Ileana

This is Princess Ileana of Romania, 192?. When I saw this picture it made me pause and just stare for a moment. Something about her expression. She looks so real. There’s something really stunning about this picture. Princess Ileana was very popular in Romania, the sister of the unpopular Carol II. She was also a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, like most royal girls of her generation. She lived from 1909-1991. I don’t know when this photo was taken but it was used as a postcard at some point which is interesting. I’m guessing late 1920’s.

Most photos I’ve seen of Ileana are much stiffer than this. Ileana’s mother Marie was a fascinating woman, Queen Marie.

She had a sister named Elisabeth who I’m having trouble finding much information about. But I did find a quote:

“I’ve committed every vice in my life except murder, and I don’t want to die without doing that too.”

So I’d imagine she was fairly interesting as well.

Fat and Ugly Henry

I found this delightful contemporary wood cutting of Henry VIII in his later years. Note the complete lack of resemblance to Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Mind you, this wood cutting gives us only a small amount of information as to how Henry really was. You couldn’t carve into wood his stinking, festering sores, diseased skin, and rotted teeth.

Imagine how poor Catherine Parr felt having to marry this man, who she knew had had two of his wives beheaded. The man she wanted to marry was sent overseas and she was given little choice in the matter.

 

Here we have Henry VII, father of Henry VIII. This was a bust made of old Henry during his time on the throne. Henry VII was the first Tudor. He defeated Richard III in 1485, and married Richard’s niece to prove his claim to the throne. Often accused (falsely, I feel) of killing the Princes in the Tower, who were Richard’s nephews. Richard declared them illegitimate after their father’s death and took the throne. He put them in the Tower in 1483, and they were never seen again. I think Richard or the Duke of Buckingham was a more likely suspect as Henry was out of the country at the time and by the time he formalized his campaign to take the throne they were already widely believed to be dead.

But the whole thing is subject to much controversy, so you’re entitled to your opinion.

Henry VII’s nose was inherited by his granddaughter Elizabeth I.

Henry is an ancestor of new Prime Minister David Cameron, as I pointed out last night.

Henry VII
Princess Margaret Tudor
James V of Scotland
Mary, Queen of Scots
James I of England
Princess Elizabeth
Sophia of Hanover
George I of Great Britian
George II
Frederick, Prince of Wales
George III
William IV
Elizabeth FitzClarence
Agnes Hay Duff
Agnes Duff
Stephanie Cooper
Enid Agnes Maud Levita
Ian Donald Cameron
David Cameron

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.

Tatiana and Maria

Further royal photos. This is Tatiana and Maria Romanov relaxing on a family trip in 1914, when they would’ve been about seventeen and fifteen respectively.

Maria is the one who looks like she’s asleep. More so than any other royal family of the era, the Romanovs loved taking photos. It was a hobby for them, and there was little they didn’t find worth capturing.

Tatiana was the Czar’s second daughter. Growing up, she shared a room with her older sister Olga. Tatiana was the leader of Nicholas II’s four daughters. Her siblings called her the governess. She was very religious, and photos show her as the most serious of the family. She loved fashion and foreign magazines, and was incredibly close to her mother Alexandra. She often spent time reading and playing cards with her mother during the many periods Alexandra became withdrawn from public life. Tatiana was dedicated and hard working, and did not relax and let lose as easily as her sisters and brother. She was incredibly talented as making clothing and embroidery and often styled the hair of her mother and sisters for fun. She was considered as good as a professional stylist by her mother’s maid.

During World War I Tatiana worked as a nurse and made friends with many of the soldiers. Tatiana was the tallest person in her family at 5’7″ and was very slim. She had dark auburn hair, dark grey eyes, and a light olive complexion. More than any of her sisters, she looked Russian rather than English or German.

Maria was the Czar’s third daughter. She was the most artistic person in the family. She loved drawing and painting. She was creative and kind-hearted. She was always shy and withdrawn about her appearance; her younger sister Anastasia called her “fat little bow-wow”, but Anastasia was kind of a brat to everyone. Maria was the least confident of the siblings, and wrote to her mother once that she felt no one loved her. Alexandra tried to encourage her and insisted otherwise. Her cousin Louis Mountbatten had a crush on her and kept her photo by his bedside.

During the family’s captivity Maria was separated from her siblings for a time when she remained with her parents to help care for her ill mother. Maria was seen as the best-behaved and most responsible of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children. She was about 5’5″ with dark blonde hair and large, bright blue eyes. She had a bit of baby fat as a child that got her teased, but by her late teens she was thinner and considered very attractive.

