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A Century of Royal Weddings, The Two Elizabeths

04-22-2011 by L. S. Carbonell

She was a vivacious, bubbly young woman with oodles of suitors. He was the painfully shy, stuttering second son of the King. He proposed three times before she finally accepted him.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyons was the daughter of the 14^th Earl of Stathmore and Kinghorne, a title that dates back to 1606. Earls are the third rank of British nobility after members of the Royal Family. She was born August 4, 1900 at Glamis Castle, which occupies the land where MacBeth had his hill fort. With a very complicated trip through genealogy, she was more Scottish than any King to occupy the Scottish or English throne since MacBeth’s step-son Lulach died in 1058. Yes, there really was a King MacBeth whose story has nothing to do with Shakespeare’s version. Though called “Lady Elizabeth,” she was technically a commoner because the English nobility system is teddibly sexist.

Albert Frederick Arthur George, Duke of York, was the second son of King George V and Princess Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes of Teck, known as Queen Mary. She was one formidable lady. Allegedly, when Queen Mary was coming to visit, people hid their good china and linen because if she liked something, it was on its way to Buckingham before her carriage left the grounds. The King, however, wasn’t exactly a forceful person. He hesitated and his cousins the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia died. The revolutionaries had offered to let them go into exile. Bertie, as he was known, had been allowed to live a fairly ordinary life. He was deeply involved in the Boy Scouts all his life and had seen active duty during World War I, something forbidden to his older brother. Mum should have known that being second son didn’t necessarily mean never being king. When her fiancé Crown Prince Albert died in 1892, she was passed down to his younger brother.

Bertie first proposed to Elizabeth in 1921, but she turned him down, saying that she was “afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to.” When Bertie told his family he would never marry any other woman, his mother went to Scotland to meet the girl, It is not known if the Bowes-Lyons hid the silver. Though impressed with the young woman, Queen Mary decided not to intervene. In 1922, Elizabeth was a bridesmaid for Princess Mary, Bertie’s sister. He proposed again a month later. Finally, in January 1923, she gave in. The feeling inside the Royal family was that the marriage to a technical commoner, and one born within the United Kingdom no less, would be a “modernizing” act for the family. In the years after World War I, it probably wasn’t politic to continue the long standing policy of seeking German nobles and noblettes for Windsor princes and princesses. Bertie’s sisters had married locals.

This is the couple we have watched recently portrayed by Colin Firth (infinitely better looking) and Helena Bonham-Carter (infinitely more eccentric). Yes, it was a love match – more like a “he desperately adored her” match. Before this most royal marriages were arranged, sometimes disastrously, even for younger sons and daughters. Because no one thought he would ever be King, Bertie was allowed the rare privilege of choosing his own wife, and he chose well.

The wedding took place April 26, 1923 at Westminster Abbey. In February, 1922, Princess Mary, Bertie’s sister was married at Westminster. Before that, one has to go back all the way to 1382 and the wedding of King Richard II to Princess Anne of Bohemia for a Royal wedding at the Abbey. In the middle of Westminster’s main aisle, the Unknown Warrior, a casualty of World War I, is entombed. As Elizabeth walked down the aisle, she suddenly knelt down and laid her bouquet on the Tomb.

Elizabeth had eight bridesmaids: The Lady Mary Cambridge and Lady May Cambridge, cousins of the groom and each other, The Lady Mary Thynn, The Lady Katharine Hamilton, The Honorable Diamond Hardinge, The Honorable Cecilia Bowes-Lyons and The Honorable Elizabeth Elphinstone, nieces of the bride and Miss Betty Cator, who later married the bride’s brother Michael. Her dress was designed by Madame Handley Seymour, dressmaker to Queen Mary, but her tiara was a gift from her father. It is called the Strathmore Rose tiara, and is a delicate band of diamond and silver roses. Bertie wore his RAF full dress uniform. He was at that time a Group Captain.

The new British Broadcasting Company wanted to record and broadcast the ceremony, but the Abbey’s Chapter, the management, nixed the idea.

Following the wedding, the guests had breakfast at Buckingham Palace, prepared by chef Gabriel Tschumi. The couple honeymooned at Polesden Lacey, a manor in Surrey, and then traveled to Scotland where Elizabeth caught a very unromantic case of whooping cough.

In 1936, Bertie suddenly became King George VI and Elizabeth, the technical commoner with more Scottish royal blood than her husband became Queen.

