A generation later, against a background of the social changes of the inter-war years, King George V’s eldest son Prince Edward (David) rebelled against the blind obedience to orders demanded of him by a father who, when he was a child, had come between him and his mother. Had King George been able to find it in him to exercise tolerance during his son’s prolonged adolescence, the course of royal history might have been changed. In the event, he came down heavily against David’s insubordination and found scapegoats for the anger which should have been directed at his neglectful but affable father, King Edward VII, in his sons. David and Bertie may not have been rivals for the love of the King’s doting mother Queen Alexandra but they were certainly rivals for the love of his wife Queen Mary.
Disapproving of almost every aspect of David’s life, from his dress to his choice of friends, King George converted a foolish, fun-loving ‘child’ into an angry and ultimately subversive adult. He only became a more caring father when, after a lifetime of service to the mother country his people gave him the unconditional love that he had lacked as a child. He may have had shortcomings as a father but as a son to his people he was without fault.
David, King George V’s heir, resembled his self-indulgent grand-father. He had a better relationship with King Edward VII than with his father who appeared to him to be not only bigoted but constantly disapproving. David’s naturally ebullient feelings were suppressed by his parents in the interests of training him for kingship. As a young adult, like his grandfather and much to his parents’ disgust, he formed liaisons with a number of women. Although unable to admit it, he admired his father’s genuine patriotism, but as King Edward VIII he directed this admiration towards the distorted nationalistic ‘patriotism’ of Nazi Germany. In the shadow of the Second World War the British establishment became increasingly suspicious of his fascination with Nazi ideology and particularly with his relationship with Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German envoy in Britain.
King Edward VIII reigned for only 326 days after the death of his father. Forced out of the country by the leaders of both Church and state, he was secretly suspected of becoming a security risk. The stratagem of banning his marriage to the American divorcée Mrs Wallis Simpson was used to banish him. The King had refused to end his relationship with Mrs Simpson after his proclamation. When she was granted a decree nisi at Ipswich Assizes on 27 October 1936 he announced to Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, that he intended marrying Mrs Simpson as soon as her divorce was made absolute. The Church, Queen Mary and the Cabinet (the latter invoking various precedents) refused to consider a marriage which would result in Mrs Simpson becoming Queen Consort. The King insisted that he was unable to live without the woman he loved, and on 10 December 1936 he was forced to sign the Instrument of Abdication, leaving the throne to his brother Bertie, the Duke of York. Kept in the dark about King Edward VIII’s enchantment with the enemy, the British people were sorry to see him go.
Like his father before him, Bertie, Duke of York, was second choice for King. Like his father, he was anxious, inarticulate and unprepared for the role. He had greatness thrust upon him by a war that gave him a status he had never sought. He and his wife Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, crowned King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in May 1937, helped to restore to the monarchy a popularity not seen since the reign of King George V and Queen Mary.
By the time of her death in 1953, the Dowager Queen Mary had lost her parents, her brother Prince Frank, her husband, her sons Prince John, Prince George, Duke of Kent (in an air crash in 1942) and Bertie (from cancer in 1952). She had thus lost most of the ‘jewels’ in her crown but not the monarchical role that she had craved. Her attachment to the monarchy remained firm and she neither condemned nor criticized it. She had known that Prince Eddy was unsuited to be King, but she had agreed to marry him. She had accepted Prince George’s hand in marriage despite her realization that she would be marrying her intellectual inferior. She had even supported her son David whose morality she deplored. She would certainly support her son Bertie, knowing his weaknesses but appreciating his strengths. She accepted the psychological difficulties of Bertie’s younger brother Prince Henry, later the Duke of Gloucester, and the homosexuality and drug abuse of the youngest of all, Prince George, later the Duke of Kent. As far as she was concerned her heirs were free to behave as badly as they wished as long as such behaviour was in private and did not bring the monarchy into disrepute. Queen Mary lived long enough to see the new King and Queen, in their wartime role, bring fresh honours to the House of Windsor.
In the immediate post-war years, despite the financial hardship and unemployment that resulted, the British people knew that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who had gone through the war with them, had shared their hopes and fears. Now that the war was over they found that the Royal Family was still by their side as the Festival of Britain celebrated the birth of the post-war era.
