Recent research has proved that Kaiser Wilhelm II played a decisive role in initiating the policies of naval and colonial expansion which caused a rapid deterioration in Germany's relations with Britain before 1914. However, scholars have devoted much less attention to the study of the role of the British monarchy in Anglo‐German relations in the quarter of a century before the outbreak of the First World War. This article provides a corrective by analysing the attitudes of British monarchs towards the kaiser and Germany,and the impact of their attitudes and actions on Britain's relations with Germany. The first section shows that the actions of British monarchs did influence Anglo‐German relations, if only to a limited extent. The article then examines the factors that constrained the influence of the British monarchy on British policy towards Germany. It concludes with an analysis of the perceptions of the kaiser and the German leadership towards the political role of the British monarchy. This section argues that Wilhelm II and his advisers consistently overestimated the influence of the British monarchy on British poicy towards Germany and proves that this had fateful consequences for German policy towards Britain.
Roderick R. McLean (Mon,) studied this question.