It was by all accounts a very happy marriage. As unprepared as Bertie was to become King when his big brother abdicated to marry that scandalous American divorcee, they positively shone during World War II. The refused to evacuate to the countryside, stating that their place was with the people of London. They evacuated their daughters briefly at the beginning of the war, even while hundreds of London’s children were being sent to country villages. The princesses were brought to Windsor Castle in May, 1940, and remained there for the rest of the war. They became the heart of England while Churchill became its backbone. During the blitz, Queen Elizabeth visited bombed-out neighborhoods, climbed over the rubble, met with families that had lost everything in one flash of a German bomb. They insisted on sharing the danger and the consequences, living on the same ration system that ordinary Britons were living on. It was in those years that Queen Elizabeth forged her place in the hearts of her people.

King George VI died of lung cancer (recently revealed to have been helped along by his doctor) on February 6, 1952. Queen Elizabeth, thereafter known affectionately as The Queen Mum, survived him by 50 years, one month and 26 days.

Elizabeth and Bertie had two beautiful daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born on April 21, 1926. Her birthday is “officially” celebrated in June because the weather in London is iffy in April. She was third in line for the throne when she was born, but wasn’t really considered to be “in line” because her uncle was a young man and expected to marry and have children of his own. Her idyllic childhood was rudely interrupted when she was 10. Her grandfather died and her uncle decided he just could not possibly “carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” Besides, Wallis Warfield Simpson was in the process of divorcing her second husband and was wa-a-a-a-y too cozy with too many Nazis. Elizabeth’s reaction was utter horror. She hated Buckingham Palace and didn’t want to live there. The Princesses were educated at home, just as all British royals had been for as long as anyone can figure out.

Even after her father became King, Elizabeth wasn’t really thought of as the heir, even by her own father. She was titled the “heir presumptive,” not the “heir apparent,” because her mother could still have children and it was assumed that she could drop a son at any time. This is the reason Elizabeth never became Princess of Wales, even when the government wanted her to assume the title to calm strained relations with the Welsh.

Elizabeth had already met the man she would marry, Prince Phillip of Greece and Denmark, at the 1934 wedding of their cousin Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. Elizabeth and Phillip are second cousins once removed. For those who haven’t wasted their lives in genealogy, that means Philip and King George VI were both great-grandsons of Queen Victoria who had more kids than the old woman in the shoe and married them and their children off to every royal family in Europe except the Spanish. That connection didn’t happen until Princess Sophia of Greece married Prince Juan Carlos. Elizabeth and Phillip met again in 1937, but it was the meeting at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in July 1939 that cinched the deal.

It was a deal, in a roundabout way. Phillip’s mother had a brother named Prince Louis of Greece and Denmark who became England’s Louis, Earl Mountbatten, but we’ll not go into the how here. Lord Mountbatten had dynastic ambitions and decided to play them out through his nephew. He arranged the meeting in 1939, when Elizabeth was only 13, very sheltered and brimming with new hormones, and his nephew was a very handsome 18-year-old man in a uniform. (A generation later, Lord Mountbatten tried to arrange things between his granddaughters and Prince Charles, but they weren’t interested.) The meeting had the desired effect and Elizabeth was head over tea kettle.

While Phillip served in the Royal Navy during the War, Elizabeth served at home. She helped raise funds for charity, made radio addresses and in February, 1945, she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service where she trained as a driver and mechanic. The War in Europe ended on May 7, 1945.

The two exchanged letters during the war and Phillip asked the King for Elizabeth’s hand in 1946. The King agreed, but requested that the formal engagement wait until Elizabeth turned 21 the following year. The engagement was announced on July 9, 1947.

In preparation for the marriage, Phillip renounced his Greek and Danish titles and converted from the Greek Orthodox faith to Anglicanism. He became Lieutenant Phillip Mountbatten, taking the British name his mother’s family had derived from their former titles as the Princes of Battenberg in Germany. On the morning of the wedding, King George VI granted Phillip the titles Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich.

England was still under wartime rationing at the time of the wedding, and Princess Elizabeth had to scrounge up enough ration coupons to buy the material for her wedding dress, which was designed by Norman Hartnell. During the choosing of the bridesmaids, it is alleged that Queen Elizabeth wanted eight “maidens” – that is if there were any virgins left in England. Wars are not known for being great respecters of virginity. The line “I may not return from the battle” is one of the oldest in history.  There was one small disaster on the morning of the wedding.  The George III fringed tiara that Elizabeth was going to wear broke and had to be quickly repaired.  Fortunately, the royal jeweler was on hand. 

