The Queen

Sinead Fitzgibbon

THE QUEEN

History in an Hour

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Introduction

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Although this oft-quoted phrase from Shakespeare’s

Twelfth Night

 was coined some 400 years ago, during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth, its sentiment is one which exemplifies the life and reign of an altogether more modern monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.

Born into one of Europe’s longest-running dynastic monarchies, the infant Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of York, was third in line to the throne at the time of her birth. But despite occupying this rather elevated position in the royal pecking order, the probability of her ever acceding to the highest position in the land was remote to say the least – so remote, in fact, that no one seriously contemplated the possibility that such a situation would ever arise.

The line of succession was expected to pass to her father’s older brother David, the as-yet unmarried Prince of Wales, and subsequently to his future children; It would take a calamity of epic proportions to propel Elizabeth onto the throne. The young princess, it seemed, was destined to live a rather unspectacular life in relative royal obscurity, albeit with the privilege and comfort accordant with her position. But, if there is anything at all to be learned from history, it is that things rarely go according to plan.

In 1936, when Elizabeth was just ten years old, a cataclysmic event shook the British Royal Family to its very core. Quite unexpectedly, Elizabeth found herself in the centre of a maelstrom, the circumstances of which would alter the course of her life forever.

The House of Windsor

In the first twenty years of the twentieth century, the British Royal Family had undergone a period of profound change. The death of Queen Victoria in 1901, after a 63-year reign, marked the end of an era for her subjects. While her passing left many feeling bereft, others were hopeful that the accession of her son, Edward VII, to the throne would reinvigorate a monarchy which had stagnated in the latter decades of his mother’s reign.

Queen Victoria (1887)

Edward VII did prove himself willing to embrace change. In what seemed to some to be indecent haste, the new king enthusiastically set about banishing the lingering cobwebs of his mother’s long rule. In addition to ordering a dramatic refurbishment of the royal residences, he also devised a number of spectacular ceremonies, including the Trooping of the Colour, with the aim of injecting some much-needed pomp and pageantry into the monarchy.

However, Edward VII’s reign was not destined to be a long one – when he died just nine years after becoming king, the Crown passed to his son, George V. Although the serious-minded and conservative George was diametrically opposite in temperament to his more liberal-leaning father, it was during his reign that the British monarchy overcame the most difficult challenge it had faced in centuries.

Edward VII

During the First World War, when anti-German feeling was at its zenith, a wave of Republican sentiment swept through the country, threatening the monarchy’s very existence. This disaffection was borne out of the fact the British Royal Family was an offshoot of the historic German Hanoverian dynasty. To add insult to injury, Kaiser Wilhelm II was George V’s first cousin – and these close family ties with the reviled enemy rankled with a significant proportion of the British public.

George V and Queen Mary in 1914

Around this time, other hereditary European sovereigns were being deposed at an alarming rate, including another of George’s cousins, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. A terrible fate awaited him as he, and his family, would eventually be assassinated in an orgy of revolutionary zeal in 1918. George soon realized that, in order to prevent a similar fate befalling him, something had to be done, and fast.

Tsar Nicholas II and family (1904)

Eventually, in 1917, he hit on a solution to the problem. Displaying a keen survival instinct, which would continue to be a defining characteristic of the British monarchy to this day, George set about ‘Anglicizing’ his family. The only way to disassociate himself from his German ancestry, he decided, was to shed the family surname of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in favour of one which would be more pleasing to the British ear. After considering, and dismissing, a number of possibilities including Tudor, Stuart, Plantagenet, York and Lancaster, George and his advisors finally settled on the perfect dynastic surname for the British Royal Family – by Royal Proclamation on 17 July 1917, the House of Windsor was born.

