A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother

A captivating exploration of the role in which Queen Victoria exerted most international power and influence: her role as matchmaking grandmother. In the late nineteenth century, Queen Victoria had over thirty surviving grandchildren. To maintain power in Europe, she hoped to manoeuvre them into dynastic marriages with royalty across the world. Yet her grandchildren often had plans of their own, fuelled by strong wills and romantic hearts. Her matchmaking plans were further complicated by tumultuous international upheavals; revolution was in the air and after her death, her most carefully laid plans fell to ruin. Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking travels through the glittering palaces of Russia and Europe, weaving in scandals, political machinations and family tensions, to enthralling effect. It is at once an intimate portrait of the royal family and an examination of the conflict caused by the power, love and duty that shaped the marriages that Queen Victoria arranged. At the heart of it all is Queen Victoria herself: doting grandmother one moment, determined manipulator the next.

"Cadbury is an adroit storyteller. Her lively, colourfully written book, Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking, recounts the courtships and marriages of a handful of the Queen’s grandchildren … a panoramic family saga, its players by turns pragmatic and romantic, wilful, dutiful, misguided and, occasionally, tragic … Cadbury writes with verve" - Daily Telegraph

"[An] absorbing book ... The fall of the Romanovs occupies the superb last pages of Cadbury’s book ... Dynastic mergers, we may deduce from Deborah Cadbury’s account, offer no defence against the whims of history. This catastrophe-laced slice of royal history offers a ripping read" - Observer

"Engrossing … Cadbury engagingly presents [Queen Victoria] as a mesmerising Mrs Bennet, summoning her children and then her grandchildren to Balmoral ... The stories of [Queen Victoria’s] descendants are mesmerising and often stranger than fiction … From the pen of a writer of skill and style, this surprising narrative leaves you wanting more" - The Times

"A skilfully woven account" - Times Higher Education Supplement

"Cadbury’s account of Victoria’s attempts to bend her unruly grandchildren to her matrimonial will is the stuff of melodrama … covered with verve and insight by Deborah Cadbury in her new history" - Sunday Times

"An entertaining, well-written and well-conceived book … perceptive and revealing in the light it throws on the mind and attitudes of Victoria. Cadbury has consulted sources in numerous archives, including the Royal Archives at Windsor, and has chosen her quotations with skill" - Literary Review

"In this enjoyable story for fans of royal machinations, Cadbury ably shows not just the successes, but also the damage inflicted by Victoria's single-mindedness. An instructive European history" - Kirkus

"One of the most riveting tales of the nonfiction season, rendered with novelistic drama but deliberate detachment. The inner tensions of the palace during wartime and the inner tensions of a remarkable family make for one of the best, and ultimately most uplifting, stories of the war years" - Boston Globe

"Deborah Cadbury combines the family drama against the backdrop of the war with terrific narrative verve" - The Times

"Fascinating, fresh insights into a story of four brothers" - Times Higher Education Supplement