3 June: George V

George V, King of England from 1910 to 1936, was born on this date in 1865.

1. He was the second son of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and Queen Victoria was his grandmother. His mother was the eldest daughter of King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. His full name was George Frederick Ernest Albert.
2. His elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, was just 17 months older, so they were educated together. Neither of them excelled in academic subjects, and their father thought the best education they could get was to be drafted into the Navy. When George was 12, both brothers joined the cadet training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth, Devon. When he was in Japan in 1881, he got a tattoo of a dragon on his arm. While serving in Malta, he fell in love with his cousin, Princess Marie of Edinburgh. There were mixed reactions from both families. Marie's mother was one of those who disapproved and so when George proposed to her, she turned him down on her mother's advice.
3. His older brother, the heir to the throne, became engaged to his second cousin once removed, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. That romance was doomed, however, since six weeks after the engagement, Albert died suddenly of pneumonia. George was now forced to give up his career in the Navy because he was now heir to the throne. During the mourning period, he and Victoria Mary became close and he ended up marrying her on 6 July 1893. George insisted that she drop one of her names. Since Queen Victoria would be a hard act to follow, she chose to become Queen Mary.
4. He was the first English monarch since 1714 who wasn't able to speak German fluently. This horrified Queen Victoria, so he and his brother were sent to Lausanne in the hope that they might learn another language. It didn't work.
5. George became king in 1911, and was King during World War I. He visited the war front regularly with Queen Mary, but there was some dissension at home because he had a German surname, thanks to Queen Victoria's husband Albert. Hence it was George V who changed the family name to Windsor and insisted that his relatives also adopted British sounding names. Hence Battenberg became Mountbatten.
6. Other things which happened during his reign were the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin and the setting up of the Irish Free State in 1922; the first Labour government in 1924, and the first Christmas broadcast by the monarch in 1932. He was a popular king and would visit factories and dockyards to meet the workers. He advised the government during the General Strike of 1926 not to take a hard line against protestors. He said, "Try living on their wages before you judge them." He also warned government ministers that they should be worried about the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. He warned that within ten years there would be another world war, and was proved right.
7. His hobbies were shooting Pheasants and stamp collecting. On one shooting trip, he shot more than a thousand birds in six hours, and was forced to admit that he'd "gone a little too far". As for stamp collecting, George played a significant role in building the Royal Philatelic Collection into the most comprehensive collection of United Kingdom and Commonwealth stamps in the world.
8. He and Queen Mary had six children, including two kings: King Edward VIII and King George VI. His youngest child, Prince John, died at the age of 13. He was once quoted as saying, "My father was frightened of his mother, I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me." However, there's no conclusive evidence that he actually said that. What we do know is that Victorian parents were often pretty strict, anyway, so it would have been normal for the time. It was also known that he wasn't one to express emotion and affection readily, even to his wife, preferring to express his feelings for her in letters. One of his children, Prince Henry did describe him later on as a "terrible father".
9. He died January 20, 1936 aged 70. He was a heavy smoker and his health had been failing for some time. He had been king for twenty-five years, eight months, and fifteen days. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, who abdicated in favour of his brother, George VI. The current Queen, Elizabeth II, is his granddaughter.
10. It came out in 1986 that his doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn, had actually hastened his end, without consulting the family, as they would have disapproved, and euthanasia was completely illegal in Britain at the time. He wrote in a diary which was made public after he'd died that he did it to preserve the King's dignity, prevent further strain on the family, and so the King's death could be announced in the morning edition of The Times. He issued a statement that evening that "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close". The diary also revealed that George V's last words were not "Bugger Bognor!" after being told he would soon be well enough to go on holiday there, but "God damn you!" addressed to a nurse administering a sedative. Dr Dawson administered a lethal injection later that evening.

My Books:

If you like stories about:

• Superheroes
• Psychic detectives
• Romance
• Alternative dimensions
• Time travel 
• Secrets
• Friendship
• Family relationships
• Ghosts
• Adventure
• Crime

If you want to read about superheroes who aren't the usual Marvel/DC staples, who don't all live in the USA.

If you like quirky tales.

If you like to support independent self published authors.

Check out my books page.