The King who never was
Published: Sun, 02/21/21
Also present were Albert and Victoria’s children, and from this point on the history gets a bit hazy. Or, to put it another way, I would just be making it up. However, what I have started with could kick off quite an entertaining alternative history novel covering the early 20th century.
The account above might well have been correct if Prince Albert Victor (1864 to 1892) had not died of pneumonia while at Sandringham, the Royal Residence in Norfolk on January the 14th. Albert was also due to be married to Princess Victoria in the February of the same year. The younger brother Prince George Fredrick (1865 to 1936) had become a Naval Cadet aged 12 and was set on a career as a naval officer. George was given command of three ships in total, his last active service being command of the Apollo Class Cruiser HMS Malampus. If George’s Naval career had not been cut short by suddenly finding himself second in line to the throne, it is not unreasonable to assume that he would have received prestigious commands, and perhaps reached the rank of Admiral. The young George also met and fell in love with Princes Marie of Edinburgh while serving in Malta. For various reasons the match did not result in marriage and in 1893
George married Victoria Mary himself with the encouragement of his Grandmother, Queen Victoria.
The idea for this snippet of alternative history came from my current bedtime reading. ‘The Memoirs of his Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor’ has been on my bookshelves for a while and must have come from my mother’s book collection. My edition dates from 1953 (originally published in 1951) and my mother’s maiden name is inside the flyleaf. The Duke of Windsor was the title granted to Edward (although known in the family as David) son of George (at the time Prince of Wales) and Victoria, after he abdicated the throne in 1936 in order to marry the American Divorcee Wallis Simpson. If you saw the film ‘The King’s Speech’ Edward was played by the actor Guy Pearce.
Edward begins his story explaining how he came to be king, albeit briefly before he stepped down in favour of his younger brother Bertie, actual first names, Albert Fredrick, who reigned as George the 6th until his death in 1952 when our present queen was crowned. As with Bertie, Edward’s father had not grown up expecting to be king until his older brother died young and suddenly. Edward describes this episode very briefly and simply says that his uncle Albert (known in the family as Eddy) had died aged 28 and thus making father and son first and second in line to the British throne.
I originally intended to write this post as a meditation on the vagaries of fate or orlog and the ergodic nature of the universe. Ergodic means the balance between chance and predestination. It was a matter of chance that George Fredrick, and both his sons became kings of Britain, and yet the monarchy continued as an institution.
However, as I did a little research into Albert Victor I discovered a pretty deep rabbit hole. It seems that if Albert Victor were alive today he might be considered to have ‘learning difficulties’. Even at the time the public regarded the Duke of Clarence and third in line to the throne as being rather stupid with a very short attention span. His Grandmother, Queen Victoria referred to Albert Victor’s ‘dissipated life’ in letters to her eldest daughter. At the time of Albert Victor’s death the royal family were apparently grief stricken. Indeed the young man was interred in a fine tomb in the Albert Memorial Chapel in Windsor Castle.
There were also rumors that Albert Victor had been deliberately killed in some way to make sure that the throne actually went to the more reliable and sober George Fredrick. The young Albert’s posthumous reputation was further tarnished by allegations that he may have been responsible for the Whitechapel murders in 1888 as ‘Jack the Ripper’. However, these allegations were easily disproved.
Perhaps not surprisingly the Duke of Windsor makes no mention of these allegations about his uncle. All that the Duke reports is that his father was very fond of his brother, to whom he had always been close. A later Biographer of the Duke of Clarence suggests that in fact the lack of academic progress was partly down to an incompetent tutor, that Albert was actually a warm and charming man, he held liberal views (leading liberal politician, E W Gladstone to note in his diary that the death was a great loss to the liberal cause), and that his reputation was deliberately diminished by biographers eager to improve the image of his brother, George. Would Albert Victor have coped with being king? I have no idea.. However, the book I am reading makes it very clear that being born into royalty is a very mixed blessing. Along with the wealth and privilege go massive pressures to conform to unrealistic expectations. Maybe the Duke of
Windsor was just lucky to get out alive, unlike his unfortunate uncle.
My point? Not sure I actually have one. I think Albert Victor was just an ordinary young man with the same aspiration to be happy and the need to be loved as the rest of us. He died tragically young and history was altered, probably in a minor way. The paradox here is that I have written about an event of very little real consequence. On the other hand you are now aware of the life of Prince Albert Victor nearly 130 years after his untimely death. Perhaps Albert would be pleased that his memory lives on, even if only in one of my posts, I would like to think so.
regards
Graham
PS Also, be careful of reading strange old books that turn up on your bookshelves, you never know what kind of rabbit hole you might fall into!