Should Edward VIII been ostricized the way he was following the abdication?.

Started by Trudie, October 20, 2011, 04:37:15 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

amabel

well exactly.  that's what I said. 
Ed VIII was so young at the outbreak of the War, that it was unlikely that his parents were making marriage plans.  Besides George and Mary DIDNT seem to bother making marriage plans the way that Victoria did.
I don't even know of Edward VII making marriage plans for any of the children.  He may have been willing to help arrange a marriage for Albert Victor, but that was special circumstances.  And Alexandra didn't want the girls to marry so he wasn't likely to make marriage plans for them either. 
George V idd  not like foreigners and I don't think he would have pushed for his children ot marry anyone in particular... and when WWI had happened, it created a situation where many royal families had lost their thrones or had been enemies of England during the conflict. So the usual idea that "roylas should marry other royals" was ended.  After the war, I believe that he pronounced that his children didn't have to marry royals, that upper class British would do very well and be more popular with the public.

sandy

It is in the biographies. Matches were thought of for the royal children. NOt the same as Victoria. Obviously some thought went into George's making a match with Princess Marina.

What about Edward's daughter Maud becoming Queen Consort in Norway. Of course Edward made plans for her. Only one of Alexandra's daughters did not marry.
Maud of Wales - Wikipedia

Double post auto-merged: October 16, 2017, 11:27:07 AM


Quote from: amabel on October 16, 2017, 07:48:11 AM
which biographies?  Its sometime since I read any of George V or Edward VIII

The Windsor Story and other biographies

Books about George V and Mary

Double post auto-merged: October 16, 2017, 11:30:19 AM


Quote from: Curryong on October 16, 2017, 08:38:25 AM
Victoria was dead by early 1901 (when David was five) Edward VII died in 1910 when his grandson Edward was nearly 14, so they wouldn't be matchmaking on David's behalf in his young manhood. King George V and Queen Mary were very different kettles of fish to Victoria. I wouldn't put matchmaking activities for their children high on either of their agendas and none of their children married at a very early age.

Look, I don't dispute that perhaps newspapers, magazines and different female relatives around 'the extensive Royal mob' may have raised the prospect of Edward and Olga making a match of it in the future. It's the sort of thing that newspapers mused on with a young Charles and Princess Marie-Astrid in the 1970s. (They never met.)

However, consider the facts. Edward was born in the summer of 1894. He therefore was just 20 years old when World War One broke out. Was he ready to marry at twenty with a European war on the immediate horizon, especially with non-pushy parents? Don't think so. And in wartime there was no chance of he and Olga meeting.

They had seen each other in person for the one and only time as young children when the Tsar and Tsarina and their young family paid a brief visit to England on the Imperial yacht.

The rumours about Edward and Victoria of Prussia had a few more legs (a very few)  as at least the Hoenzollens and the BRF met reasonably frequently. However, Edward was only in his late teens when Victoria fell deeply in love with the Duke of Brunswick's heir and married him shortly before WW1 broke out.

The only young Prince that it is known that Alix reluctantly consented to Olga meeting was the heir to the Romanian throne, Prince Carol. Neither of the young people liked each other, and no doubt Alix took her daughter home with a sense of relief. She liked her daughters being at home with her and Nicholas.

Olga was reputed (and only reputed) to have had a few mild flirtations with a couple of Russian princelings and her mother is known to have refused an offer by a Prince Boris on her daughter's behalf as he was very much older and apparently debauched.

If there is anything in any serious biography of King George V, Queen Mary or Edward VIII referring to Edward's parents communicating with the Tsar about their son (just 20 in 1914, remember) wishing to make an offer for Olga, or any of the sets of parents arranging a meeting for the young people or even discussing a match between them by letter, then I would like to read it, as in no bio that I have read and there have been several, has anything of that sort been mentioned.

Olga was, like her father, Russian to her bootstraps and her heart and soul. She is said to have commented several times that she never wished to live outside Russia, or marry a non-Russian. If the war had never occurred and the dynasty had survived then I have no doubt whatsoever that Olga would have ended up as the wife of a high-born Russian aristocrat, perhaps from one of the extended branches of the Romanov clan.

Lord Mountbatten did say that one of the Grand Duchesses was considered as a bride for Edward. And Lord Mountbatten talked of a possible match between him and Grand Duchess Marie. He kept her photograph until the day he died. He even met Grand Duchess Marie and he fell in love with her. so it was out there, and HE was there to know what went on. And I read this in the biographies. 

Olga was a homebody and did not want to leave Russia. If she had she would have survived.

Curryong

Princess Maud married her first cousin Prince Charles of Denmark. She'd known him for years from visits to Denmark and Carl visiting his aunt and cousins in Britain. He was a little younger than her. Alexandra never really encouraged her children (especially her daughters) to marry. She liked them to remain at home. (Louise, her eldest daughter, decided on her own when she was quite young, to marry Lord Fife who was a good bit older than her. Alexandra wanted a handmaiden/companion so the middle sister Victoria remained single.)