Tatiana and Maria were both killed with their family in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. Tatiana was twenty-one, Maria was only nineteen. Reply

Queen Alexandra

Posted from Jezebel, this is not Augusta Rose…

She loved the corsets, thus the small waist.

Here we have Queen Alexandra in Tudor costume. She was Princess of Wales when this was taken, though reaching the end of her term. I believe (not 100% sure) that this was taken at the same 1895 ball I showed the photos of George and Mary from.

Alexandra was born in 1844 and was a Princess of Denmark. At 17 she got engaged to the heir to the British throne, Prince Albert Edward. As a girl, Alexandra had shared a room with her sister and best friend, Dagmar (later Empress of Russia) and had made clothing for herself and her sisters. She was only 18 when she got married, and not long after the marriage she got pregnant with her first child. She also discovered that her new husband was a womanizer.

She’s often compared to Princess Diana, but unlike Diana she was raised to expect a royal marriage, and royal marriages often include infidelity. Alexandra looked the other way as her husband had affairs with many different women. These included, Lillie Langtry, a beautiful actress who Alexandra later became friends with, Daisy Warwick, probably the love of Albert Edward’s life, and Alice Keppel, Camilla Shand’s great-grandmother.

Alexandra turned her attention to her children and was generally regarded as a better mother than most royal women of her era, though she was very possessive and almost smothered them. She treated her offspring as children well into their twenties, and tried to prevent her daughters from marrying. She was sucessful in the case of her middle daughter Victoria, who stayed her mother’s companion her whole life.

Alexandra was incredibly close to her oldest son Prince Albert Victor, called Eddy. Eddy died in 1892 and Alexandra was crushed. She kept quiet, though she was widely believed to have disapproved of her dead son’s fiancee Mary of Teck, who then married her second son, George.

Alexandra was a very affectionate grandmother to all of her grandchildren. She was particularily well regarded by George and Mary’s children, who didn’t get a lot of affection from their parents. One story about her grandson Prince Olav of Norway (her daughter Maud’s son) was that he had gotten in trouble with his governess and had been threatened with a beating. So he ran off and hid under a bed. The family set off to look for him and Alexandra found him. His response was “Hello, Grannie! Is she after you, too? Come hide with me and I’ll protect you!”

So Alexandra crawled under the bed and laid down whsipering and laughing with her grandson until the governess found them both. But she kept Olav out of trouble.

Alexandra did not become Queen until 1901, when she was in her late-fifties. Her husband reigned as Edward VII, but was only on the throne until his death in 1910. When her son, George was crowned, Alexandra stayed at home during the coronation and according to Matriarch by Anne Edwards, a biography of her daughter-in-law, she ran around her rooms madly screaming and crying that “Eddy should be crowned, not George.”

In her later years, Alexandra began to lose her hearing, though she stayed young looking and energetic. She remained close to her sisters, daughters, and grandchildren.

The kind of pictures I like…

Old royal photos are a bit problematic. The vast majority of them were posed and thought over quite a bit before hand. The usual look was totally expressionless. The intention was to look serious and dignified. Queen Victoria looked downright angry in some of her photos, but not in a passionate or emotional way. Her descendants were much the same. There were smiles, occasionally, but they usually look unnatural.

The British royals seem more serious than some of the other families. There are a lot more candid pictures of the early-twentieth century Romanovs than the Windsors. Part of it may be that with the demise of the Russian monarchy and the death of many members of the Imperial family came the publication of many personal photos. Perhaps the Windsors have large archives of informal photos hiding somewhere in a box in Buckingham Palace.

Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia Romanov playing

But I doubt that. Queen Mary, like Queen Victoria, was a big believer in looking proper and dignified when being photographed. Plus Nicholas II was really into photography and new technology in general. His daughters had cameras and kept their own photo albums, some of which survived the Revolution. What I love about the above photo is that you can see expressions on the girls’ faces. You can see them as they were in real life, not as they tried to present themselves. They’re getting a little dirty, and Anastasia is enjoying it. Photos like this are sort of haunting, though, when you remember what the future had in store for them.

Compare to this formal photo. You can't tell as much about them from this.

One of the things I love about Princess Diana is that she wasn’t afraid to show emotion in front of the camera. Admittedly, part of it had to do with her living in the age of paparazzi where she was going to be photographed all the time, without having time to work out how she wanted to be seen. But still other contemporary royals didn’t quite show the emotion of Princess Diana. She always seemed real. Even in posed photos.

