Queen Victoria had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and
Grandchildren of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha of Edinburgh the current prince consort of the United Kingdom as the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. Princess Victoria was also the mother of Queen Louise of Sweden. Queen Victoria → Princess Alice → Princess Victoria of Hesse → Princess Alice of Battenberg → Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Alice and Louis's second daughter, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, married, in 1884, the Russian Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna, and younger brother of the then reigning Tsar Alexander III. They had no children. Following Sergei's assassination in 1905,