: Many years ago I read her autobiography,
: "A Measure Of Understanding" and
: I recall she made some such remark in a
: retort to Winston Churchill to whom she was
: introduced at a meeting in London sometime
: in the 1940s. As I recall the conversation went
: something like this:
:
: Churchill: "Is it true that the Kaiser
: was your
: grandfather?"
:
: Frederika: "Yes he was but Queen
: Victoria was
: also my great-great grandmother and if you
: had
: Salic Law in Britain my father would be your
: king today".
:
: Frederika was alluding to the fact that if
: the succession to the British throne
: followed Salic Law like in Hanover, her
: ancestor, Ernest Augustus, Duke of
: Cumberland would have succeeded his elder
: brother William IV as monarch of the UK as
: well as Hanover instead of his niece,
: Victoria and Frederika's father (then still
: living) would eventually have succeeded to
: the British throne.
:
: Makes perfect sense to me.
:
: Btw, how did you like the book? I started
: reading it a while ago but switched to
: Princess Irene’s bio, still to be finished,
: too.
I enjoyed reading it but can't now seem to recall much else about it. I also read her mother's memoirs which were naturally quite defensive of her father, Wilhelm II and her Prussian family. I recall how she made much of the fact that her marriage helped heal a 50 year rift between the Hanoverians and the Hohenzollerns dating back to the invasion and annexation of Hannover by the Prussians in 1866.
Are you finding Princess Irene's memoirs interesting and informative?
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