Queen Elizabeth II

[Mouse]

And Kafka, where did you find this information about the Queen Mother?

Actually, George VI and his siblings were nothing to brag about, either.

[Deleted]

what's up with locking away children in asylums and attics?

Kitty Kelley said in The Royals, 2 nieces of Queen Mum (Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon) were mentally retarded,and sent to an asylum. The family even declared them dead, while they spent their whole life there.

And about Queen Mum's birth...She pretended she was born in London, but her father said it was in St Paul 's Walden Bury, Hertfordshire. He also, as Peggy Lane reported, waited quite a bit to declare her birth. Some rumours, acording to Kitty Kelley, said she was an illegitimate child of the Earl and a Welsh servant, that's why there are so many weird things about the event.

[kafka]

mouse said:

And Kafka, where did you find this information about the Queen Mother?

Which information in specific? A lot of what I know is based on years worth of reading about certain royals. If you're asking about the girls who were locked away, you can go here for a synopsis, with external link contained within to a 2002 article in the Sunday Herald. Only one of the girls is still alive which is why I was thinking it was just Katherine but, as you can see, there were quite a few Bowes-Lyons with mental issues.

With regard to the other stuff, as PennyLane and ElissaG have said, there were a few oddities concerning the QM's birth. As for the current Bowes-Lyon Earl and his sexual addictions, there were numerous pieces on him and his viciously contentious divorce in all the papers about 2 (?) years ago or so.

The issue of the QM's bigotry and racial bias is well-documented, as is the role she played in supporting Charles & Camilla's affair, and in choosing Diana along with Lady Fermoy, her chief lady-in-waiting and Diana's grandmother.

Actually, George VI and his siblings were nothing to brag about, either.

I quite agree, and I chalk that one up to George V's parenting style which was, quite frankly, brutal.

ETA: ElissaG, I love your avatar!

ETA2: Mouse, I've spent a little while trying to find you some online excerpts of Hugo Vickers new(ish) book on the Queen Mother which has a lot of details of the real QM, behind the scenes, and which I thought you might enjoy. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any that were still up, other than in payment-required archives. The Daily Mail had huge serialised chunks of it a while back but I can't seem to find them, or they're no longer available either. If you want, I can try to find you links to newspaper articles in the Times and other places that discuss some of the things I've mentioned.

[Deleted]

ElissaG, I love your avatar!

Thank you!

Quote:Actually, George VI and his siblings were nothing to brag about, either.


I quite agree, and I chalk that one up to George V's parenting style which was, quite frankly, brutal.

ITA! And Queen Mary was the same.
I even read the royal kids were mistreated by one of the nannies, she made them crying by hurting them or gripping their hair...
It's not really surprising they got troubles in their adulthood.

[greenbunny]

Yep, It was Prince DAvid aka Duke of Windsor.

[heyalice]

Queen Mary, that was a handsome beast.
I think it was mentioned during the coverage of the funeral for the QM but apparently she had the last resting spot at Windsor and all royals since the Tudors are buried there. So will QEII be buried at Westminster?

[monkey]

Has anyone read the book written by Elizabeth and Margaret's nanny, back in the 1940s or 1950s? Was there any fall-out from that? Did Elizabeth ever have any contact with the nanny after that?

[Deleted]

monkey said:

Has anyone read the book written by Elizabeth and Margaret's nanny, back in the 1940s or 1950s? Was there any fall-out from that? Did Elizabeth ever have any contact with the nanny after that?

According to Wikipedia, Marion Crawford was pretty much blacklisted from anything to do with the RF after the book was published. They never forgave her. Seems kind of harsh, since it seems she didn't write anything scandalous and if anything the book was sweet and complimentary. But that’s the way it was back in 1950.

[Deleted]

I read the book years and years ago. I agree, it was a very respectful book, quite formal and flattering, but I suppose the very act of writing it and selling it to a publisher turned her into a traitor. Wasn't there a follow-up book by Crawford? She made it sound like the family was fine with it in the end. I felt rather sorry for her that she had such grief over the first book.

[may2]

I thought she wrote the book because she desperatly needed money because her pension was so small.