Queen Victoria surrounded by her family - Coburg, 1894 (1 of 2)

It is a royal family group photograph at Coburg, into the Palais Edinburgh, following the wedding of Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse, 21 April 1894. (The wedding took place two days before, on 19 April 1894)

The following people are in the photo from left to right:

• 1. Kaiser Wilhelm II. Son of No. 3.
• 2. Queen Victoria.
• 3. Victoria, the Empress Frederick, was the eldest child of Queen Victoria. She married Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia who was briefly Kaiser Frederick III.
• 4. Princess Beatrice of Edinburg and of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 10-year-old in this picture, was the younger sister of the bride. She later married Alfonso, the Infante of Spain.
• 5. 15-year-old Feodora was Queen Victoria's first great-grandchild, having born into Bernard III, Duke of SaxeMeiningen and Charlotte (No. 15). She was their only child, and committed suicde in 1945 after a lifetime of illhealth.
• 6. 20-year-old Alfred had just recently become the Heir Apparent to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1894. He is brother of the bride. Suicidal and syphilitic, he died under murky circumstances in 1899.
• 7. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, would ascend to the British Throne in 1901. He always distrusted his eldest nephew, the Kaiser.
• 8. Tsarevitch Nicholas (soon-to-be Nicholas II) was at the wedding to announce his engagement to No.9. His parents wanted a dynastic union with France, but finally relented to his wishes.
• 9. Alix of Hesse was the daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice -- the second daughter of Queen Victoria. Before the year was out, she would be Empress of All Russias.
• 10. Victoria of Battenberg was the elder sister of No. 9. She married her father's first cousin Prince Louis of Battenberg (No.21).
• 11. Irene of Hesse married her first cousin Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular younger brother of the Kaiser.

No. 9, 10, 11 are all sisters of the groom.

• 12. Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was the wife of Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia and was known as the grandest of the grand duchesses. Her husband being the brother of No. 13, she was the bride's aunt.
• 13. The bride's mother, Duchess Marie of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg, was born Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, the only surviving daughter of Tsar Alexander II. During the WWI, the Dowager Duchess was maintained as a prisoner of state.
• 14. Princess Alexandra of Edinburgh and of Coburg-Gotha, was the sister of the bride. Two years later, she married a distant cousin, Prince Ernst HohenloheLangenberg.
• 15. Charlotte of Saxe Meiningen, mother of No. 5, was a daughter of Kaiser and Kaiserin Frederick of Germany (No. 3). She shared confrontational and conservative politics of her brother Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• 16. & 17. The Duchess of Connaught was born Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia. Her granduncle was Kaiser Wilhelm I. Arthur, the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn was the seventh child of Queen Victoria. Later, he was appointed the Governor General of Canada.
• 18. & 19. Beatrice, the youngest of Queen Victoria's daughters, married Henry of Battenberg, the younger brother of Louis of Battenberg (No. 21). The prince photographed here in military attire, lost his life during the Ashanti War.
• 20. Princess Louise Marie of Belgium married Phillip of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Kohary (No. 23) against the wishes of her father, Leopold II of Belgium, who viewed it as an unwelcome alliance with Prussia. Three years after this photo, she left her husband for an Austrian lieutenant. Heavily indebted and mentally unstable, she later became an outcast, and barred from every court in Europe.
• 21. Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, husband of No. 10, brother of No. 19, later became the First Sea Lord and changed his titles to that of Marquess of Milford Haven after the First World War.
• 22. The bride's maternal uncle Grand Duke Paul was later arrested and shot by the Bolsheviks in 1919.
• 23. Prince Philip of Coburg-Kohary, husband of No. 18, was the elder brother of Ferdinand, who became the Tsar of Bulgaria in 1887.
• 24. Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly had only a few more months to live after this photo. The count, whose mother was a princess of Saxe-Coburg, was a cousin of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was a General of Cavalry in the Austrian Army.
• 25. The bride's another maternal uncle Grand Duke Sergei, the then Governor General of Moscow. His wife was also a Hesse (No. 28). An extreme reactionary, he was assassinated in 1905.
• 26. & 27. Marie of Edinburgh was the elder sister of the bride. Only the previous year, she had married the Crown Prince Ferdinand of Romania. They became King and Queen in 1914.
• 28. Elizabeth was the eldest sister of the groom, and of No. 9, 10, 11. A decade before her sister married Tsar Nicholas II, she married No. 25, becoming Grand Duchess Sergei of Russia.
• 29. Yet another maternal uncle of the bride, Vladimir of Russia (brother of No. 13, husband of No.12) was the senior Grand Duke of the House of Romanov. His son, Cyril, would later become the second husband of the bride.
• 30. Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, was the second son of Queen Victoria. Less than a year earlier, he had succeeded his paternal uncle Ernst II as the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He is father of the bride and of No. 4, 6, 14, 27 and husband of No. 13.