Kaiser William II, the second son of Prince Frederick William and Princess Victoria of Prussia, was born on January 27, 1859, with a congenital deformity in his arm. His mother was the daughter of Queen Victoria, making him a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. Growing up, William was fascinated by his grandparents, Emperor Wilhelm I and Empress Augusta, who ruled Prussia, as well as his English grandmother, Queen Victoria, and Otto von Bismarck, the Prime Minister of Prussia.
As a child, William had to navigate the complexities of royal family dynamics, with multiple siblings and a complicated family tree. His brother, Henry, even married their cousin, Irene, the daughter of their Aunt Alice. William's parents' excessive attention to his arm deformity led to a deep-seated resentment towards them.
In his late teens, William fell in love with his cousin, but she rejected him and married Grand Duke Serge of Russia instead. A few years later, he married a granddaughter of his grandmother's half-sister, with whom he had several children.
When William's father died in 1888, he searched his desk for incriminating documents but found only papers detailing his father's flaws. He was present when his grandmother, Queen Victoria, passed away in 1901, and later that year, he lost his mother as well. William repeated the same actions with his mother's papers, only to find that she had given them to the British ambassador in Berlin just days before her death.
Following his mother's passing, William continued to rule Germany in a backhanded manner, resentful of his Uncle Edward's greater power. He was dismayed by the outbreak of World War I, which pitted him against his cousins, aunts, and uncles across Europe and the Americas. When his cousin, King George V, changed the royal family's name to Windsor, William quipped that he would like to see the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha.
After the war, William was forced to abdicate and fled to the Netherlands. Following the death of his first wife, he married a second time and remained with her until his death at the age of 82 in 1941.
