His mother said: “Don’t for a moment imagine that my son ever does anything from any motive but vanity.” - Emil Ludwig

The instability to which he was victim had flung him from the arms of one national group into another, and then back to the first; and all the time that he was treacherously playing off one enemy against the other, he was but drawing the two together. Since he would always do everything himself, and spoke the decisive word in all great national affairs, he bore and bears the responsibility for Germany’s isolation and encirclement in the decade immediately before the World-War. Never, but for William’s provocations, would Edward VII and his people have joined the enemies of Germany. The security of the German Empire was offered up on the altar of the Emperor’s nervous temperament.

As a man without religion, without philosophy, without principles, he balked at nothing. ...[H]e concealed... his desire for self-aggrandizement, and... believes in his own idealism.

In the course of five years’ visits the Emperor had roused English feeling against Germany; by his conduct towards his uncle he had offended the Court, by that towards Salisbury the Cabinet; by his prattle he had annoyed society, by his menaces the Press, by his indiscretions the man in the street, who read of them in the papers.