It was many years after her marriage that Charles (or Carl) was offered the throne of Norway and became King Haakon. Carl and Maud were married during Queen Victoria's lifetime, in 1896. Her brother George of York didn't do any matchmaking on her behalf, and there seems to have been a feeling in the family from Vicky and Queen Victoria's letters to each other on their engagement of 'Oh thank God, Maud isn't getting any younger and Carl is a nice boy.'

I can actually remember that documentary, and Mountbatten saying that he had a soft spot for Marie and always hoped it would come to something etc etc. However, he was 18 when Marie, unknown to him, was killed in Russia. Not an age when you make up your mind to marry!

Louis Mountbatten (Battenburg) did meet up with his Russian cousins a bit more than the BRF did as his mother, Victoria and Alix were sisters. However he wouldn't have met Marie after war broke out when he was fourteen and went off to naval college. So, a nice heart-warming story but nothing much else to go on.

Marina and George of Kent met at a party in London held by Lady Cunard, a wealthy society hostess of the time. Marina was staying at Claridges with her bills there paid by her sister Olga who was married to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. They didn't meet for a year after that, though they corresponded, and then Prince Paul issued an invitation to George to visit Yugoslavia. He was obviously attracted to Marina and accepted. He visited Prince Paul and Olga in Belgrade, met Marina again and explored the countryside. He proposed to Marina out there.

Although King George V and Queen Mary obviously liked Marina when they met her and approved their son's choice, there's very little evidence that George and Mary had anything to do with George choosing Marina as his bride. If anything it was Prince Paul and Princess Olga who facilitated things.

sandy

Some royals get betrothed as teens. Maybe he really wanted to marry her.

There is a photo of British royals meeting the Russian Royal Family pre war.

I think George and Mary were happy with Marina and she was even spoken of as a possible wife for Edward.

Double post auto-merged: October 16, 2017, 02:23:17 PM


Uneasy lies the Head that Wears a Crown

Curryong

I wrote in my first post about this matchmaking thing that Nicholas and Alix had visited Britain briefly on the Imperial yacht when David and Olga were both children.

Mountbatten wouldn't have been considered of sufficient rank to have married the Grand Duchess Marie, daughter of the Tsar if there had been no war and if the dynasty had survived, even if he was fond of her at fourteen.

David made no attempt before the war when he was in his late teens to see his presumed great love Olga, nor did George and May ever invite Olga and her mother to England. There is no evidence in letters or anything else that they did matchmaking for any of their children,though Mary was interested in Bertie's courtship of Elizabeth. In fact biographers have remarked on their detachment about that.

Edward briefly showed an interest in the very young Marina in the 1920s and why not! She was very attractive and soigne even at that age. Marina's mother, who's chief aim was to if possible marry off her daughters to Kings or their heirs, was beside herself. But soon David lost interest and was back with Freda Dudley Ward.

You think that Louis Battenburg (Mountbatten would seriously consider himself engaged to Marie at the age of fourteen, which was how old he was when war broke out, or that his parents would seriously regard it as a possible match!!! I certainly don't think they or Alix or Nicholas would!

Or that David, in spite of neither himself or his parents making any attempt to get to know the Grand Duchess Olga, would, at the age of twenty at the beginning of the war, consider himself engaged to her? Neither his behaviour in starting an affair with Freda whom he met in a cellar/air raid shelter in 1917, nor Geoege V's in refusing sanctuary to Nicholas's family point in that direction at all.

And surely, if he and May had pushed for an engagement between David and Olga before the
war, they would have moved heaven and earth to get her and her family out of Bolshevik hands to safety.

Very early engagements in Princes and Princesses' childhoods were very common before the eighteenth century. By the 19th, with the exception of Prince Albert the Prince Consort, that age for Princes had moved to at least the early twenties though Princesses were married off earlier. Even Queen Victoria, who was very anxious indeed to marry Bertie off, had the decency to wait until he was 22! And she WAS a convinced matchmaker.

By the 20th century things had changed. Princes certainly weren't getting engaged in their teens. George and May didn't matchmake and these are the ages of their children at marriage.

Edward, almost 43; Albert (George) 27; Mary almost 25; Henry, 35; George, almost 32.

No signs whatsoever of being pushed into any marriages by any of them, all love matches, in spite of rumours about Mary, and mature ages for all of them, especially the sons.

sandy

He had a crush on her. She was a younger daughter, and he had royal blood and they were both descendants of Victoria's daughter Alice. I don't think it would have been unheard of for her to marry him.

The War changed things. Had there been no WW I, David might have married a Princess from another Kingdom.

