Royal family fortunes... and a king created by a twist of fate

ONE hundred years ago this week, a shy young Scotswoman named Elizabeth walked down the aisle to marry the man she loved.

It was a beautiful spring day and, as befitting the style of the 1920s, the bride wore a lace cap veil and a dress of ivory chiffon moiré, embroidered with pearls and silver thread.

Aged just 22, Elizabeth had been cautious about marrying her husband, known to his family as Bertie. So much so that the first time he proposed she turned him down, saying she was ‘afraid never, never again to be free to think, speak and act as I feel I really ought to’.

Her full name was Elizabeth BowesLyon, the woman most of us knew as the Queen Mother. And it is quite extraordinary to think that when Elizabeth, who had grown up in the rambling environs of Glamis Castle, in Angus, stood at the altar in Westminster Abbey, she could have had no inkling that a century later, in exactly the same place, her grandson would be crowned King.

It would be another 13 years before Elizabeth’s brother-in-law made a decision that would change her life, and that of every single one of her descendants, forever.

When King Edward VIII suddenly and shockingly abdicated in December 1936, professing he was unable to do the job ‘without the help and support of the woman I love’, Elizabeth was said to be furious.

She understood the duty and the heavy burden that came with being a member of the Royal Family even before she had married into it.

Now, she knew that not only would her husband become King – a job which he carried out with aplomb but for which she would later blame his early death – but that her elder daughter, ten-year-old Elizabeth, would one day become Queen.

We are often prone to viewing the Royal Family’s rarefied world as ordered and pristine. And yet fortune’s slings and arrows lie in wait for us all, no matter who we are born to.

How different things might have been had the Duke of Windsor never met the tall and willowy American Wallis Simpson, but settled down instead with a nice, sturdy British girl and produced a series of heirs. A recent documentary, Edward VIII: Britain’s Traitor King, based on the book by historian Andrew Lownie, suggests that had Edward remained on the throne the implications for us all could have been disastrous – the extent of his connections to the Nazi regime far deeper than many had realised.

He was said to have encouraged the Nazis to continue bombing Britain, in an attempt to crush us into submission, and also appeared to be open to being installed as King of a Nazi puppet state.

A narrow escape, then, for Britain. But I do wonder if, over the years, Elizabeth had pangs of regret at her husband’s early death and her daughter’s early ascension to the throne, at a time when she should have been enjoying life as a young mother.

Perhaps that is why, then, she focused so much of her attention on her eldest grandson, reported to be her favourite.

CHARLES was only three when his mother became Queen, and she was often away on long overseas tours. Instead, it was his grandmother who stepped in, nurturing his sensitive, artistic side, campaigning against his being sent to Gordonstoun (a battle she lost), encouraging him to paint, and taking him north with her to the Castle of Mey, her bolthole in Caithness which he now owns.

She would have known for his whole life, of course, that he would eventually become King. Perhaps she wished to protect him for as long as she could.

We are all, in one way or another, a product of our heritage. Of the people who came before us, who shaped and moulded us, who tried their best to shield us or enjoyed indulging us when life afforded it.

When King Charles III sits on the throne at Westminster Abbey next Saturday to receive the crown and sceptre, he brings with him the wise counsel of the sensible Scotswoman who stood there a century before him, and the knowledge that were it not for a chance meeting so many years ago, he might never have been there at all.

I rather like that notion because were it not for chance, fortune and a little luck, could we not all say the same?