George V – Biography, Marriage, Successor & Death

May 4, 2020 by Santosh Bhunia

George V was born George Frederick Ernest Albert on June 3, 1865, and died January 20, 1936, was king of the United Kingdom and the dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland), and emperor of India of May 6, 1910, to his death.

George was the grandson of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and the first cousin of Tsar Nicholas II and the German Emperor William II. From 1877 to 1891, he served in the Royal Navy and reached the rank of Commander.

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, George’s father became king under the name of Edward VII and George was made Prince of Wales. On the death of his father in 1910, he succeeded him as king-emperor of the British Empire under the name of George V. He was the only Emperor of India to attend his darbar in Delhi.

Following the First World War, the British Empire reached its maximum extent. In 1917, he became the first monarch of the house of Windsor after having renamed the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha because of anti-German feelings in the United Kingdom.

His reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and Indian independence which radically changed the political landscape. The Parliament Act of 1911 establishes the supremacy of the House of Commons elected by the people over the House of Lords whose members are appointed by the sovereign.

In 1924 George V appointed the first British Labor Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster removed dominion rights from the Commonwealth of Nations. Victim of health problems in the last years of his reign, he died on January 20, 1936, and his eldest son Edward succeeded him under the name of Edward VIII.

The Early Life of George V

Prince George V is born on June 3, 1865, at the Royal Residence of Marlborough House in London. His father is the Prince of Wales, future Edward VII, eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Her mother is Princess of Wales Alexandra of Denmark, eldest daughter of King Christian IX. As the Prince of Wales’ son, George receives the predicate: His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales. He was baptized in the chapel of St. George of Windsor Castle on July 7, 1865, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley.

As the cadet of the Prince of Wales, George is unlikely to rise to the throne. His older brother, Albert Victor, is second in succession after his father. The two brothers are only 17 months apart and they are raised together; in 1871 John Neale Dalton was chosen to be their tutor.

Neither Albert Victor nor George excelled intellectually. Their father considers the navy to be the best possible training for a boy 5 and the two brothers join the Royal Navy in September 1877and are deployed on the training vessel HMS Prince of Wales stationed at Dartmouth.

From 1879, Albert Victor and George V served for three years on HMS Bacchante accompanied by Dalton. They tour the colonies of the British Empire in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Australia and go to the United States, South America, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Asia.

In Japan, George asked a local tattoo artist to draw a blue and red dragon on his arm. Dalton writes about The Cruise of HMS Bacchante. between Melbourne and Sydney, Dalton notes the vision of the ghost ship the Flying Dutchman.

When they returned to the United Kingdom, Queen Victoria complained that her grandchildren did not speak French or German and the two brothers were sent six months to Lausanne in Switzerland but were unable to learn another language.

After Lausanne, Albert Victor, and George are separated; Albert Victor entered the Trinity College of Cambridge University and George remains in the Royal Navy. He made many trips around the world and visited many regions of the British Empire until his last command in 1891-1892 as a captain. After that, his rank in the Royal Navy was largely honorary.

George V Marriage with Mary of Teck

As a young man destined to serve in the navy, Prince George V remained for several years under the command of his uncle, Prince Alfred of Edinburgh who was stationed in Malta. On the island, he meets and falls in love with the daughter of his uncle, his cousin Marie of Edinburgh.

Her grandmother, father, and uncle approved the union, but their mothers, the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Edinburgh opposed it. The Princess of Wales thinks that the family is too pro-German and the Duchess of Edinburgh does not like England and does not want a marriage between first cousins (practice prohibited by the Russian Orthodox Church). Pushed by his mother,

Ferdinand, the heir to the Romanian throne, in 1893. In November 1891, George’s older brother, Albert Victor got engaged with his first cousin, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. Her father, François de Teck, belongs to a younger and morganatic branch of the House of Württemberg.

Her mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, is the granddaughter in the male line of King George III and the first cousin of Queen Victoria. Six weeks after the engagement, Albert Victor died of pneumonia; George thus passes in the second position in the order of succession to the British throne and becoming a direct heir, it becomes likely that he succeeds his father.

