Wilhelm was also a first cousin of Nicholas's wife, Alix of Hesse, and the eldest grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.
The majority were sent from Berlin or the Neues Palais in Potsdam, and others from places as diverse as Rominten, Coburg, Letzlingen, Wilhelmshöhe, Kiel, Posen, Pillau, Gaeta, Corfu (where Wilhelm had a summer retreat), Stamboul, and Damascus.
[1] The Willy-Nicky telegrams consist of a series of ten messages wired between Wilhelm and Nicholas on 29, 30 and 31 July and 1 August 1914.
As a matter of fact I must request you to immediatly [sic] order your troops on no account to commit the slightest act of trespassing over our frontiers.
In contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry (Sergey Sazonov), as well as the French Ambassador in Russia (Maurice Paléologue) believed the telegram was very important.
A "flurry of telegrams" between Wilhelm and Nicholas[26] led to the cancellation of Russian general mobilisation by the latter on 29 July, but under pressure from Sazonov this was resumed two days later,[19][20][21] and on 1 August 1914, both Germany and Russia found themselves at war.