Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 03:54 PM 11/9/1999 -0000, B. D. Colen wrote: >And isn't Windsor a nom-de-Brit that the family adopted around the time of >WW I to hide as best they could the fact that their royal genes are German, >not British. Weren't Kaiser Willie and George V first cousins? Prince Philip >is a Greek, fer God's sake! My heavens, BD, how we foul up a fairly straightforward historical record! The reigning house of Great Britain ceased to be the Tudors upon the death of Elizabeth I, when James VI of Scotland, a cousin, came to the throne. His great-grand-daughter was Queen Anne, who died in 1714, bringing (illegally or, at the least, improperly in this Celti's eyes) George I of Hannover to the British throne, at which point the House name changes to Hanover. He was a distant relative of James I, but was primarily German: he and his son, George II, never spoke English. George II's grandson, however, was that most-British George III, the one we spatted a bit with. While George III did speak some German, his son, "Prinnie" (George IV) and William IV did not, and certainly Victoria, his grand-daughter, spoke very little until she married Albert of Saxe-Coburg (yes, he's the one who's "been on the can for years"), when the House name becomes Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria's grand-son, another most-British sort, George V, changed the House name to Windsor in 1917, when he also reduced dramatically the use of "prince" by those of the Royal blood. (In 1917, H G Wells, a noted Socialist, called for the abolition of "an alien and uninspiring monarchy", to which George V grumbled privately that, "uninspiring I may be, but I'll be damned if I'm an alien!") The connexions between George V, Wilhelm II, and Nicholas II were through Victoria, not through the Germans, though the close relationship between the Windsors and the Montbattens (and, hence, Prince Phillip) descend through a German line, Prince Louis of Battenberg being married to the sister of the latest Czarina. Prince Phillip is "Greek" only by virtue of being a member of the Greek Royal House: his family are actually off-shoots of the House of Hohenzollern. (George V and Nicholas II were both grand-sons of Victoria, the one through her eldest child, Victoria, the wife of the "99-day Kaiser" and the other the second son of her oldest son, "Bertie" (the future Edward VII). In short, George V was one-quater German (Prince Albert), one quarter English (Victoria), and one-half Danish (his mother, the sister of the Dowager Czarina of First War fame). Again, the Almanach de Gotha, or Debrett's, or Burke's or even Whitaker's, will make this all crystalline to you. It is interesting and most important, if you are attempting to figure out precisely how we arrived at our current state of world affairs. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!