Tsar Nicholas II, King George V, Emperor Wilhelm II and WWI (photo: public domain, assembly: Timixi, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

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Warring cousins
King George V, Emperor Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II stood at the birth of World War I as relatives

Tension in Europe peaked in 1914. European powers armored and closed military pacts. Neither the kinship of three rulers could prevent the war: George V, Wilhelm II and Nicholas II.
The family relations were linked by the German Hohenzollern family, the English House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and (over the Danish royal family) the Romanov dynasty. The noble cousins themselves approached Willy, Nicky, and Georgie in private.
Even in 1913, Nicky and Willi's meeting in Germany was dignified and friendly. A year later, Russian and German soldiers stood against each other.
The war started the assassination of the successor to the Throne, Franz Ferdinand d'Este, act by Serbian separatists. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia during the month. Russian Tsar Nicholas declared in support of Serbia the mobilization of its armies. The German Emperor Wilhelm responded to this by declaring war on Russia and then France, into which he entered with his army through Belgium. The violation of Belgian neutrality led King George to declare war on Germany.
Other states, bound by military agreements, joined immediately. The Great War, later referred to as the World War One, was transferred to other continents. War conflict lasted until the ceasefire, which signed Germany on 11th November 1918 in Compiègne, France. The formal end of WWI was concluded by the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
With the visualization of the events on the timeline, we can check the contemporary context on the reign of related rulers, the launching of The Entente and The Alliance, and the World War.