Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have swept the world into a media-friendly fairy tale, straight out of a made-for-TV rom com. But no matter how compelling a narrative and endearing the bride, weddings just aren’t as consequential as for prior generations of royals—for instance, Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, whose nuptials were planned with an eye to influencing the future of Europe. Advertisement These marriages are the subject of Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking: The Royal Marriages That Shaped Europe , a well-timed new release by Deborah Cadbury. She looks at “the high summer of royalty,” the last era when a royal wedding was truly high-stakes for more than the couple, their immediate families, and content-hungry media entities. The book’s first chapter opens in 1887, with Queen Victoria obstinately insisting during preparations for her Golden Jubilee on wearing a bonnet rather than a crown for the celebratory parade. This is a central image for the story that follows, a handy synecdoche for the maneuverings of a woman acting as both grandmother and queen, welding the two roles together, drawing on her position as grandmother to execute her aims as queen and vice versa. Queen Victoria was a dedicated matchmaker, parachuting her children and grandchildren…