RE: [Leica] OT: Windsors Use Leicas!

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Wow! Is that a mouthful! I am most impressed that you can even begin to keep
the royal lineage straight - something I obviously failed to do. But I guess
I get at least partial credit for a) knowing that "Windor" was a
nom-de-Brit, b) and knowing that at some point the "British"royals wanted to
"hide" their ties to Germany. As to Philip, doesn't being part of the Greek
royal family come close to being Greek? :-)





> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of
> Marc James
> Small
> Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 9:33 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: [Leica] OT: Windsors Use Leicas!
>
>
> 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!
>
>