Edward waited an unusually long time to marry. 43 was considered an "advanced age" back then. Henry and George were playboys before they settled down. George and Henry were rumored to have love children during their bachelorhoods. Beryl Markham allegedly had a child by Henry.  Bertie had a married mistress when he was in his early twenties. He dropped her and then courted Elizabeth

The Happy Valley set

The night Prince Harry came to blows over the lover he shared with his brother: Not that one, his namesake | Daily Mail Online

Curryong

Nobody's denying that George of Kent especially, had a very colourful life, that Henry Gloucester, the bovine blunderer, may have slipped up once or twice or that David had several mistresses.

However, that doesn't negate the fact that there is no evidence that George and Mary pushed for a marriage between David and Olga of Russia, or indeed marriages for any of their children, nor any proof that Edward ever seriously considered Olga as a bride, considering his young age.

Rumours aren't facts, and Mountbatten certainly spread a few in his lifetime, including that he was responsible for Philip's engagement to Elizabeth for example, something that is pretty well denied by published family letters etc.

David could indeed have very easily become engaged to Marina. Certainly Princess Nicholas, Marina's mother hoped so, as perhaps did Marina herself. However David's interest in Marina didn't last and he went back to Freda.

sandy

This would have been before the War. As I said, it was discussed in biographies where pre WW I possible matches were suggested for him. I am not saying they did any "pushing" but as was traditional, marriages to princesses in other Kingdoms were considered suitable as were those to aristos. I do think Mountbatten was sincere about Marie. I don't think he embellished. Why would he keep her picture then?

Curryong

Yes, I think the teenage Mountbatten did have a soft spot for poor Marie and that remained all his life. I think he said in the documentary that the vile murders of Nicholas and Alix and their children 'cast a shadow over our family for a very long time.' Mountbatten's mother Victoria, poor woman, grew old knowing that her beautiful sister Ella had been thrown down a mineshaft while still alive, and her sister, brother in law and their children were all butchered in a cellar. Not to mention another brother in law Sergei, blown up by a bomb. Just incredibly heartbreakingly awful, whatever Nicky and Alix's faults.

amabel

Quote from: sandy on October 16, 2017, 03:25:20 PM
This would have been before the War. As I said, it was discussed in biographies where pre WW I possible matches were suggested for him. I am not saying they did any "pushing" but as was traditional, marriages to princesses in other Kingdoms were considered suitable as were those to aristos. I do think Mountbatten was sincere about Marie. I don't think he embellished. Why would he keep her picture then?
One, I don't see what Mountbatten has to do with anything.  he was not the son of the King.
And do you realy think that George V was making a match for his son when Edward was under 20? he was only 20 when War broke out and made it impossible for The Royals to make any foregin marriages..

sandy

Royals made matches for their children as teens. A great deal of planning for example was involved in matching up Prince Eddy, son of Alexandra and Edward,with woman from another royal house. Victoria wanted Alix (future Alexandra of Russia) to marry Eddy but Alix refused. As a Prince of Wales and future King, future brides for Edward would have been discussed. Lord Mountbatten did mention that a Grand Duchess was considered as a future bride for Edward. It does not mean the teenagers have to marry immediately.

Curryong

The prospective matches you mention were in Victoria's day. I've already acknowledged that Victoria was a great matchmaker. George and Mary were not.

Sorry, but I'd like to see correspondence of the time in quoted, links to serious biographies of George, Mary or David showing George and Mary were prepared to arrange matches for David or any of their other children in their teens before I would place huge reliance on a few words of Mountbatten as an old man remembering back before WW1 in a doco.

sandy

When I have a few minutes, I can check out the books.  David did not appear to be receptive to other women after he got involved with Freda Dudley Ward. He did not marry the "suitable" girl because of that

The last "suitable" girl Edward courted was Rosemary Leveson Gower (who became the grandmother of Actress Rachel Ward)

The Trentham Lady who almost became Queen | englishlocalhistory

LouisFerdinand



Curryong

Thank you, sandy. Yes, poor Rosemary had rather a sad life, little son killed on the road, she dying in a terrible air crash etc. Mary wasn't impressed with Rosemary's mother who made a couple of disastrous brief marriages after Rosemary's father died.

Double post auto-merged: October 17, 2017, 12:04:39 AM[hr

Deleted.


LouisFerdinand

^It was informative to learn that Lord Louis Mountbatten drew up a list of 17 eligible ladies as Edward's possible wife. This is the first I learned that Princess Margarita, Theodora, and Ingrid had been considered.   
:random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44:


Curryong

Lord Louis Mountbatten could have written up (for fun) a list of a thousand young women for his relative Edward, princesses or not. It wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to what the King, Queen and the Prince of Wales did or did not do. The King and Queen would no more have taken notice of who Lord Louis suggested as a wife for their son than that of the Lord Mayor of London.

