© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.

Victoria after her death. Their coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911.

On 11 December 1911, the King and Queen travelled to India for the Delhi Durbar, where they were presented to an assembled audience of Indian dignitaries and princes, as the Emperor and Empress of India. George wore the newly-created Imperial Crown of India at the ceremony. Later, the Emperor and Empress travelled throughout India, visiting their new subjects. George took the opportunity to indulge in hunting tigers, shooting 36, while ignoring his planned timetable to visit various dignitaries. Also during one season in Sandringham he shot 1,209 pheasants.

World War One

As King and Queen, George and Mary saw Britain through World War I, a difficult time for the Royal Family, as they had many German relatives. Although a female-line great granddaughter of King George III, Queen Mary was the daughter of the Duke of Teck, a morganatic section of the Royal House of W¸rttemberg. King George's paternal grandfather was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; the King and his children bore the titles Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke and Duchess of Saxony. The German Emperor Wilhelm II, who for the British public came to symbolise all the horrors of the war, was the king's first cousin, "Willy." The King had brothers-in-law and cousins who were British subjects but who bore German titles such as Duke and Duchess of Teck, Prince and Princess of Battenberg, Prince and Princess of Hesse and by Rhine, and Prince and Princess of Schleswig-Holstein-S¯nderburg-Augustenberg. Writer H.G. Wells wrote about Britain's "alien and uninspiring court", and George famously replied: "I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien."

On 17 July 1917, George V issued an Order in Council that changed the name of the British Royal House from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House of Windsor, to appease British nationalist feelings. He specifically adopted Windsor as the surname for all descendants of Queen Victoria then living in the United Kingdom, excluding females who married into other families and their descendants.

Finally, on behalf of his various relatives who were British subjects he relinquished the use of all German titles and styles, and adopted British-sounding surnames. George compensated several of his male relatives by creating them British peers. Thus, overnight his cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, became Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford-Haven, while his brother-in-law, the Duke of Teck, became Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge. Others, such as Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein and Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, simply stopped using their territorial designations. In Letters Patent dated 30 November 1917, the King restricted the style "His (or Her) Royal Highness" and the titular dignity of "Prince (or Princess) of Great Britain and Ireland" to the children of the Sovereign, the children of the sons of the Sovereign, and the eldest living son of the eldest living son of a Prince of Wales.

The Letters Patent also stated that "the titles of Royal Highness, Highness or Serene Highness, and the titular dignity of Prince and Princess shall cease except those titles already granted and remaining unrevoked." Relatives of the British Royal Family who fought on the German side, such as Prince Ernst August of Hanover, 3rd Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale (the senior male-line great grandson of George III) and Prince Carl Eduard, 2nd Duke of Albany and the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a male line grandson of Queen Victoria), were simply cut off; their British peerages were suspended by a 1919 Order in Council under the provisions of the Titles Deprivation Act 1917. George also removed their garter flags from St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle under pressure from his mother, Queen Alexandra.

Another of George's cousins was the Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, a first cousin of George through his mother, Queen Alexandra. Nicholas II's mother was Queen Alexandra's sister. The two men were almost identical in appearance. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 overthrew the ruling Romanovs, George asked his ministers to ensure that the Tsar and his family be saved and brought to Britain for their safety. Worsening conditions for the British people, and fears that revolution might come to the British Isles, led George to develop an atmosphere of austerity about himself. He reversed his position on the Romanovs, thinking that their presence might seem inappropriate under the circumstances. Despite the later claims of Lord Mountbatten of Burma that Lloyd George, the great Liberal, was opposed to the rescue of the Romanovs, records of the King's private secretary, Stamfordham, suggest that George V did this against the advice of Lloyd George, who is often wrongly blamed for the loss of the Romanovs. The Tsar and his immediate family thus remained in Russia and were murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg in 1918.

Later life

During and after World War I, many of the monarchies which had ruled most European countries fell. Emperor Nicholas II of Russia was executed in 1918. The monarchies of Austria, Germany, Greece, and Spain also fell to revolution and war, although the last was restored again shortly before George's death. Most of these countries were ruled by relatives of George. In 1922, George sent a Royal Navy ship to rescue his cousins, Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg and their children, including Prince Philip, who would later marry George's granddaughter, Elizabeth II. George also took an interest in the political turmoil in Ireland, expressing his horror at government-sanctioned killings and reprisals in a letter to Prime Minister Lloyd George.

World War I took its toll on George's health, which began to deteriorate rapidly. He had always had a weak chest, a weakness exacerbated by heavy smoking. A bout of illness saw him retire to the sea, by Bognor Regis in West Sussex where Queen Mary helped nurse him back to health (however, reputedly the King's last words, upon being told that he would soon be well enough to revisit Bognor Regis were "... bugger Bognor!!!") He did live to see the silver jubilee of his reign, in 1935, by which time he had become a well-loved king.

George's relationship with his heir, Prince Edward also deteriorated in his later years. George was disappointed in Edward's failure to settle down in life and disgusted by his many affairs with married women. He was also reluctant to see Edward inherit the crown. In contrast, he was fond of his second eldest son, Prince Albert (later George VI) and doted on his eldest granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth; he nicknamed her "Lilibet", and she affectionally called him "Grandpa England".

George was quoted as saying about his son Edward: "After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in 12 months," and later about Albert and Lilibet: "I pray to God that my eldest son Edward will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

Death

George died on 20 January 1936 at Sandringham House, and is buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. His end was allegedly hastened by his physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, who, it is rumoured, gave him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine. The courtier wanted to end the King's suffering, and perhaps hoped the monarch would die before midnight so that his death could be announced in the morning The Times rather than in the less prestigious afternoon newspapers.

At the King's lying in state in Westminster Hall, his four surviving sons, King Edward VIII, the

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oceania