George V has just recovered from a serious illness and stayed in bed for six weeks due to typhoid fever. Queen Victoria continues to consider Mary of Teck as a possible partner for her grandson George and they get closer during the mourning period.

A year after the death of Albert Victor, George V and Mary become engaged and they married on July 6, 1893in the royal chapel of Saint James palace in London. Although the marriage has been arranged, the two spouses develop a deep affection for each other.

George is, by his own admission, unable to easily express his feelings orally, but they frequently exchange letters and notes of affection.

Duke of York

The death of his older brother put an end to George’s military career, being second in succession to his father. George is made Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney by Queen Victoria May 24, 1892, and receives lessons in constitutional history with JR Tanner. After her marriage to George, Mary received the title of Royal Highness, Duchess of York.

The Duke and Duchess of York reside primarily at York Cottage, a relatively small residence near Sandringham House where their lifestyle is more like that of an affluent middle-class family than that of the aristocracy.

George prefers a simple and peaceful life as opposed to his father’s hectic social life. His official biographer, Harold Nicolson, commented negatively on this period: He may have been a perfect young cadet and a wise old king, but when he was Duke of York… he did nothing but hunt and stick stamps.

George is a famous philatelist, which Nicolson despises but it played a large role in the creation of the Royal Philatelic Collection which became the most complete collection of stamps in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

George and Mary have five sons and one daughter. Randolph Churchill claims that George is a strict father whose children are afraid and reports George’s words to Edward Stanley, my father was afraid of his mother, I was afraid of my father and I will make sure that my children are afraid of me.

Since there is no direct source of this confidence, it is likely that George’s education was similar to that of most parents at the time.

Prince of Wales

In Melbourne, Australia, George V opened the first parliamentary session of the newly created Commonwealth of Australia on May 9, 1901. On his return, his father gave him the traditional title of heir to the throne, on which George was appointed Prince of Wales on November 9, 1901.

Edward VII was willing to prepare his son for his future role as king better than he had been prepared, which is why Georg had extensive access to cabinet papers and other state documents. Between 1905 and 1907, as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, George held the oldest military office in the monarchy and supported the naval reforms of the First Sea Lord, Admiral John Fisher.

On an eight-month tour of British India between October 1905 and May 1906, Georg gained a deeper insight into the living conditions of the subcontinent.

In 1906 the Prince and Princess of Wales attended the wedding of George’s cousin Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg to the Spanish king Alfonso XIII. as well as the coronation ceremony of his sister Maud and her husband Haakon VII in Norway.

Accession to the British Throne and Coronation

After Edward VII died on May 6, 1910, and George became king. On the death of his father, he wrote in his diary: I have lost my best friend and the best of parents … I never had a single word of anger with him.

I am overwhelmed with pain and my heart is broken, but God will help me in my responsibilities and my dear May will be my comfort as always has been. May God give me strength and guidance in the heavy task that has fallen on me.

Jorge never liked his wife’s habit of signing official documents and letters like “Victoria Mary” and insisted that he stop using one of the names. Both agreed that she should not be called Queen Victoria and thus became Queen Mary.

Later that year, a radical propagandist named Edward Mylius published the lie that the king had secretly married in Malta when he was young and that, consequently, his marriage to Queen Mary constituted bigamy.

The hoax first appeared in the press in 1893, but Jorge took it as a joke. In an effort to end the rumors, Mylius was arrested, tried, and convicted of defamation and sentenced to one year in prison.

The coronation of the new kings took place at Westminster Abbey on June 22, 1911. The event was celebrated with the Festival of the Empire in London. Later that year, the King and Queen traveled to India for the Delhi Durbar, where they were presented on December 12, 1911, before an audience of Indian dignitaries and princes, such as the Emperor and Empress of India.

George used the newly created Imperial Crown of India for the ceremony and during the event, he proclaimed the change of the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi. On December 15, he laid the foundation stone for New Delhi alongside Queen Mary.

