The last British royal wedding between Prince William
and Kate Middleton brought together 1,900 guests,
many of whom were pretty high-profile people.
Footballer David Beckham was there with his wife
and fashion designer, Victoria Beckham.
Elton John was there, too,
but this photo might be the most impressive of all,
because this is the Queen of Spain and the Prince of Spain
next to the Princess of Sweden.
The former King of Greece is behind them,
and way back there is the former king of Romania.
They were invited because they're all related to
Prince William's great-great-great- great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.
Over the course of her 63-year reign, she strategically planned
marriages to place her descendants in royal families all over
Europe and, in doing so,
created one of the most remarkable royal families in history.
By the early 19th century, Europe had been at war for decades.
After the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars killed millions,
European leaders came together to restore peace
by reshaping major states for a new balance of power.
Great Britain went on to become one of the strongest states
and, years later, Queen Victoria and her husband Albert came up
with a plan to maintain that political power -
they'd marry their children to monarchs across Europe.
And at that time, you know, all royal marriages were
fundamentally about dynastic unions,
about cementing political allegiances,
about building new political alliances.
It started with their daughter Vicky, the eldest of nine children.
She married the heir to the Prussian throne,
the largest and most powerful of the German states.
Albert's vision had always been - and Victoria shared it -
that Prussia, of all the German states, was the one that
would end up leading the way towards a great, unified Germany.
They wanted to build strong connections with Germany
and see them as being a force for good
and constitutional, benign monarchy across Europe.
Their children - Alice, Beatrice, Helena, Leopold and Arthur -
also married German royalty.
Their eldest son, Prince Albert Edward,
married a Danish princess whose brother was the King of Greece,
two more important European states.
But when their son wanted to marry the daughter of the Russian Tsar,
things became a bit more complicated.
There was a long history about Queen Victoria's deep, deep apprehensions
about Russia, for any of her children marrying into Russia.
The Russian monarchy was an autocracy,
whereas the British monarchy, as such, was a constitutional monarchy.
There was a whole, long period of Russophobia in Britain.
The two states were also extremely competitive over
territory in Central Asia and Eastern Europe,
where they fought a bloody war in the 1850s,
but the marriage was allowed and, by the 1880s, Queen Victoria's
children were in several important branches of Europe's monarchies.
Not quite.
See, Germany did unify in 1871, but it wasn't peaceful.
Prussia fought a series of bloody wars
and consolidated the other German states.
In Russia, the royal Romanov family was losing its grip on power.
Members of the monarchy were being hunted
and the Tsar was assassinated in 1881.
The royal unions didn't play out as Queen Victoria planned,
but she continued to make more matches anyway.
She had 42 grandchildren in total
and these seven ended up on royal thrones.
The eldest, Wilhelm II, who was already in line to be
the next Emperor of Germany, married a German princess in 1881.
The hope was that he would steer a unified and powerful Germany
into an alliance with Great Britain.
George was in line to be the King of Great Britain
and married a minor British royal family member.
Alexandra married Nicholas, who was related to George and Wilhelm,
and both became the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia,
and four more granddaughters married European royalty,
fulfilling Victoria's vision.
I mean, when you look at Queen Victoria,
by the end of her life, she really was the grandmother of Europe.
Take, for example, this family photo, where Queen Victoria
is with her daughter and grandson, the rulers of Germany.
Her son, Britain's next king, and her granddaughters,
the future Tsarina of Russia and the future Queen of Romania.
Here's the soon-to-be King of England and his lookalike cousin,
the soon-to-be Tsar of Russia.
And here's some of the children and grandchildren together.
Finally, this is King Edward of Great Britain and his nephew,
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, at Queen Victoria's funeral in 1901.
After her death, the family ties that Queen Victoria had
strung around Europe would not bring peace,
but the most destructive war Europe had ever seen.
The Kaiser and the King make ready to sweep the field.
The Tsar of Russia mobilises.
England joins the battle royal.
World War I broke out in 1914 and split this family apart.
Wilhelm's Germany, along with Austria, Hungary
and the Ottoman Empire,
fought an alliance led by Britain, Russia and France.
These countries were neutral.
Say Victoria had lived till we were on the brink of war,
I think it would have broken her, totally broken her heart,
to know that her grandchildren ended up at war with each other.
The war killed over 10 million people
and ended the era of monarchy in Europe.
Wilhelm, Sophia and Marie were all forced to abandon their thrones.
Revolution swept through Russia,
and Alexandra and Nicholas were executed by communists.
The British monarchy survived,
but the war forced them to rethink their political strategy.
George, King George V, and his wife, Queen Mary,
were very, very astute.
They saw that the monarchy had to be more people-friendly,
had to be more accessible, not just sitting there in great robes
in glory, you know, with their crowns on.
It had to be much more out on the street, hands-on,
meet the people, win their confidence,
the kind of monarchy we now have with Queen Elizabeth.
That approach not only helped modernise British monarchy over the
last century, but it also changed the face of royal weddings forever.