van de kiste books are often a good read and especially a good start. The problem is th he never travels( that i was told) and never consult original sources in a foreign language. So you get more or less only the British views on German royalty. I found his book on the Prussian Princesses and Prince Henry extremely annoying for that reason. As a first start, fine, but there is so much more out there which he misses and views he presents are not really convincing or indepth. It is a bit of a shame as I like his style of writing.

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: Another most interesting historical account of
: royal family traumatic relationships as told
: by John Van der Kiste.
:
: In 1900, almost two years after Princess
: Feodora of Saxe-Meiningen married Prince
: Henry XXX of Reuss, her mother Charlotte,
: eldest sister of the German Emperor William,
: told a friend that her daughter was beyond
: her comprehension, and vowed to exclude her
: from her home ‘for ever’. Charlotte had long
: had an uneasy relationship with her mother,
: now the Empress Frederick, a daughter of
: Queen Victoria, but her relationship with
: her only child astonished the family. Mother
: and daughter both suffered from porphyria,
: the disorder which appears to have
: exacerbated the personality differences
: between them. Charlotte, a frivolous-minded
: young woman known for her love of society
: life and gossip, and later her involvement
: in the anonymous letters scandal which
: plagued Berlin high society from 1892
: onwards, had never really wanted children,
: while Feodora’s life was embittered by her
: failure to have a family. This short life of
: both women examines the troubled lives which
: led to estrangement and in Feodora’s case
: ended in tragedy.
:
:
: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17238237-charlotte-and-feodora
: