20 May 1910. The streets below Windsor Castle were filled with crowds waiting for a sight of the gun carriage. Every window, roof top and ledge was commandeered to watch King Edward VII’s coffin complete the final stage of its journey. The late king, a once wayward youth, had become a popular monarch, ‘the Uncle of Europe’ whose contribution, especially in foreign diplomacy was respected. Thousands had passed silently by the king’s body when it lay in state in Westminster Hall. Even larger crowds watched the magnificent royal procession along the funeral route in London. The streets of Windsor offered a last chance for a glimpse of the great monarch who was to be buried as he had lived, in unimaginable splendour, accompanied on his way by many of the crowned heads of Europe. The solemn and carefully stage-managed event would unite royal relatives from across Europe in a unique pageant.
Nine years had elapsed since the death of Queen Victoria and yet her all-pervasive influence had continued with a momentum of its own through her descendants. In her later years the great matriarch had tried to maintain royal power through the dynastic marriages of her forty-two grandchildren. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren from her marriage to her beloved Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg formed a ‘galaxy of Emperors, Kings, Princes, Grand Dukes and Dukes’.1 By 1910, this dazzling constellation counted among their number the heirs to the British throne as well as the German Emperor, the ‘Tzar of all the Russias’, and cousins, uncles and aunts married into the royal houses of Norway, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Romania, Belgium, Portugal, Bulgaria and a myriad of princely dynasties. To the people in the streets they were the celebrities of their day. Photographs of royalty were included in family albums as a talking point, royal visitors to England were followed in newspaper reports, and on 20 May many of these commanding figures would be in the streets of Windsor.
The royal train steamed into Windsor station from London. Edward VII’s coffin was lifted onto a gun carriage and slowly the cortege, almost hidden from view by the accompanying Blue Coats, carried the King through the thronging streets to St George’s Chapel. Behind the procession of Blue Coats came nine of Europe’s monarchs, mounted on horseback, resplendent in military or ceremonial dress. To onlookers this appeared to be where absolute power resided, among the glittering plumed heads of Europe, difficult to distinguish among all the feathers and finery of their elaborate costumes. The new British king, George V, led the monarchs, followed closely by his cousin, the Emperor of Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on a white horse. Behind came seven other sovereigns and their entourages: the late king’s son-in-law, King Haakon VII of Norway, his brothers-in-law, George I of Greece and Frederick VIII of Denmark, his nephew-in-law, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and more distant cousins, King Albert I of Belgium, King Manuel II of Portugal and Tzar Ferdinand of Bulgaria. The kings were followed at a measured distance by thirty of Europe’s princes, many of them relatives, such as the late king’s nephew, Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Among them was the doomed heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne whose name was yet to make its mark in history: Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
The royal relations had come to pay their respects to the late king and also to take their place among the princely superstars. Even without the great matriarch that united many of them by blood, in 1910 the British monarchy was important, standing at the pinnacle of society in the largest empire the world had ever seen. The British Empire’s 11 million square miles spanned almost a quarter of the surface of the planet. Its 400 million subjects inhabited the subcontinent of India, the scorching deserts of Africa, the great forests of Canada, the distant outback of Australia, and even far flung coral islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. Britain’s Navy straddled the globe, her ships, steel, cotton, textiles, were sold across the world and fuelled the teeming prosperity of the country.
The heir to this extraordinary legacy, the late king’s grandson, fifteen-year-old Prince Edward, recognised what he would later call ‘the golden thread’ of his inheritance from his earliest years. He marched up the hill behind George V with his brother, fourteen-year-old Prince Albert, both princes dressed in their naval-cadet uniforms and required to show a dignity beyond their years on that hot day in May. Even for the confident Prince Edward, ‘it was all rather overpowering’, bringing an awareness of the very public role that he would soon be required to fulfil.2 His mother, the new Queen Mary, considered her confident oldest son well placed to meet the expectations upon him, but his grandmother, Queen Alexandra had her doubts, warning that he could dominate his brothers and sister, ‘laying down the law & thinking himself far superior to the younger ones.’3
Prince Edward’s dominance appeared to have had an effect on Prince Albert, who had failed to blossom in his older brother’s shadow and became shy and nervous, suffering from a debilitating stammer from the age of eight. Bertie, as he was known in the family, felt he compared unfavourably to Prince Edward and developed an almost excessive admiration of his older brother, while he himself shrank from view. He took ‘refuge . . . in silence’ knowing that any blighted attempt at speech might condemn him further.4 He would rather wait in a darkening room than face the daunting task of asking palace staff to light the gas lamps.5 His one sustaining comfort stemmed from his position as the second son: he was sure that he would always be able to avoid the limelight that shone so brightly on his older brother. On the day of his grandfather’s funeral he had the support of his younger brother and sister, Prince Henry and Princess Mary. George V and Queen Mary’s youngest two sons, Prince George and Prince John stayed away.
The gun carriage passed by the floral tributes which covered the grass outside the chapel. The royal procession followed behind at a stately pace, winding its way up the hill, past the Round Tower, into the courtyard and slowly filled the chapel. The mourners could not know as they took their places in the inside that they were marking a watershed in history. This was the high tide of royal power, the last blazing show of era that had begun to fade. Many of those commanding dignitaries lined up in the carved wooden pews that day were poised on the threshold of momentous change. The words from the burial service rang out across the chapel, reminding those present that all eventually ‘must come to dust’.
Within just a few years this glittering company would be divided by war and revolution; four empires were destroyed and several royal houses were thrown from their kingdoms. Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate his throne, his reputation demolished for the part he played in precipitating the First World War. Queen Victoria’s favourite granddaughter, Alexandra, the Tzarina of Russia, and her husband, Tzar Nicholas, their son and four beautiful daughters were brutally murdered. The King of Portugal, Manuel II was exiled from his country in 1910, as would be Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1931. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 fired the starting gun of a ‘Great War’ so terrible that the generation who lived through vowed there would never be war in Europe again.
But in spite of the tumultuous upheavals of world war and revolution that had parted many of their relatives from their thrones, the British monarchy survived intact. It emerged at the end of the First World War in 1918 with a new name, ‘Windsor’—replacing the German name of ‘Saxe-Coburg’—and at the helm of an expanded empire, swollen with a further 1,800,000 square miles. George V and Queen Mary were popular and their eldest son, Edward, the Prince of Wales, showed much promise, having all the necessary qualities in abundant supply to create a popular and successful monarch.
As the young Prince of Wales embarked on tours of the empire in the 1920s he was greeted by rapturous crowds keen to welcome the son of the British king. With his blonde good looks, his modernising approach and easy charm the heir to the throne became famous, his image recognisable across the empire. He was a man who knew his way in the world—he was idolised by the working classes for championing the cause of the under-privileged and was at the same time every young girl’s romantic day dream. The path chosen for him by fate and the role he had created for himself seemed perfectly united: he was the prince who embodied a shining new future. The British royal family, that symbol of the unity of the country and empire, appeared as strong an edifice as the towering walls of Windsor Castle. Nothing and no one, it seemed, had the power to damage this fabled dynasty or topple the occupant from the British throne.