An Uncommon Marriage

George did not stop there. Having successfully rebranded his branch of the family tree, this politically savvy king introduced yet another innovation which would further bolster his British credentials – he decided to break with tradition and allow his children to marry into British commoner (or non-Royal) families. Up to now, in order to strengthen their ties with their European neighbours, it had been the Hanoverian habit to marry their children off to scions of other Continental royal families. But now, George’s offspring were free to choose a spouse from the sons and daughters of British aristocratic clans.

One of the first members of the Royal Family to take advantage of the opportunity to introduce some ‘new blood’ into the lineage was George’s second son, Prince Albert, the Duke of York (known to all as Bertie). After a two-year courtship, during which she twice refused his proposals of marriage, Bertie finally became engaged to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in January 1923.

Bertie and Elizabeth (1920s)

When the wedding of Lady Elizabeth (a daughter of the Scottish Earl of Strathmore) and the Duke of York took place in Westminster Abbey on 26 April of the same year, the union was welcomed by an enthusiastic British public. Crowds lined the streets to cheer the newlyweds as they emerged from the Abbey, and large numbers congregated in front of Buckingham Palace to witness the couple’s brief appearance on the balcony. Evidence indeed that the British public’s love affair with their Royal Family had been rekindled.

As far as George V was concerned, it was mission accomplished.

The Birth of a Princess

After their high-profile nuptials, Bertie and Elizabeth would undoubtedly have preferred a peaceful start to their married life. But their royal status meant that, during the first few years at least, they were kept busy with a number of official visits abroad, no doubt calculated to capitalize on their popularity.

Then, after two years spent devoting themselves to their royal duties, the Duchess of York was delighted to discover, in the summer of 1925, that she was pregnant with the couple’s first child. Although the pregnancy was relatively uneventful, the birth proved to be difficult. Complications arose during the labour, which had begun a few days prematurely. To the relief of all concerned, the Duchess was finally delivered of a healthy daughter at 2.40 a.m. on 21 April 1926, at the couple’s home at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair. The newspapers of the time stated, somewhat mysteriously, that the Duchess was obliged to undergo ‘a certain line of treatment’, thought to be a euphemism for the procedure now known as a Caesarian section.

When news of the safe arrival of their first granddaughter reached Buckingham Palace by telegram a little while later, King George V and his wife, Queen Mary, were overjoyed. They visited the newest addition to their family the following day, and the Queen wrote in her diary: ‘Such a relief and joy. Saw the baby who was a little darling with a lovely complexion and pretty fair hair.’ The child’s christening took place the following month, on 29 May, at Buckingham Palace, using water from the River Jordan. As is royal custom, the young Princess was given names from previous generations of her illustrious family – she was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary after her mother, great-grandmother and grandmother respectively.

The ceremony was a grand occasion, and despite having died twenty-five years previously, Queen Victoria’s imposing shadow loomed large over the event. The gold baptismal font, which had been used to christen of all Victoria’s children, was conveyed from Windsor Castle for the occasion, while the child’s christening gown was another relic from a bygone era, having been originally used for Queen Victoria’s first daughter. Interestingly, for a woman who would soon learn never to show her feelings in public, Princess Elizabeth’s incessant wailing throughout the ceremony left her parents in no doubt that she was immensely unimpressed with the whole affair.

An Idyllic Childhood

When the young Princess was just eight months old, her parents were obliged to leave her behind in England when they embarked on another tour, this time of Australia. The enforced six-month separation, however, proved to be more difficult for her mother than for the infant herself, with the Duchess recalling later that parting from her beloved daughter ‘quite broke me up’.

Portrait of Princess Elizabeth, aged three (1929)

In her parent’s absence, the responsibility for Princess Elizabeth’s care mainly fell to her nanny, Clara Knight, who had also looked after the Duchess as a child. Known as ‘Alah’ to her young charges, this indomitable, no-nonsense woman was to have a profound influence on the young Elizabeth, who would continue to remember her fondly long into adulthood. The little Princess, however, was not completely without familial influence during those formative months when her parents were away. In addition to frequent visits to her maternal grandparents, she was also taken to see King George and Queen Mary ever