ROYAL CHOICES

While in one sense its members are spoiled for choice, our dear Royal Family has had constant difficulties in selecting “suitable” spouses. Yet it all started so swimmingly. Victoria fell head over heels for eligible German princeling Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and although he was initially looked upon with insular suspicion, Albert became a model Consort. He organised the Great Exhibition of 1851, introduced the Christmas tree and sired no fewer than 9 children before succumbing to typhoid in 1861 at Windsor Castle (poor drains). Reporting Albert’s death, The Times portentously began its Appreciation with “The Nation has suffered the greatest Catastrophe it is possible to imagine”. Victoria was famously inconsolable and Albert is lavishly commemorated with the jewel-like Albert Memorial, opposite the Albert Hall and not far from The Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Albert Memorial, Kensington Gardens, London

                 
It would have been natural if Victoria had channelled her affections upon her eldest son Albert Edward, known as “Bertie,” but, alas, Bertie was a fractious and grumpy youth and he grew up to be a very naughty boy indeed. “I never look at him without a shudder” declared his mother disloyally and, just 2 weeks before he died, Prince Albert reprimanded him sharply for his behaviour at Cambridge University and with an “actress”, Nellie Clifden, at an army camp. Her parents agreed he must marry and in 1863 Bertie duly married the Danish Princess Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (thankfully abbreviated to “Alix”). Alix was a popular and dutiful spouse but the competition for Bertie’s bed was intense. It was said that Bertie had 55 liaisons (who was counting?) and they included those with Lily Langtry, courtesan Guilia Berucci, Daisy, Countess of Warwick and Mrs Alice Keppel among many, many others

Alix knew of her husband’s infidelities; she became a fashionable princess with her trademark pearl choker (to hide a scar on her neck) and increasing deafness spared her from the tide of gossip and scandal surrounding Bertie. In the event, when Bertie succeeded as King Edward VII in 1901 he performed rather well, being genial and diplomatic. Alix was worldly enough to allow Alice Keppel to attend Bertie’s deathbed in 1910. To the outside world at least their marriage had been some kind of a success.
                                       
   

Edward VII's Alice Keppel

Queen Alexandra with her Choker

Bertie had 3 sons, two of whom lived to adulthood. The eldest, Prince Albert Victor was engaged to marry May of Teck, a German princess who was a daughter of the Duchess of Cambridge and had lived mainly in England. Sadly Albert Victor died in 1894, struck down by the pneumonia epidemic then ravaging Europe; with the blessing of the family May transferred her dynastic affections to the second son, George, Duke of York, and they were duly married.

George had trained as a sailor and was a diminutive disciplinarian and martinet. He bullied his two elder sons, David (later Edward VIII) and Bertie (later George VI) resulting in a distant relationship. May, known as Queen Mary from 1910, was a very grand lady towering over her husband, who soon enough had the 1911 Lords constitutional crisis and the 1914 Great War to cope with.

Regal Queen Mary

                                                  
George V’s private passion was slaughtering pheasant in industrial quantities at Sandringham and elsewhere. (He was a gun at a 1913 shoot which bagged 3,937 birds). His Queen obsessively collected antiques with royal connections; she would visit country houses and espying an item would simper “Oh, how much I would love to have that!” In the pregnant pause that followed, the luckless host often handed it over as a “gift” – not many had the courage to say “Yes, it is a cherished family heirloom and will never leave this house!” Queen Mary’s technique was often practised in antique shops in London and Windsor and the merest word that she was in the area soon caused proprietors to rush to raise their shutters and lock their doors!

George V died in 1936 and the Queen was appalled when her David (Edward VIII) preferred Wallis Simpson to his royal duties. She supported Bertie (George VI) and during the War was a rather ungrateful evacuated guest at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, getting by with only 55 servants. Queen Mary outlived her son, dying herself in 1953, twelve weeks before Elizabeth’s Coronation. She belonged to a different and more exclusive age.

Prince of Wales in 1932

Wallis Simpson

Her eldest son, David, became a most glamorous Edward, Prince of Wales. He was everything his father was not, modern, sociable, with an easy smile and he spoke with a cockney/trans-Atlantic drawl in contrast to his father’s precise guttural Germanic accents. He also had a restless eye for the ladies, with seductions of married women galore and his mistresses included Mrs Dudley Ward and Lady Furness. Fatally he then fell for Mrs Wallis Simpson, from Baltimore, Maryland, twice married, a brittle society lady of mixed reputation.
 
Wallis could just about be tolerated as the hidden mistress of a Prince, but when Edward acceded to the throne in January 1936 and soon expressed a wish to marry Wallis and make her his Queen, a full-scale constitutional crisis developed. The Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin enlisted the Dominions in vetoing Wallis and rather than give her up, Edward abdicated in December 1936. A wastrel and a cad, Britain was well rid of Edward. He and Wallis flirted with the Nazis, was exiled to the Bahamas for the War and thereafter lived in France. As the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they were rather sad fixtures of febrile café-society. Wallis dominated weak Edward; there were stories of her sexual talents – The Shanghai Grip featured tantalisingly – and her very sexuality was called into question. His gifts dissipated, Edward died in 1972 and Wallis herself in 1986.