William and Harry are like their mother, which is good. From now on, the problem of stiff and unemotional royal photos should be over. Even Queen Elizabeth is much more open about her emotions now and ten times more human-looking than Queen Mary ever was. But from a historical standpoint, it’s hard seeing so many photos that don’t tell you anything about the person in the picture. If I was a historian, I would publish a whole book of royal photos I could dig up where you can see personality, complete with commentary about the person, place, and time. As it is I’ve been getting my photos off of Flickr and other sites, where you have to dig through dozens of boring photos to find interesting ones. And half the time they’re only interesting because of the silly hats pictured and not because of the facial expressions present.

Pictured: Silly hats.

Some of the boring photos are worse than portraits. Even though royal portraits rarely show any emotion (or what the sitter really looked like) at least there were pretty costumes.

Some of the posed photos have those too.

Princess Mary Doesn't care how pretty she looks

Lady Gaga vs. The Windsors

So I found a great article (with pictures!) comparing Lady Gaga’s use of hats to that of the British Royal Family.

Personally, I think Lady Gaga is more fashionable than anyone in the royal family today. She tries to do things no one else has ever done before. She’s trying to push the limits and shock people. The royals, with their strange hats just look tacky. Except for the Queen, obviously, who could never, ever, be tacky.

The Elegant Princess Marina

So… I have almost NO hits yet, but I really don’t want to be one of those people who pimps out their blog. I hate people like that. Or at least I did before I had a blog of my own. I tried to get my blogs in google results so hopefully that will bring in some traffic. I will be writing part three of Gay for Hitler whenever I have time. Perhaps I chose a title that was too controversial or weird but I always thought the remark I got it from was just so ridiculously funny.

So I wanted to do a post on Princess Marina, who is one of my favorite royals of all time. I really don’t know that much about her, strangely enough, but from everything I have seen she seemed like an amazing woman. She was born in 1906, a Greek Princess, though actually of Danish and Russian descent (I think there was some German in there too) and was married to Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of George V, who doesn’t get nearly as much attention as he should.

I really can’t write much else because I don’t have a book on them, which is not for a lack of effort on my part. I have heard of only two that were ever written, and I’ve never come across either of them in my years of searching. And I don’t want to write some long detailed post using details from the internet, because I don’t trust many online sources. She is mentioned in most books on the House of Windsor as well as most books on the Greek royal family, but she tends to only be a minor character.

I’ve always imagined her as rather sad. Her family were among the many exiled royals that were running around in Europe after World War I and her husband died young, leaving her a widow at age 36 with three children. But she still had style. My favorite royal fashion icon is probably Wallis Windsor, but she did not have the elegance or regality of Princess Marina. Marina looked like a Princess. Every photo I’ve ever seen of her just oozed class.

See what I mean? Pure elegance.

That hat looks amazing on her. I think it would look terrible on pretty much every other royal woman who ever lived, but not Marina.

Gay for Hitler: part II

Okay, I am probably going to have to go to the library before I can write any more parts than this, though I don’t know what I might find there. I have fourteen non-fiction books about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as well as several books on the Windsor dynasty in general, but most of them simply don’t go into the Nazi allegations, beyond simply saying they were untrue or mostly untrue. I have two books that are firmly on the “yes, they were Nazis” side. One of them is by Charles Higham, and he seems to think quite a few people were Nazis (including Errol Flynn) and he has been accused of twisting facts around and generally making stuff up. Also, his book doesn’t give a source for every claim he makes. He’ll sometimes give a source in text (and it’s usually of the “some guy told me” vein) but mostly has source notes for each chapter in the back. He doesn’t give sources claim by claim but rather just generally lists what sources he used for each chapter. He’s also really vague. Here are some exact quotes from his source notes:

“Balfour’s files were excellent on the Young matter.”

“Murphy was the best source on the Mountbatten matter.”

“The Niehans Clinic information was researched in Switzerland.”

There’s plenty of that to go around. Seriously, “researched in Switzerland”? Apparently this guy makes a lot of money writing these books, too. I’ve got to get in on that. I’m going to write a book on how the royal family killed Diana* and just give the names of a bunch of authors who were “good sources” and claim I researched the rest in Switzerland. I’m gonna be rich!

