The first half of the twentieth century was of tremendous upheavals in the world, what with two world wars, revolutions and the nuclear physics era that came in with a literal bang, rather more than one. The world powers changed the status from Europe being major colonial powers to the bipolar era of US and USSR being the two major powers, and Europe diminished into its physical space post end of colonial era heralded by the two major wars.
Amongst all these the relatively less noticed, or rather comparatively forgotten, is the end of the era of monarchies in most of Europe, which affected the royal families across the continent as much as it did the various nations involved. These families were all interconnected by blood and marriages, most connected to the British royal family directly, and in fact most were directly related to the Queen Victoria who ruled most of the previous century with its establishing of the British Empire, by blood or marriage - she was called Grandma of Europe, and she referred the usual gatherings of the royals at various weddings and funerals and other state events with an apt epithet "The Royal Mob".
It is rather apt that the century that brought in the end of the monarchies in most of Europe was heralded by the end of reign of Queen Victoria who died almost at the beginning of the century, but paradoxically the various descendants and other relatives of hers whose reign ended in Europe did not include Britain monarchy.
This work is a summary of the early part of this history of the end of monarchies brought about with the first world war, and gives a general reader a good beginning of understanding about the events of the first quarter of the twentieth century across Europe, from point of view centred and focused on the royal families of the continent.
