Blog Tour - Victoria to Vikings
Book Spotlight
Victoria to Vikings – The Circle of Blood
by Trisha Hughes
On my blog today I have the pleasure of
sharing with you.....
Victoria to Vikings – The Circle of Blood
I would like to thank Rachel Random Resources and Trisha Hughes for inviting me on the blog tour
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Book Information
At the heart of our present are the stories of our past. In ages gone by, many monarchs died while they were still young. There were battles and diseases and many were simply overthrown. But the days of regal engagement in hand-to-hand combat are over and the line of succession has a good ageing prospect these days.
One of the most famous monarchs in history is Queen Victoria and her passing brought an end to an amazing era. She could be demanding, rude and she frequently fled public duties for the solitude of Scotland. But she loved fiercely, and her people loved her fiercely in return. Under her reign, England achieved greatness it had never known before.
‘VICTORIA TO VIKINGS – The Circle of Blood’ spans from this great queen to another one: Queen Elizabeth II. Ours is the era of the longest living monarch in history and her ancestry is incredible. But walking two steps behind her, stalwart and loyal, stands Prince Philip, the strawberry to her champagne, and with him comes his own amazing Viking heritage.
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Author Guest Post
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
and the lead up to World War I
When the three grandsons of Queen Victoria stood side by side at the wedding of Kaiser
Wilhelm's daughter to Prince Ernest August Duke of Cumberland, no one had any idea that a
very real tragedy loomed silently on the horizon. Unknowingly, the world was poised at the
starting gate of a tragedy full of conflict and betrayal marking the day the cousins' worlds would
begin to unravel. It would be the last time the cousins would ever meet again.
If you were a fly on the wall at the beautiful ceremony, you could have been forgiven for
thinking it was like watching a charade. There was a pretence that they were all a loving family
but somehow the atmosphere crackled with tension and everything seemed a little off kilter.
Perhaps you would have noticed that everyone was smiling a little too widely as they danced,
glancing just a little nervously around the room. It was almost as if the air fizzed with the
unspoken word…war. One month later, on 28th June, the nightmare began.
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie were visiting Sarajevo, the capital of the
Austro-Hungarian province when a grenade was thrown at their car. The bomb detonated
behind them, hurting the occupants of the following car, but both Franz and his wife were safe.
They were badly shaken by the time they arrived at the Governor’s residence but after a short rest, the couple insisted on seeing all those who had been injured by the bomb at the local
hospital.
The decision is one of those ‘if only’ situations in history. ‘If only’ their driver had not driven
the car down a side street where Gavrilo Princip, aged 19 at the time and a member of an
organisation called the Black Hand, was sitting at a café. As Princip watched the line of stalled
cars in front of him, he seized the opportunity and walked calmly across the street and shot the
royal couple through the window with a pistol given to him by a Serbian Army Colonel.
Princip’s first shot hit Sophie in the abdomen and his next hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck.
Despite several doctors’ frantic efforts, Sophie died from internal bleeding and Franz died
shortly after being carried into the Town Hall.
Wilhelm was at the Kiel Regatta racing yachts when he heard the terrible news. He was
entertaining a squadron of British battle cruisers and the town was full of fraternising German
and British officers. When he heard that his closest friend Franz Ferdinand had been murdered,
he was visibly shocked and distressed.
Nicholas was on his annual Baltic summer cruise and 9-year-old Alexei had fallen while
jumping from a ladder and twisted his ankle. Being a haemophiliac, he was screaming with
pain and his mother Alexandra was white with worry. They also had just heard that a
madwoman had stabbed Rasputin and everyone on the boat, except Alexandra and Nicholas,
was hoping that he would die. With everything else going on around them, news of Franz
Ferdinand’s assassination barely registered with Nicholas and his family.
George was preoccupied as well. He had been having bitter arguments over the fate of
Protestants in six northern counties in Ireland which had threatened to fight if they were
separated from Britain. Guns had been smuggled into the north and George was obsessed with
what might happen if his army had to fire on British citizens.
Although everyone was shocked at the news, no one expected the assassination to escalate to
all-out war. Certainly initially, there was rage and sympathy for Austria but everyone expected
it to blow over. Even if the murder could be traced back to Serbia, the 19-year-old assassin had
said he killed Franz Ferdinand because he was an enemy of the Southern Slavs.
The Austrian government, however, saw things differently. A week after the assassination, the
Austrian ambassador came to Wilhelm with a confidential letter requesting their support to
launch a quick war to punish Serbia while Europe was on its summer holidays. Germany’s only role was to make sure no other powers would feel tempted to get involved. It would be all over
before anyone knew about it, they assured him. Famous last words.
Give Wilhelm his due: he hesitated. Even if it was for only a moment. Then he made a fateful
decision. He told the ambassador that they could rely on German’s full support. Convinced that
the mere threat of war would be enough, Wilhelm set off the next day for his annual yachting
trip along the Norwegian coast. Unknowingly, with that one signature, he set the future horrific
events into motion. It was a decision he would live to regret for the rest of his life.
None of us have forgotten the first cousin’s war, the War of the Roses. We have not forgotten
the cruel battles, the harvest of heads that followed and we have certainly not forgotten the
sight of wounded and defeated soldiers returning from the battlefields. During the first cousin’s
war, heads were cleaved open by battle-axes and bellies were ripped open by swords. Men
swinging great swords, war axes and pikes defended themselves against family members who
only a decade before had been regarded as friends.
This time it would be more civilised. This time they would use guns and cannons and trench
warfare as they scrambled in the mud over barbed wire towards enemy lines in an attempt to
thrust a bayonet into the armpit or chest of the enemy. But the meadows would still be littered
with corpses and the rivers would still run red as the snow fell softly on everything like frozen
tears. Men would still hack and stab at each other. This time, instead of white and red roses,
there would be blood-red poppies bobbing their heads knowingly.
Sometimes we learn. Sometimes we don’t.
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Author Bio
I am an Australian author born in Brisbane, Queensland now living in Hong Kong. My writing career began 18 years ago with my best-selling autobiography ‘Daughters of Nazareth’ published by Pan MacMillan Australia. Over the past 8 years, I have been researching and writing a historical fiction trilogy based on British Monarchy throughout the ages beginning with the Vikings. Originally meant to be a single book, as facts accumulated the material gradually filled three books. I call this series my V2V trilogy.
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