According to family legend, Valois' great-grandfather was lured from France to Switzerland during the Seven Years' War, where he was conscripted into Habsburg service.

[3] At the outbreak of the Prussian war with Denmark he was officer of the watch on the steam-powered Gunboat Loreley, under command of Captain Hans Kuhn.

Subsequently, Augusta took refuge in the Spanish harbour at Vigo, where it was blockaded by three French warships until 1871, when the ship returned to Kiel.

Valois commanded the corvette SMS Victoria (France, 1863) in February 1881 on a cruise to Liberia to protest a native attack on the shipwrecked crew of a German merchant ship.

[7] In early 1890 he left the position of Director (Oberwerftdirektor) of the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel to become commander of the German East Asia Squadron.

On 21 December 1890 he was as Samoa with his squadron in connection with German plans to annex the Marshall Islands when an approaching hurricane caused him to flee in his flagship Leipzig.

This tension was increased slightly when Valois brought his squadron into San Francisco on 4 June 1891 without the expected courtesy of raising an American flag.

By this time, Alfred von Tirpitz, who favored the construction of heavy ships in direct competition with Britain, had come to power as the State Secretary of the Naval Office.

In 1898, Tirpitz secured passage of the 1898 naval law, which emphasized a fleet strength that relied on battle ships and heavy cruisers.

[11][12] This strategic philosophy, with its emphasis on cruisers, did not match William's (or Tirpitz's) concept of an appropriate German navy that could compete in weight, size, and impressive appearance with the vast British fleet.

"[16] Although he was long retired when the United Kingdom entered the First World War against Germany, he published a pamphlet "Nieder mit England!"