With the abdication of King Edward VIII, the legacy of sexual need posing as love (ironically passed on by the seemingly asexual King George V) seemed to have come to an end. King Edward VIII’s brother King George VI showed no interest in sexual philandering. He had no sons to bully, as his father had bullied him, and when the reins of monarchy were handed over to his daughter Princess Elizabeth, on her father’s death in 1952, it seemed reasonable to assume that the pattern of promiscuity introduced by King Edward VII had now ended.
Queen Elizabeth II carries on the tradition emulated by her revered grandfather King George V. Living as he did in the monarchical past, she wears the clothes of an earlier time and, like her grandmother Queen Mary, has not changed her hair-style since her accession. Not for her ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’. She abhors change but, as Princess Elizabeth, had married a man whose fractured upbringing was not dissimilar to that of her father. The Duke of Edinburgh’s father, Prince Andrew of Greece, had abandoned his wife shortly after the family had been helped to escape to France from a revolution in Greece by King George V. The young Prince Philip was brought up by his deaf mother and his four elder sisters. With no father on whom to model himself, Prince Philip relied on naval discipline to bring up his son Prince Charles. Determined, true to form, to ‘make a man of him’ he sent Prince Charles away to a school whose harsh discipline was quite unsuited to his son’s timid personality. The combination of absentee parents (constitutional duties following the death of King George VI took Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip away for months at a time) and a martinet of a father set Prince Charles on a well-trodden royal road.
Encouraged to marry the unhappy, love-seeking Lady Diana Spencer, but refusing to give up his long-standing relationship with a married woman, Prince Charles once again provoked a royal scandal, which was this time brought to the public eye by an intrusive press. When Prince Charles’s wife, by then Princess Diana, publicly retaliated against her husband’s self-declared adultery the monarchy seemed to be in danger of being replaced by a republic. Ironically, it was Princess Diana’s tragic death at the age of thirty-six that made the British people realize that Royalty was a role model for other families only if their indiscretions were kept well hidden. Having been blamed for hounding the Princess to her death, and now bound to silence, the press called a moratorium and finally allowed the monarchy if not to mend its ways at least to keep quiet about them.
King George V had bestowed upon the House of Windsor a status that was almost destroyed by his son King Edward VIII and later by his great-grandson Prince Charles. Despite having grown up in a broken home and being sent away to boarding schools, Prince William and Prince Harry were dearly and manifestly loved by both their mother and Prince Charles. If left in peace by the media, they might yet inherit the mantle of nobility and dignity left to them by their great-great-grandfather King George V
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The infant Prince George photographed in 1867
The Times Picture Library
Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra with their baby son Prince George and his older brother Prince Eddy, the Duke of Clarence, 1867
The Times Picture Library
Prince George aged fourteen with his mother Princess Alexandra
The Times Picture Library
Prince George (centre) with his brother Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, learning to tie knots on the training ship HMS Britannia
The Times Picture Library
Prince George aged nineteen in naval uniform, 1884
The Times Picture Library
The Princes Eddy (left) and George while in the Navy
The Times Picture Library
Prince George and Princess May of Teck, taken on their wedding day, 6 July 1893
The Times Picture Library
King George V’s children, clockwise from top left: Prince Bertie (the future George VI), Edward, Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, Prince George, Princess May and Prince John, 1916
Al Fayed Archive
Framed portrait of King George V’s wife, Queen Mary, 1911
Al Fayed Archive
Prince George in naval uniform, signed ‘Papa, 1896’
Al Fayed Archive
King George with Major-General H. Hudson cheered by men of the 25th Infantry Brigade, Fouquereuil, France, 11 August 1916
Al Fayed Archive
King George visiting war graves in Belgium with Rudyard Kipling, c. 1925
The Times Picture Library
King George and Queen Mary during a shooting party at Sandringham, c. 1934
Al Fayed Archive
King George making the first ever Christmas broadcast in 1934
The Times Picture Library
King George’s last journey; his subjects pay their respects at Littleport, near Ely, as the royal train bearing the late King’s body passes by on its way from Sandringham to London, January 1936
The Times Picture Library
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Darling Georgie Page 24