Queen facts you never knew before yesterday/today

[sborber]

I had no idea she birthed (the now King) Charles via C-section, at home, IN Buckingham Palace... Imagine!

@CaveMum since Edward VIll's advisers thought he'd go so bad a job at being king, they hoped held fall off his horse and break his neck. I don't think Churchill was wrong.

Ooh I didn’t know that about Edward VII possibly bring sterile. So Elizabeth was raised with the expectation she might be Queen? That doesn’t play out on the narrative they used in the Crown (I know that’s fiction!)

didn’t they really resent Edward because his abdication had thrown Bertie into the top spot, which likely contributed to his early death? Or am I misremembering.

yes i believe the qm hated him and wallis

The QM hated them and blamed them for her husband’s early death. She refused to receive them for years and only saw Wallis again at the Duke of Windsor’s funeral.

Also Wallis and Edward VIII, as he was at the time, were pretty cruel to the then Duchess of York, calling her “The Dowdy Duchess” and referring to her as being more like a “fat-bottomed cook” than a Duchess.

The also used to call her “Cookie” in reference to being more like the cook/housekeeper

And her weight too I think.

I think she was raised with the strong possibility that she would be queen, but because of the abdication and then her fathers early death, it happened much sooner than expected.

I think also the family were horrified that Edward did not fulfil his 'duty' to the Crown - so there was just this huge anger & resentment.

But as Margaret said in the series "Not everything that is wrong in this family can be blamed on the abdication! "

George V hoped that Edward VIII wouldn’t marry because he wanted the throne to go to George VI and Elizabeth, though undoubtedly not in the way it did.

“I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and have children,” he reportedly told a friend, “and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.”

All the people who used to say HM Queen should abdicate failed to take into account that she saw the fallout from Edward VIII’s abdication and that it almost brought the monarchy down. Even though any abdication on her part would have been under totally different circumstances she did not want to be tainted by association.

I imagine if she felt she couldn’t carry out her duties she would have opted for a regency, with Charles as Prince Regent. Although I can’t think about “Prince Regent” without picturing Hugh Laurie!

Who are the 5?

yes, i realised that yesterday and need to mention it to my own dm who is 87
i had to look them up
george v
edward viii
george 6
elizabeth ii
charles iii

Ed VI was said to have a todger the size of a cashew nut. Can’t remember who put that in their memoirs. Probably Chips Channon

Edward VIII !

One of the broadcasters today quoted - I think - Churchill as saying that in fact Wallis Simpson was the best thing to have happened to the monarchy

Yes, I think the full quote was that there should be a statue of her in every village, town and city in the country in thanks to her taking Edward VIII off our hands!

He would have been the death of the monarchy, I'm certain.

Thanks for sharing. My 90 yo Nan was quite pleased to hear she'd seen five in her lifetime - her memory isn't the best these days.

i’ve just learned the queen gave Daniel Craig CMG in the honours list- usually reserved for spies/secret service etc.

the same award James Bond had 😂

That was something I didn't know until the Queen died. I would have thought it was Charlotte!

Yes my DH commented on that at the time. I didn't know.

We were talking about this yesterday (I'd not heard that story about him or that he was sterile) but thought that she might have always ended up as Queen as he didn't have any kids with Wallis. He died in 1972 so she might still have made a Golden Jubilee and while not beating Victoria, she would have still been Queen for a very long time. That's assuming he wouldn't have killed the monarchy by then of course, or ended up on trial for treason given his Nazi links (can the king be hanged for high treason).

And yet my mum who is only five years younger has only seen 3 - George Vi, Elizabeth and Charles III.

All those monarchs in such a short space of time!

My grandad was born in the late 1880's and died in the mid 1970's.
He saw 6 monarchs (a Londoner, so literally saw):

Victoria
Edward VII
George V
Edward VIII
George VI
QEII

I saw something on TV, can’t remember the channel but it was something like Hunting Hitler/Hitlers Mistakes. Anyway, they said that the security services asked Edward VIII to report/spy on some of the aristocracy because they thought some would support Hitler. His reports showed that he was the biggest Hitler supporter.

When you think about it from Victoria's ascension in 1837 to Elizabeth's death is 185 years. In that time we only had male monarchs for 51 years. My parents had 3 of them in a 15 year period (1936-1952). They were married in the same year as Elizabeth and Philip and my eldest brother was in the same year as Charles. My brother has been retired for 9 years and has no intention of starting again.

I didn't appreciate when I was younger how traumatic the Abdication crisis was for the royal family and the country but now I see they must have felt personally threatened as it was only 20 years since WW1 when so many of their relatives were eliminated. And the '30s were like our present times x 100 for social and national turmoil so being deposed and even killed were not unthinkable hence the hatred for Edward V111 for deserting his post. And the significance of the Princess Elizabeth's personal promise of commitment.
Interestingly I have seen and read that Wallis Simpson tried not to marry him but gave way under threats of him committing suicide if she did not which says a lot really. They were definitely both fascist sympathisers like many others of the times both rich and poor.

I didn’t know about the C sections at all. Must have been quite dangerous in those days!