Queen Mary

Here is Queen Mary, looking out a window. She’s not the Bloody one; she’s the one they named the ship after.

She was born Princess Victoria Mary (insert long list of other middle names here) of Teck in 1867. She was always known as May, after the month she was born in. May’s mother was a member of the extended British royal family, and her father was a minor German prince. Her family was always in debt and generally considered second-tier royalty. At one point they left England to escape their debts. Growing up on the edge of the monarchy, May became kind of obsessed with it.

She was the last member of the British royal family to believe in Divine Right of Kings. As in, May thought the Monarch was selected by God and was a representative of God on earth. Her devotion to monarchy and duty was kind of cultish. She’s really not my favorite, so in a way I’m probably not being fair to her. My source for most of this is Matriarch by Anne Edwards, which is the only bio of May that I own. It’s a touch (but not totally) trashy and I really need to get a better one.

As a young girl, May aspired to be higher up on the totem pole, and became a favorite of Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria saw May as an ideal wife for her grandson (and second in line to the throne) Prince Albert Frederick (known as Eddy to the family). Eddy was, depending on which source you believe, either an okay but stupid standard-issue prince, or a creepy bisexual pervert who did all kinds of unspeakable things that his family had to quietly cover up. Despite popular belief, he was not Jack the Ripper. The fact that tons of people thought (and still think) he was says something about the mystique his short life has.

After the engagement, but before the wedding, Eddy died. May was kind of screwed there, but continued to hang out with Eddy’s parents and siblings after his death. On the suggestion of Queen Victoria, Eddy’s younger brother George proposed to May, who immediately accepted. I kind of think she got engaged to both Eddy and George because she wanted to be Queen (or wanted to be rich) but eventually she did grow to love George.

The press found the whole thing rather amusing, but because she was well-born and virginal May’s reputation didn’t suffer much. Imagine how she would’ve been treated if she had been a commoner (say, an actress…) who got engaged to the heir to the throne and then within a year of his death got involved with his brother… The whole thing was shades of Katherine of Aragon or Empress Marie Feodorovna.

So May and George got married in 1893 and had six children in the next twelve years. George was a very angry person when it came to his kids (he wanted them to be afraid of him) and May, commenting that “I must always remember their father is also their king” let him kind of run with it.

After the death of her grandmother-in-law and father-in-law, May got to be Queen. And she was a great Queen. A pretty terrible mother from what I’ve read, but a great Queen. She was a bit shy with the public and was no Princess Diana, but she did duties and was always dignified and proper. Her husband was even more proper; when trends dictated moving hemlines up (so ladies could show a bit of ankle..) May didn’t do it until after her husband died. He didn’t approve of her showing off her ankles to anyone but him, I suppose.

May obsessed over collecting royal items (and other things that caught her eye) and made it her mission to get back things earlier royals had given away or sold. Often without paying for it, I might add. She was Queen during World War I and the roaring twenties, and six years of the less than roaring thirties. There’s a rumor that hair extensions were invented because noblewomen in London had gotten fashionable bob hairstyles. May did not approve, so when these women were received at court they clipped in extensions hide their shorter haircuts.

May’s devotion to the monarchy trumped everything else. When her husband was on his death bed she gave his doctor permission to euthanize him so that his death would make the morning papers instead of the less than dignified afternoon papers. She was also concerned that him “lingering on” like past monarchs had done would be damaging to the monarchy.

Then her oldest son who had a bunch of names but reigned as Edward VIII and was known to the family as David became king, and shit hit the fan. He was in love with Wallis Simpson (who was so unsuitable May refused to ever meet her: one of May’s friends thought she was a vampire) and gave up the throne to marry her. May did not exactly sympathize with his situation, as the monarchy had been the great love of her life. She wrote him in a letter, in explanation for why she didn’t want to see him again (she didn’t for ten years) “All my life I have put my country before everything else and I simply cannot change now.” She allegedly told a friend he could come home to England “when he came to her funeral” though she did relent eventually.

Her last years were spend mostly drinking expensive wine and doing needlepoint. She had a profound influence on her granddaughter Elizabeth, now Queen. She was by all accounts a much better grandmother than she had been a mother. She died in 1953, having outlived three of her six children. Towards the end she said “I am beginning to lose my memory, but I mean to get it back.” She never did.