Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

Queen Marie of Romania, who once wrote: 'We are hardly ever arbiters of our own Fate: We must move, do, live, according to our several duties and our own desires and wishes have to be fitted in with what we can do more often than what we desire to do'.

Prince Nicholas wrote: ' If your house is broken into and plundered and finally set on fire by persons whom you considered to be your best friends, have the latter any right to call you a 'traitor' because, in despair, you opened your window and screamed for help?

I don't mind whether a person is rich or poor. Once my friend, always my friend. --Tsarina Alexandra of Russia (1872-1918)

If you begin giving up, they will go on grabbing till they get everything. ---Queen Victoria

Changes can only come gradually and slowly.... (In a letter from Empress Frederick to the future Queen Sophie of Greece)

She (Empress Marie Feodorovna) instinctively understood that to the Russian people the appearance of greatness was as important as greatness itself.

There are great dreamers and there are great workers in the world! When a dreamer is also a worker, he is working for today and for tomorrow as well. For he is building for those who come after us.

If there remains the smallest, most meagre fighting chance, I shall still fight, --- a losing battle no doubt, but I would consider myself unworthy of my own ideas, were I to give in before I completely convinced that all is lost.

Barbara Tuchman has called 'the bitter truth of history; that progress and gain by one group is never accomplished without loss of some permanent value of another' .