Never Let Anyone Tell You Something is Too Big to Change

By Rich Kozlovich

I stumbled across this yesterday, and of course my first thought was: "How quickly, and how meaningfully, things can change". This picture was taken in 1910.

 

Here was the caption, and I linked the characters for your perusal.  Some of these characters were, to be polite, unique!

 

On hand to attend the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910 were nine reigning kings. Thankfully, someone realized this was a great photo op and gathered the monarchs together for an historic photograph…most likely, the only photograph in existence that shows nine kings all together. They are, from left to right, starting in the back row: King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of the Bulgarians, King Manuel II of Portugal and the Algarve, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Prussian, King George I of the Hellenes, and King Albert I of the Belgians. In the front row, from left to right, are King Alfonso XII of Spain, (Note: King Alfonso XII was dead at this time, so, this must have been King Alfonso XIII, and his pictures testify to that, so that's the person I linked.  RK),  King George V of the United Kingdom, and King Frederick VIII of Denmark.  

 

Little did anyone realize how things would change over the next eight years.  Some would be dead, some wouldn't be kings any longer, some would be lesser kings, but nothing would be the same after WWI.  

 

I am surprised Nicholas II Czar of Russia isn't here, since he and King George were cousins, and were very close.  They also looked very much alike.   They were also both cousins to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, who was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria.  

 

All three were grandchildren of Queen Victoria, who had 9 children, 42 grandchildren, (20 grandsons and 22 granddaughters) and as far as I can tell, all those who survived married into royal houses at some level.  She also had 87 great-grandchildren, and I have no idea who they married.  

 

Here's the list, peruse it as you wish, as you can see, it gets complicated and I'm not that interested to work it out.  Especially since I have little regard for royalty, or elitists in any form or discipline for that matter.  As this picture makes clear.  Time and circumstance befall us all!   As a result, no one is really all that "special"!

 

People aren't really special because of their positions.  I treat the janitor like a CEO and a CEO like a janitor.  I treat everyone with a certain amount of dignity and respect, that's what I expect in return, simply because that's what everyone deserves.  At least until people prove themselves unworthy of respect.  What makes people special is what they accomplish and how they accomplish it.

 

King George could have saved the Czar and his family from being murdered by the communists if he had permitted his cousins exile in England, but he refused.  He was more concerned about the German background they all shared being publicly touted.  He decided that might prove embarrassing during the war, so he decided maintaining the family business of monarchy was more important than the life of his Russian family, who were his allies during the war.  

 

Did he know they would be killed?  No, but he had to know by the way the communists were treating them the danger of that was very real, and certainly real enough to not take chances with their lives.   This decision wasn't made out of ignorance, it was made out of selfish self interest, which the other members of the Russian nobility who survived accused him of for the rest of their lives.

 

There's a bigger story there, and it's worth looking up, because it helps explain a lot of why England's royal family does the things it does. It's all about the family business. Nothing else matters to them.