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As the Kaiser grew up towards manhood his personality was hardly known; his father, the Crown Prince Frederick, a far more noble figure, monopolised attention. Beyond the fact that he was Queen Victoria's favourite grandson nothing was known about William II. Nobody thought that he would be called upon to rule before he was middle aged or elderly; his father's illness was unsuspected. But if there was no ill feeling at the English court, it is impossible to say the same of the court at Berlin. The presence of the Princess Royal was resented; many people believed, or affected to believe, that the marriage had been designed to make Germany politically subservient to Great Britain. As everybody knows, these feelings grew apace as soon as the old Emperor William had breathed his last, and when, a few months later, the Emperor Frederick passed away, the Anglophobia had spread throughout the Court circles and the young Kaiser had been tainted with the Court prejudice against his own mother. He did not treat her well; it is not too much to say that he treated her badly. She, naturally enough, complained to her brother, the Prince of Wales,—I have already said that she was now his best loved sister. He was angry on her account and spoke his mind. Relations between the young Kaiser and his uncle were already strained. I must turn back a little to explain why.