Now, the other books is slightly better sourced. That’s called The War of the Windsors and it produces lots of third-hand evidence about how the Duke of Windsor collaborated with Hitler! It also produces lots of third-hand evidence about how the Duke of Kent collaborated with Hitler! And how George VI and the Duke of Gloucester didn’t actively collaborate with Hitler, but sure were happy about how he was treating the Jews. Also Louis Mountbatten was some sort of super villain who did all kinds of bad and illegal stuff including trying to overthrow the British government. It’s all in there. And the Queen Mother doesn’t come off looking very nice either.

So, my point is, I have two books that support the now incredibly widely accepted viewpoint that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were involved with the Nazis, and one of them is completely untrustworthy, and the other is somewhat untrustworthy and makes similar (or worse) accusations against the rest of the Windsor family. So, I am going to have to go to the library if I want to understand what evidence there is for any of this and refute it. Assuming there is evidence for any of it. So far all I’ve found is quotes and stories coming decades later second or third hand. Which, if you read War of the Windsors, you’ll see can be dug up on the rest of the family as well. Also, there seems to be a lot of stories and accusations floating around the internet, but it’s the internet. I feel liked it can only be relied upon for celebrity gossip and phone numbers for politicians I don’t like. Just so you know, that does apply to me as well. I’m trying to make a point and I’m not saying you should just trust my word on anything either, so please do check out some books if you want to form an opinion of your very own.

So now I’ll go into what seems to be the most solid evidence for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor having been Nazi supporters.**

^See that picture? It’s one of the first results on a google image search for “Wallis Windsor”. Honestly, I think this picture has done more for these stories than trashy books or conspiracy theories ever did. First of all, shaking someone’s hand politely and being photographed doing so does not mean you agree with or support them politically. There is a photo of my father shaking hands with former Virginia Governor, Senator, and racist George Allen. I think my parents hate him more than most people hated Hitler in 1937 (or at least most people who’d never gotten on his bad side) yet the picture still exists. I think it was in a paper in Washington D.C. when it was taken, too.

Now, to be clear, this picture is what it looks like. No photoshop involved. It was taken during a trip the Windsors made to Nazi Germany in 1937. They had been invited to tour housing developements by a man named Charles Bedaux. Right now, the book I’ve got open is The Woman He Loved by Ralph G. Martin which covers this period fairly well. Now, Charles Bedaux was a friend of the Windsors and was also in with some Nazis. Honestly, IMHO from what I’ve read this guy was more concerned with making money than anything else and it has never been solidly proven he collaborated with the Nazis during the war. Bedaux talked the Windsors into accepting an invitation to go to Nazi Germany. He roped them in by telling them that the Duchess would be treated like royalty on the tour (which she didn’t get a lot of) and that it would help promote peace. During the tour, Hitler decided he wanted to meet the Windsors, which they agreed to. In Edward on Edward one of the men Prince Edward interviews was Dudley Forwood, who worked for them and was there. Forwood said that the Duke of Windsor agreed to meet Hitler because he thought he could talk him out of causing another war. Prince Edward suggested that his great-uncle thought himself so charming he could get Hitler to abandon his whole taking over Europe plan and make nice with everyone. Hitler insisted in this meeting that he did not want war with Britain and that all he wanted was to keep the evil communists from corrupting the innocent German people. Naturally, this was a lie, but we’re talking about Hitler here, so telling it was probably one of the least evil things he ever did in his life.

But for the Windsors, meeting Hitler is generally regarded as the most evil thing they did in their lives and as solid proof they loved Hitler, hated the Jews, and wanted Hitler to take over Britain and put them on the throne. But I don’t see evidence for that. Now, the trip was stupid, and they were advised against it, but stupid=/= Nazis. Also, though Winston Churchill advised them not to go, but still after they went anyway he told them it had went well and they had done alright. As for Hitler’s treatment of the Jews, in 1937, he had not started his “Final Solution” or even most of the programs that led up to it. As far as the public outside of Germany was aware, he wasn’t going much further than the United States was in their treatment of African Americans. Correct me if I’m wrong about any of this as my knowledge of the lead-up to World War II comes from my dad’s books, which are not very well sourced. All I ever learned in history class was that World War II started because Hitler was a bad guy who was picking on the weak people in Europe until America came over and kicked his ass. Then we had a lesson on why America is better than the rest of the world.

*It’s worth noting this is related in some ways as one of those “documentaries” about Edward VIII as a Nazi and a traitor was made by the same people who made one about Diana having been murdered by the royals.

** I was going to use the term Nazi sympathesizers, but I’ve seen that used in regards to a wide range of people from those who in the early 1930’s thought the Nazi party wasn’t all that bad for Germany to those who during and even after the war thought Hitler was wonderful and doing everything right and wanted Germany to win.