Queen Alexandra

Queen Alexandra

Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia; 1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was the wife and queen-empress consort of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Emperor of India.

Her family had been relatively obscure until, when she was a child, her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the great powers to succeed his distant cousin, Frederick VII, to the Danish throne. At the age of sixteen, she was chosen as the future wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent of Queen Victoria. They married eighteen months later in 1863, the same year her father became Christian IX of Denmark and her brother, George, was appointed King of Greece. She was Princess of Wales from 1863 to 1901, the longest anyone has ever held that title, and became generally popular; her style of dress and bearing were copied by fashion-conscious women. Although largely excluded from wielding any political power, she unsuccessfully attempted to sway the opinion of British ministers and her husband's family to favour Greek and Danish interests. Her public duties were restricted to uncontroversial involvement in charitable work.

On the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Albert Edward became king-emperor as Edward VII, with Alexandra as queen-empress consort. From Edward's death in 1910 until her own death, she was the queen mother, being a dowager queen and the mother of the reigning monarch, George V, though she was more generally styled Her Majesty Queen Alexandra. She greatly distrusted her nephew, German Emperor Wilhelm II, and supported her son during World War I, in which Britain and its allies fought Germany.