in 1913, and you will struggle to tell them apart. Same beard, same build, same tilt of the head. It is not a trick of the camera. The two men were first cousins, and their resemblance is one of the more startling footnotes in how are European royal families related, a question with an answer that runs through nearly every throne on the continent.

The short version: almost all of them descend from one woman. Queen Victoria had nine children, and by the time her grandchildren had grown up and married, her descendants sat on or married into the thrones of Russia, Germany, Spain, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Romania. She has been called the grandmother of Europe for good reason, and the web she created still shapes royal Europe today.

This is not the story of the British royal family tree on its own. That tale of Windsors and Wales, of King Charles III’s line down to Prince Louis, lives elsewhere on this site. This is the wider, stranger story: how one Victorian matriarch’s marriage strategy connected the ill fated Romanovs, the surviving Windsors, and the quietly thriving royal houses of modern Europe into a single, sprawling family.

Queen Victoria, the grandmother of Europe

Victoria became queen in 1837 and married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Together they had nine children, and it was Albert in particular who saw royal marriage as a form of diplomacy, a way of binding Europe’s ruling houses together through blood rather than treaty. The couple set about placing their children, and later their grandchildren, into royal houses across the continent with real deliberation.

By Victoria’s death in 1901, she had forty two grandchildren, married into or destined for the royal families of Germany, Russia, Greece, Spain, Norway, Romania and Sweden. Her eldest daughter, also named Victoria, married the future German Emperor Frederick III and became mother to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Her son Alfred’s daughter Marie became Queen of Romania, and her granddaughter Maud became Queen of Norway. It is genuinely difficult to find a European throne of the early twentieth century without a descendant of Victoria sitting on it.

Contemporaries called her the grandmother of Europe partly with affection and partly with nervous awe. No single family had ever held such reach across the continent’s crowned heads, and it gave the elderly queen a unique vantage point over Europe’s politics, conducted as much through her children’s marriages as through any foreign office.

The marriages that spread her family across the continent

Two marriages in particular carried Victoria’s bloodline furthest. Her second daughter, Alice, married Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and their daughter Alix grew up to marry Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, becoming Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Victoria’s youngest daughter, Beatrice, had a daughter, Victoria Eugenie, who married King Alfonso XIII of Spain and became Queen Ena.

Her eldest son, the future King Edward VII, married Alexandra of Denmark, whose sister Dagmar had already married the future Tsar Alexander III of Russia and taken the name Maria Feodorovna. That Danish connection matters, because it means the British and Russian royal houses were bound by two separate threads of kinship, Victoria’s blood on one side and the Danish sisters on the other.

By the early 1900s, a wedding anywhere in royal Europe was liable to be a family reunion. Queen Victoria’s descendants filled the guest lists of Berlin, Athens, Madrid and St Petersburg alike, and the resemblance between cousins, when it appeared, was often uncanny.

George V and Nicholas II: cousins who looked like twins

The most famous instance of that resemblance belongs to George V and Nicholas II. Their mothers, Alexandra of Denmark and Maria Feodorovna, were sisters, the daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark. That made George and Nicholas first cousins on the Danish side, quite apart from any Victoria connection. The two men grew up seeing each other at family gatherings, and as adults they were frequently mistaken for one another in photographs, right down to matching beards and near identical posture.

Their closeness was more than physical. George and Nicholas wrote to each other affectionately for years, addressing one another with the nickname Nicky and Georgie, and their families held real warmth alongside the usual formality of royal correspondence. It has often been noted, with some sadness, that this closeness makes what followed in 1918 all the more painful. Cousins who so plainly resembled each other, and who called each other by pet names in their letters, ended up on opposite sides of a war and, ultimately, unable to save each other from what came after.

The Spanish, Greek and Scandinavian branches

Spain’s royal connection runs through Victoria Eugenie, known as Ena, Victoria’s granddaughter through Beatrice, who married Alfonso XIII in 1906. Their descendants include King Juan Carlos I and, in turn, the current King Felipe VI, meaning Spain’s monarchy still carries Victoria’s bloodline into the present day.

Greece’s royal family drew from a different but overlapping branch. Prince Andrew of Greece, a grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark, the same shared great grandfather as George V and Nicholas II, married Princess Alice of Battenberg, herself a great granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Their son, Prince Philip, later Duke of Edinburgh, would go on to marry Queen Elizabeth II, folding the Greek branch directly back into the British royal family within living memory.

Scandinavia offers perhaps the tidiest illustration of the whole family’s interconnection. King Christian IX of Denmark fathered children who became King of Denmark, Queen of Britain, Empress of Russia and King of Greece, earning him the nickname the father in law of Europe. His descendants, through those various branches, now sit on the thrones of Denmark, Norway and, through the Greek line, Britain as well.

