Willy was buoyant. Everything was going his way. The hideous period in his life when Phili and other members of the Liebenberg Circle had – because of a mountain of evidence to the contrary – been unable to defend themselves against claims of homosexuality was now in the past. By the skin of his teeth, and because he had instantly severed all ties with Phili, never meeting or speaking with him again, he had managed to escape the scandal that had followed. The void in his life afterwards had seemed bottomless, but he had survived.

Now, about to give his precious only daughter, his last child Princess Viktoria Luise, in marriage to Prince Ernst August of Hanover in a few days’ time, Willy couldn’t have been happier. Not only was it a love match, but Sissy – the only name Viktoria Luise had answered to since she’d been a child – had assured him of that, as had the groom. Ernst’s pedigree was impeccable. Via his Danish mother he was both Georgie and Nicky’s first cousin and was closely related to the Norwegian and Greek royal families as well. It meant the wedding guest list was going to cover every royal court in Europe, as well as Russia.

It was going to be the biggest, most spectacular royal wedding in decades, and Willy’s only disappointment about it so far was that, although Nicky would be attending, poor health meant that Alicky would not.

It was a disappointment he had overcome. Alicky was rumoured to be mentally unstable, antagonizing Nicky’s family by her habit of rarely appearing in public and by her bizarre, insistent friendship with a depraved, mystic monk who was equally bekloppt, or, as English Georgie would say, barmy.

As well as Sissy’s wedding giving him the opportunity to appear in a wide range of military uniforms – Willy would, of course, wear his British admiral’s uniform when greeting Georgie and May, while an equally splendid Russian military uniform would suffice when meeting Nicky – there were also lots of other heavily gold-braided and bemedalled uniforms that he could don when greeting other guests.

The Danish contingent, for instance, would be very large, considering that the groom’s mother was Danish. Norway, too, was going to be represented, as his English cousin Maud, who had married Prince Carl of Denmark, had, by a bizarre turn of events eight years ago, found herself Queen Maud of Norway, after Norway had separated from Sweden. Wishing to establish its own monarchy, the country had offered the throne to her and Carl. While Maud had retained her Christian name, Carl had changed his to the Norwegian Haakon. Willy had found it a disturbing way of establishing a monarchy, but the deed was done and Maud was, after all, a first cousin.