Royalty in History

[Auroranorth]

mouse said:

Here's my question: am I the only one who thinks that Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley were the Britney Spears and Kevin Federline of their era?

That's not a bad parallel, except Bothwell was more KFed than Darnley. Darnley was more Justin Timberlake.

[Deleted]

happypenguin said:

guinastasia said:

I'm reading An Uncommon Woman yet AGAIN, and a bio of Wilhelm II of Germany. Damn, what a horrible son. You know, it's very interesting to speculate what history would have been like if Frederick III had survived and reigned. It's possible that the entire first half of the 20th century would have been VERY different.

I've been reading Born to Rule and his treatment of his sister Sophia of Greece (Constantine I?'s wife) is horrible too. Especially as the things he objected to were her attempts to fit in with Greek life, her conversion to Greek orthodoxy. She unlike the modern day Greek Royals seems to have taken a real effort to fit in, e.g. learning Greek etc. And her correspondance with Vicky is fascinating.

Oh absolutely-I think Sophie's unpopularity probably stemmed from WWI, when basically anyone who was German was suspect. At one point, her garden was dynamited to try and find the alleged wire she was using to contact her brother.

It's so very very sad that Fritz died so young. He and Vicky were truly blessed in their marriage. An arranged marriage that ended up being a love match and an equal, intellectually compatible partnership.

[azaleaqueen]

I did a Google on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and found a story about their having had a child together before they weren married. I was a girl and was stolen from them. They were told she had died. She was supposedly brought to the USA and God revealed to her her true identity. She was living in Tennessee under the name Elizabeth Kelman. Google it yourself and draw your own conclusions.

[kelly9480]

Wallis was beaten severely during a pregnancy in her first marriage and miscarried. She apparently never got pregnant again. Besides, David suffered mumps during a critical stage (I think right when he started puberty) and was sterile. I'm not sure whether his testicles ever descended, but he certainly never went through the outward stages of puberty, like growing body hair, height & weight increase, or a deepening voice.

His brother, George VI, suffered mumps at that same stage and had a very, very, very hard time fathering children, making his wife wonder whether she'd ever be able to have children after a 1924 miscarriage, and leading to the rumors of EIIR being conceived with a turkey baster (which wasn't invented by 1925, so dismiss them) stem from.

[Deleted]

Both David and his brother Bertie (George VI) suffered from orchitis, an inflammation of the testicles which often follows the mumps when a person has it in puberty. With Bertie, only one of his was affected, but David had it in both. They said he rarely, if ever, had to shave. As Wallis put it, he wasn't "heir conditioned."

I was aware that her first husband was abusive, but I never knew she had a miscarriage-where was this info, kelly9480? Not that I'm doubting you, I'm just curious.

[kelly9480]

It was in one of the bios I read about the Windsors, and was, IIRC, sourced to some of Wallis' friends. It's also been reported in several pro-Wallis articles, I specifically remember reading it in an article four or five years ago.

[Deleted]

The stolen daughter story is nuts. The woman is right up there with all of the various Romanov claimants.

[azaleaqueen]

Oh, I'm sure you're right, especially after reading that God was the one who told her the true story.

I always wonderd why they didn't have children. Now I see that it could have been the result of one or more physical conditions. I always figured it was because she wasn't exactly a spring chicken.

[nitenurse]

I had heard rumours about the Queen Mother being artificially inseminated before now. Remember that the British royals are very into horse and dog breeding and somebody told me that animal breeders were using AI back in the '20s.

Makes you wonder. All the secrecy that money can buy.

[Deleted]

The supposed Windsor daughter[/color]

She's nuts. She goes so far as to compare pictures of her grandson to Prince Albert, the Prince Consort. I would think that by that many generations, any resemblance would be entirely coincidental.