The wedding took place at 11:30 a.m. on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey, where the King and Queen had been married. Varying the actions of her mother, Elizabeth laid her bouquet on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior as she and her groom left the Abbey.

Whether or not they were “maidens,” there were eight bridesmaids: Princess Margaret, the bride’s cousins Princess Alexandra of Kent, the Honorable Margaret Elphinstone and the Honorable Diana Bowes-Lyon, her second cousin Lady Mary Cambridge, Lady Caoline Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the groom’s cousin the Honorable Pamela Mountbatten and Lady Elizabeth Lambart. The bride’s cousins Prince William of Gloucester and Prince Michael of Kent were pageboys. .

The wedding party arrived in a carriage procession, with the bride riding in the Irish State Coach with her father. The ceremony was officiated by the Archbishops of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, and York, Cyril Garbett. This time, the BBC was allowed to record and broadcast the wedding, which was heard by approximately 200 million people around the world.

The guest list was a who’s who of British royalty and royal relations and just about every royal in Europe, many of whom were also royal relations. The royal families of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands still hold their crowns as does the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, but the royal families of Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, and Iraq and the Duke of Flanders have long since lost their crowns.

Following the wedding, the family and guests had “breakfast” at Buckingham Palace. This is some kind of royal thing – having a meal or nibbles after noon and calling it “breakfast.” The bridal couple then journeyed to Broadlands, Earl Mountbatten’s estate in Hampshire for their honeymoon.

Their first child was born six days before their first anniversary. At the time, they were living in a rented house, Windlesham Moor, near Windsor Castle. In July, 1949, they took up residence in Clarence House in London. Between 1949 and 1951, Prince Philip was assigned duties in the British Protectorate of Malta, and the couple lived there for several months at a time in the Villa Gwardamangia, the rented home of Earl Mountbatten. They left the children in England. It was to become a normal pattern for them as parents – being absent for long periods of time. Charles became the first royal prince to attend boarding school, further separating him from his parents. All four children were shipped off as soon as they were old enough.

They were in Kenya on February 6, 1952, when King George VI died and Elizabeth became Queen. As is traditional, she was asked what name she would take as Queen, and reported replied, “my own, of course.” In her radio and television address to her subjects, she vowed to spend her whole life “be it long or short” in the service of her people. When Elizabeth was crowned on June 2, 1953, the BBC carried the coronation live on television. Sales of TVs spiked in England.

Philip was not amused to be informed that it was not acceptable that the royal family name of Windsor was not going to give way to Mountbatten. He complained “I am the only man in the country not allowed to five his name to his own children.” After the death of Queen Mary and resignation of Winston Churchill, a compromise was reached and any of their male-line descendants who do not have royal titles, will have the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. So far, there aren’t any.

There were rumors in the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign that Prince Philip had engaged in one or more affairs. He often traveled abroad as her ambassador. Prince Philip has often been characterized as 19^th century in his attitude towards the monarchy and marriage, which made things a little tricky. Raging chauvinism and being a queen’s consort don’t blend well. He was also infamous for off-color, racist and offensive remarks. Some were dismissed as simple gaffes, others garnered him loud criticism. He made no secret of the fact that Princess Anne was his favorite child.

Elizabeth has been on the throne for 59 years, exceeded only by Queen Victoria and King George III. One of the few public ceremonies at which Queen Elizabeth is attended by Prince Philip is the Opening of Parliament. The monarch has been forbidden entry into the Chamber of the House of Commons since the reign of Charles I in 1642. The Opening ceremony has not changed in centuries and the way it is depicted in the movie The Madness of King George is exactly how it is conducted today. Among her duties is the role of “hostess for the nation.” None of the spouses of her 13 Prime Ministers have hosted the state dinners for visiting heads of state and other dignitaries. According to some inside sources, following these events, the Queen retreats to the hallway leading to the private quarters, kicks off her shoes and amuses her attendants with dead-on imitations of various guests at the party. She’s also said to be a life-long fan of the soap opera Coronation Street.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip will celebrate their 64^th anniversary this November. He will be 90 years old in June, and has had to curtail his activities somewhat. He used to do more public appearances (300) than any other royal except Princess Anne. He has suffered from a heart condition since 1991 and has developed severe arthritis. The Queen has just celebrated her 85^th birthday. Whatever their marriage may have been in the past, they have long since passed into the realm of old married companions, as comfortable as old slippers.