A couple of years after the organ-grinder monkey incident, his grandfather had begun to take an interest in him, as had Bismarck, his grandfather’s formidable Chancellor. They were the two people he idolized most in the world. His grandfather because he had led the Prussian Army into battle against Napoleon, and Bismarck because, with blood and iron, he had welded together a hotchpotch of kingdoms, principalities and grand duchies into a strong, unified empire. And both men disliked his mother just as much as Willy did.

When he had asked his grandfather why he disliked his mother so much, his grandfather had replied bluntly, ‘Because she is an Engländarin. Because she has infected your father with English liberal ideas and because she rules her husband in a way no German wife would ever dare to do.’

He had then gripped Willy hard around his shoulders. ‘Promise me,’ he’d said, his white handlebar moustache quivering with the force of his emotion, ‘promise me you will only ever marry a German princess. A German princess will know her place. She will never try to rule you, as your mother rules your father. All you will need from her is that she bears you sons, for to father sons is the duty of a hereditary monarch. Do you understand, Wilhelm? Do you promise?’

He had promised. And he had kept his promise. He had married Dona, who, before their marriage, had been Her Serene Highness Princess Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein and who was now Her Royal Highness Princess Wilhelm of Prussia.

He hadn’t been in love with her. He’d been in love with Ella, and he was still in love with Ella. He would always, until the day he died, be in love with Ella. But Ella had rejected him for Sergei Romanov, a man so unappealing that in a crowded room he was always to be found standing alone. Blind with bewilderment and hurt, desperate to save his pride, Willy had left immediately for Schleswig-Holstein and had proposed to Dona, the daughter of one of his father’s friends.

It had been an act of impulse, but then he was always impulsive. Being impulsive was something he simply couldn’t help. It was part of his psyche. And he’d known there wasn’t a one-in-a-million chance of suffering another rejection. As a Serene Highness, the homely and dim-witted Dona was insignificant in the royal marriage stakes. So much so that it would never have occurred to her, or to her family, that she stood the slightest chance of a distinguished marriage – far less of marriage to a man who would one day be Germany’s emperor.