In the 1920s Louis was married to a wealthy young woman Edwina Ashleigh, whose grandfather was worth a fortune. However Louis, although a friend of Edward's, (as his father had been a friend of King George when they were young) had no influence at Court or with the BRF at all.

He was a young naval officer, the younger son of the former Prince Louis Battenburg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and just one of a myriad of relatives in the extended family.

Louis was a friend of Edward's and accompanied him on tour to India. (He himself got engaged to Edwina while they were in India.) However, he (and his list) quite obviously had no influence over Edward or that young man would have given up Freda Dudley Ward and given serious thought to marriage. After Rosemary Leveson Gower, though,  Edward did not give any thought to marrying anyone until Wallis Simpson.

Of course he would put down Prince Philip's sisters into the mix. They were his nieces and there was nothing he would have liked better than to see a member of his family as Princess of Wales.

amabel

Why woud he be makng up lists anway?  he had no influence over whoever Edward married.  I don't believe Edward realy wanted to marry, or he would have done so well before Wallis came along.  And certainly there is no evidence that I know of, that George or mary made any efforts to get him married.

Curryong

Indeed, amabel. When Bertie wanted desperately to marry Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Queen Mary accompanied him to Glamis, where Elizabeth was hostessing as her mother was ill. After the visit Queen Mary came away convinced that Elizabeth was 'the one girl who could make Bertie happy', as she told her lady in waiting and great confidante and friend, Mabell Airlie.

'However' she added, 'I shall say nothing to either of them. Mothers should never meddle in their children's love affairs'. And what went for Bertie obviously went for his elder brother too.

sandy

Quote from: amabel on October 18, 2017, 04:54:13 AM
Why woud he be makng up lists anway?  he had no influence over whoever Edward married.  I don't believe Edward realy wanted to marry, or he would have done so well before Wallis came along.  And certainly there is no evidence that I know of, that George or mary made any efforts to get him married.

I read that once he met Freda Dudley Ward who was married already he did not want to marry a "suitable" girl because he would be unfaithful to her and prefer the mistress. He was involved with Dudley Ward for quite a number of years. Which is one reason he did not settle down with the suitable wife and start a family.



Double post auto-merged: October 18, 2017, 12:50:17 PM


Quote from: amabel on October 18, 2017, 04:54:13 AM
Why woud he be makng up lists anway?  he had no influence over whoever Edward married.  I don't believe Edward realy wanted to marry, or he would have done so well before Wallis came along.  And certainly there is no evidence that I know of, that George or mary made any efforts to get him married.

Why does anybody do anything? Maybe he did it because he could. Of course he had no influence but there is such a thing as relatives doing "matchmaking".

amabel

Quote from: Curryong on October 18, 2017, 05:13:21 AM
Indeed, amabel. When Bertie wanted desperately to marry Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Queen Mary accompanied him to Glamis, where Elizabeth was hostessing as her mother was ill. After the visit Queen Mary came away convinced that Elizabeth was 'the one girl who could make Bertie happy', as she told her lady in waiting and great confidante and friend, Mabell Airlie.

She probably felt that putting pressure on either of them would only backfire. 

TLLK

@Duch_Luver_4ever and @Curryong-Thank you for your posts regarding Europe, the rise of fascism and the fear of communism after WWI and prior to WWII. You both presented excellent information about the state of the world during those years. I enjoyed reading it.

amabel

Quote from: Curryong on October 16, 2017, 12:21:16 PM
Princess Maud married her first cousin Prince Charles of Denmark. She'd known him for years from visits to Denmark and Carl visiting his aunt and cousins in Britain. He was a little younger than her. Alexandra never really encouraged her children (especially her daughters) to marry. She liked them to remain at home. (Louise, her eldest daughter, decided on her own when she was quite young, to marry Lord Fife who was a good bit older than her. Alexandra wanted a handmaiden/companion so the middle sister Victoria remained single.)

It was many years after her marriage that Charles (or Carl) was offered the throne of Norway and became King Haakon.
I
There is a letter exchange between Edw VII and Q Vic about the marriages of the Wales girls, where Q Vic was saying that she felt it was not a good idea to leave the girls' fate "vague" for much longer. and Edward said, probably defenesivly, that Alexandra enjoyed the girls company so much that she didn't really want them to leave her...
Louise married the Earl of Fife who gota  Dukedom, but Alix still had 2 daughters left and Louise was still in the UK.  It took some time before Maud managed to get herself married to Pr Charles of Norway, and I think it was pretty much a case of grabbing at a marriage, with a nice man whom she liked, because she knew if she was too choosy, she might not get many chances.  Edward didn't as far as I know try to get his daughters married, though he was willing for it to happen, but Alix was very reluctant and insisted on having at least one daughter to stay iwht her - and if she could have, she would probably have kept all 3 at home...