The Romanovs’ fate and its echo across royal Europe

The First World War placed George V, Nicholas II and their German cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II, another of Victoria’s grandsons, on opposing sides, a family tie that proved powerless against the political forces pulling Europe apart. When revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, Nicholas abdicated, and the following year, in July 1918, he and his immediate family were killed in Yekaterinburg. It remains one of the twentieth century’s most sobering royal tragedies, and it is generally remembered with more sorrow than detail, a family lost rather than a spectacle to dwell on.

Historians have long debated an offer of asylum for the Romanovs that, in the end, did not go ahead, a decision shaped by the volatile politics of wartime Britain and remembered as a quiet, painful coda to a friendship that had once been genuinely close. The wider Romanov and Battenberg families, many of them also descended from Victoria, scattered across Europe afterwards, some settling in Britain, Denmark and Greece among relations who shared their grandmother’s blood.

Europe’s monarchs today and their shared roots

Remarkably, the thread has not broken. Denmark’s royal family, now led by King Frederik X, descends directly from Christian IX, the father in law of Europe, and Frederik is a cousin of King Charles III through that Danish line. The Netherlands’ King Willem-Alexander connects to the wider network through the House of Orange Nassau’s long history of intermarriage with German and British royalty. Norway’s King Harald V is himself a great grandson of Edward VII, making Norway’s royal family a direct branch of Victoria’s descendants. Spain’s King Felipe VI carries the line down from Victoria Eugenie, and Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf connects through Victoria’s granddaughter Margaret of Connaught, who married into the Swedish royal house in 1905.

In practice, this means most of Europe’s reigning monarchs today can trace a line back to the same nineteenth century queen, making them, in varying degrees, cousins still.

What remains of these ties today

The blood ties no longer carry political weight the way they once did before 1914, but they have not vanished from royal life. Europe’s monarchs still gather for each other’s weddings, jubilees and funerals, and the guest lists at these events read like an echo of Victoria’s own family gatherings a century earlier. King Charles III has hosted and been hosted by his Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch and Spanish cousins on state visits, and royal funerals in particular tend to bring the wider family together in a way that recalls its shared origin.

One family, many thrones

What began as one determined queen’s marriage strategy became the connective tissue of an entire continent’s royal history, binding thrones together through blood even as politics repeatedly pulled them apart. The Windsors and the Romanovs, the houses of Orange, Bernadotte, Glücksburg and Bourbon, all trace back, in some fashion, to Victoria and Albert’s nine children. For more on how one branch of that tree, the British royal family, fits together in detail, the family tree explainer on this site picks up the story closer to home.

Frequently asked questions

How are European royal families related?

Most of them descend from Queen Victoria, whose nine children and forty two grandchildren married into the royal houses of Russia, Germany, Spain, Greece, Norway, Romania and Sweden during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Were George V and Tsar Nicholas II really related?

Yes. Their mothers were sisters, daughters of King Christian IX of Denmark, making George V and Nicholas II first cousins. They were also closely connected through Queen Victoria’s family and were famous for their striking physical resemblance.

Why was Queen Victoria called the grandmother of Europe?

Because her descendants, through deliberate royal marriages arranged largely by her husband Prince Albert, ended up on or married into nearly every major throne in Europe by the early twentieth century.

Did family ties prevent the First World War?

No. George V, Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II were all cousins, yet found themselves on opposing sides of the war, showing that family connection could not override the political and military pressures of the time.

What happened to the Romanov family?

Tsar Nicholas II abdicated during the Russian Revolution in 1917 and was killed along with his immediate family in July 1918. It remains one of European royal history’s most sombre chapters.

Which royal families today still descend from Queen Victoria?

Britain, Norway, Spain and, through various branches, Sweden and Denmark’s royal families all include descendants of Queen Victoria, alongside Danish links tracing back to King Christian IX.

How is the current Danish royal family connected to the Windsors?

Denmark’s royal family descends from King Christian IX, whose daughter Alexandra of Denmark married Britain’s Edward VII, meaning today’s Danish monarch and King Charles III share a common ancestor.

Are today’s European monarchs still in contact as relatives?

Yes. State visits, royal weddings and funerals regularly bring Europe’s monarchs together, and many maintain personal relationships alongside their diplomatic ones, an echo of the family gatherings once hosted by Queen Victoria herself.

This article reflects publicly documented royal genealogy and historical record at the time of writing. Titles and family relationships are accurate as of publication.