Queen Elizabeth in the 1940s

There were many doubts about the suitability of knock-kneed Bertie who succeeded as George VI. Although afflicted with a bad stutter, Bertie effectively conquered it and was a dutiful, respected and conscientious monarch during the perilous war-time years. His very dullness was a merit after the Edward and Mrs Simpson soap-opera. He was much helped by his feisty Scottish wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, who was outgoing and confident.

Elizabeth was solid and sensible rather than fashionable and this appealed to the people. She protected her privacy, never giving an interview, and in popular folklore her vices were a fondness for gin and a love of horse-racing. She was also said to be rather extravagant – but then what is the point of being a queen? As the Queen Mother, she became a “national treasure” and lived to the extraordinary age of 102, finally leaving the scene in 2002.

The Queen and Prince Philip in 1953

Our present Queen, Elizabeth II, succeeded on the death of her father in 1952. She had already married in 1947 Prince Philip of Greece and of Denmark, a member of the Sonderburg-Glucksburg dynastic family. The family had been exiled from Greece and had lived in France and Germany. In 1934 Philip had moved from Salem School in Germany to Gordonstoun in Scotland. He joined the British Royal Navy when he was 18 and saw constant service throughout WW2. He had met Princess Elizabeth when she was 13 and corresponded thereafter. He sought her father’s permission to propose in 1946 and they were married in 1947 when Elizabeth was 21.
                      
He renounced his Greek and Danish titles and became a naturalised Briton as Duke of Edinburgh. Philip was always an energetic moderniser, impatient with court protocol and engaged with science and technology. He wanted to continue his naval career but he had to be at the Queen’s side (or more properly one step behind). He had a few lady friends but his behaviour was discreet. He remained enough of a sailor to be salty in his speech and his impromptu “humorous” remarks occasionally became undiplomatic gaffes. Philip is now almost 92 and his health is faltering. His almost obsessive dedication to The Firm and his public duties have been admirable. Her Majesty chose well.

The Queen and Prince Philip seem to have been much less successful as parents. Three of their four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward divorced their first spouses sometimes amid noisy scandal. Charles, the heir apparent, is frankly an oddball. A gawky and rather dim child, he hated Gordonstoun (“Colditz in kilts” he complained), managed a degree at Cambridge University, was embarrassed by the gaudy ceremony creating him Prince of Wales and rather grimly performed his duties within the three services. He never quite found a role to relish although he has developed the philanthropic Princes’ Trust, has thrown himself into environmental controversies and champions alternative, herbal medicine.

Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall

Princess Diana

He had various love affairs but was in danger of relapsing into a spoiled, crusty bachelor. He surrendered to his father’s pressure to woo and marry in 1981 glamorous and eligible Lady Diana Spencer, daughter of Earl Spencer, 13 years his junior.

The public was entranced but the marriage was a disaster. Although they produced two sons, William and Harry, Diana was poorly initiated into court life and Charles resented Diana bathing in the limelight to his neglect. They had little in common and Charles resumed his relationship with old flame Camilla Shand (now Mrs Parker-Bowles) and mercurial Diana was squired by James Gilbey, James Hewitt and various others. After years of estrangement they divorced in 1996. When Diana was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 with her then lover Dodi Fayed, there was a hysterical outburst of grief from the public which wrong-footed the monarchy, retrieved by a TV broadcast by the Queen and a moving funeral.

Charles endured deep unpopularity following Diana’s death and Camilla was already in bad odour from the earlier publication of the “Camillagate” tapes of intimate and improper conversations (wonderful copy for the tabloids) between her and Charles. Slowly and gingerly she has been introduced to public life. Charles married her in a civil ceremony in Windsor in 2005. She is known as The Duchess of Cornwall and performs her duties with grace, if without Diana’s glamour. As the Queen’s reign draws to its inevitable conclusion (she is 86) the public reception of King Charles and Queen Camilla is likely to be bumpy and cause some trepidation.


Charles’ son William, heir-presumptive, injected some welcome pizazz into the Windsor saga by marrying his university girl-friend Kate Middleton in April 2011 in a splendid ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Kate, now styled Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, is pretty, poised and pregnant. Unlike most royal spouses, her background is decidedly proletarian and future embarrassments may well be unavoidable. She has made a most promising start.

"Princess Kate"

This canter through royal spouses maybe only underlines the obvious; choosing the “right”spouse is a perilous exercise. The present age of serial adultery, gay marriage and admiration for the deplorable lives of football players sets few moral standards. Perhaps the House of Windsor’s mixed record is no worse than that of families throughout the realm.


SMD
7.06.13
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2013