They traveled along the subcontinent and Jorge took the opportunity to enjoy big game hunting; in Nepal, it killed 21 tigers, 8 rhinos, and a bear over the course of 10 days. He was an expert and enthusiastic shooter. On December 18, 1913, he shot nearly a thousand pheasants in six hours at Lord Burnham’s house, although he came to admit “we went a little too far” that day.

End of George V Reign

The First World War takes a heavy toll on the health of George V: he is seriously injured on October 28, 1915, when he falls from a horse during a military parade and his heavy smoking exacerbates his existing respiratory problems. He is a victim of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pleurisy.

In 1925, on the advice of his doctors, he reluctantly embarked on a private Mediterranean cruise; it was his third trip abroad since the end of the war and it was also his last. in November 1928, he developed sepsis and his son Edward assumed a large part of the royal duties during the following two years.

In the spring of 1929, the king’s proposal for a new convalescent stay abroad was rejected with rude language. Rather, he prefers to retire for three months to the seaside resort of Bognor in West Sussex. Following this stay, the city adopted the suffix “Regis”, Latin for “of the king”.

According to a rumor which develops later, his last words, when he is told that he would be quick enough to revisit the city, are Bugger Bognor! (“I don’t care about Bognor!”)

George never fully recovers. During his final year, he occasionally receives 90 oxygen. On the evening of January 15, 1936, the king goes to bed in his room at Sandringham House complaining of a cold; he will not leave the room alive. It becomes weaker and weaker and alternates between conscious and unconscious states. Prime Minister Baldwin says:

“Whenever he regained consciousness, he would ask kind questions or remarks and have kind words. He nevertheless said to his secretary: How is the Empire? A sentence unusual in this form and the secretary answered, all right, sir, with the Empire and the king gave him a smile and sank again into a coma. ”

Death and burial

The January 20, the king sees his last hours. Its doctors, with Lord Dawson of Penn at their head, publish a bulletin with these words the life of the king advances peacefully towards its end.

The private newspaper that Dawson keeps, found after his death and published in 1986, reveals that the king’s last words, a God damn you! (“Be cursed!”) Stammered, are addressed to her nurse while she administered him a sedative on the night of January 20.

Dawson writes that he had “accelerated” the king’s death by injecting him with a lethal dose of cocaine and morphine, order, he specifies, to preserve the dignity of the sovereign, but also to spare the family the vision of a slow agony and thus allow them to keep the pleasant memory of the man he was all his life, and thus to avoid having as last memory the image of a dying old man and kept alive only for the sacredness of it.

Finally, Dawson exposes us always in his diary, one last argument for his action: the ideal was that the time of death of the King ( 23h 55min ) may be announced in the morning edition of the newspaper The Times rather than in the less appropriate… evening newspapers.

The king died after more than 25 years of reign, at the age of 70. Immediately, his eldest son and heir, Edouard, succeeded him and became King Edward VIII. His second son, the Duke of York, became the heir apparent to the crown.

German composer Paul Hindemith goes to a BBC studio the morning after the king ‘s death and writes in six hours the suite Trauermusik (“funeral music”) which is played live on the radio by the symphony orchestra in the evening BBC, directed by Adrian Boult.

During the procession bringing the remains of George V to Westminster Hall, part of the imperial crown of India falls from the top of the coffin and lands in the gutter while the procession is turning in the New Palace Yard.

Who was king after George V. The new king, Edward VIII saw the incident and wondered if it was a bad omen for his reign. Ironically, he abdicated in December of the same year because of his escapades, and his brother Albert of York was crowned under the name of George VI.

As a sign of respect for their father, the four living sons of George V, Edward, Albert, Henry, and George stand guard in front of the catafalque night before the funeral. This ceremony was not repeated until 2002 after the death of the daughter-in-law of King George V, the Queen Consort, the Queen Mother Elizabeth, widow of King George VI.

King George V was buried in the chapel of St. George of Windsor Castle, alongside his father, January 28, 1936.