I have endeavoured in these pages to present a true picture of Court life. It is a life hedged about by many restrictions; to me a great deal of it all was empty and meaningless. I say nothing of those who are actively engaged in the duties of rulership; but to the other members of Royal families, life is little more than a round of useless ceremonies, from which a mind with any pretence to independence flies in relief—does opportunity offer. I have left behind me the life of Courts and palaces.

Once , when I was making an official visit to the South of Spain with my brother (who was then King), we were told of a gentleman of the Province of Sevilla who had had a talking parrot sent to him from South America; and this parrot had been taught to say “ Viva la Reina! ”—that is, “Long live the Queen!” But soon after its arrival in Sevilla there was a revolution, and Spain became a republic; and it was not at all comfortable for the gentleman to have a parrot screaming “Long live the Queen!”

It is in life as it is in travelling, that you go sometimes with such unreflecting interest in the mere passing-by of the incidents of Time that you arrive unaware of your destination, and look back with dismay on the change and the distance. It was so I went from the democracy of our French class-room to the estate of Royalty in Spain. The mere journey itself was an excitement; and it was at once, even in France, almost a Royal progress, because of the number of Spanish ladies who had come to P

If our fortunes had carried us directly from Paris to stay with my brother in the palace of Madrid, perhaps I should have found myself still caged there. But freedom is only by comparison; and, after my unhappiness in the Alcazar, it seemed to me now as if my life had really been given wings. Our arrival was almost private; the people in the streets, accustomed to the sight of royalty, did not make a great to-do about us (for it is chiefly curiosity that draws crowds, I find, even to see kings!)

In speaking of one’s past it is difficult not to take a present point of view; and when I say that being a Royal person in Spain had its serious aspects—because I could not love or marry as a private person—I mean that it had those aspects as I look back upon it. At the time I was not aware of them. They were accepted by me as constituting the natural order of life. Long before I could begin to think of such things as love and marriage I had been schooled to the idea that I could have such relat

I suppose that no one who has not lived at a Court will believe how narrow in its interests the royal life can be. It is the life of a little family isolated by an impervious etiquette from the immensities of life that are about it. One can read, and hear, and be aware of the life of the nation at second hand; one can not approach it intimately. And the little family revolves upon itself, with its own gossip, its own scandal, its own jealousies and ambitions, its own jokes, and its own quarrels,

There now began for me an interesting experience. I had started out to travel and see the sights of Europe, a bride of twenty-two, with a mind in some ways older than my age, as inquisitive as youth, but, perhaps, not so subject to youth’s self-deception; as interested as youth in my own observations (rather than in any general view or philosophical explanation of society), but sceptical, and with no youthful tendency to illusions either romantic or royal. The European travels of such a young la

After hearing King Edward’s opinion of his nephew, I was eager to meet the Kaiser. I was never more eager to meet any sovereign. And there was none who ever made such an impression on me. One felt at once the vibration of a strong personality, an incessantly active mind, a dynamic nervous energy, a Latin temperament intellectual and gay. He has the kind of hard grey-blue eye that is usually called piercing. And he uses it, I think, with some knowledge of its effect when he wishes to be disconcer

Looking back over my travels, few visits stand out with more pleasant recollections than those I have paid to Petrograd. In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my experience, unique. Sovereigns may have moments of an affectionate emotion; they rarely have consistent tenderness. In their most intimate relations of family life they are apt to resume suddenly the frigid tones of royalty; and I have seen a ki

Will democracy ever rule in some countries? I will not dare to prophesy, only in so far as there is a tendency gradually spreading which gives hope that in the end it will permeate the entire Western life. Many years will be necessary for its development here and there—in Russia, for instance—but most peoples are almost ready for the change, and unless kings meet the movement and, so to speak, merge themselves in it, leading it, they will pass and their thrones with them. Some great crisis will

“ I am so glad that I am queen of a country in which everybody loves simplicity.” This was the testimony to the charm of Norway which Queen Maud gave me, when I saw her in her little home near Christiania in the autumn of 1913. She spoke with enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I was not in the least surprised, for Norway is undoubtedly the happiest and most progressive country in Europe. Indeed, if anybody wants to know what life will be like in the good time that is coming, when Capitalism

I was at Genoa, and one spring morning I strolled through a network of narrow streets to the harbour. The sea was as blue as a turquoise, gleaming like a jewel in the sunshine, and I could not resist the temptation to hire a boat and waste an hour gliding over the enchanted waves. The boatman who rowed me was a lively fellow. Luckily for me, as I afterwards realised, he had not the faintest idea who I was, and I let him chatter to his heart’s content. “The old Duke of Galliera gave many million

It was during these years of travel in Europe that I was offered the opportunity of going to America to represent the Throne of Spain at the World’s Fair that was to be held in Chicago to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery. I accepted the invitation with joy. I had no longer my childish idea that if I could only take a boat and sail to America I should be really “free”; but I had still in my mind the household saying that I was “only fit for America,” and I felt s

What interests—fascinates—the student of contemporary humanity rather than of contemporary politics is to what extent the war will either advance or set us back as a civilisation; shall we be better for it, will life be better for it? I have always had a horror of war. I hoped and thought up to the last moment that it would be averted. It seemed impossible that France and Germany could come to blows; the cost looked to be too big. Yet I see the Kaiser swept away by the war party behind him, urge