King George VI Was Never Supposed To Be King D
and not least the workman. Queen Elizabeth II’s father, George V 6th, was totally unprepared for the crown. And one of his diary entries reveals the chilling truth. King George V 6th was the spare, not the heir. When scandal rocked the monarchy, he was thrust into a role no one thought he could handle.
What followed redefined the nation and the man who led [Music] it. The future king was born during the reign of his great-g grandandmother, Queen Victoria, and was christened Albert in honor of the late Prince Consort. At the time of his birth, Albert was a distant fourth in line to the throne, which was probably just as well. He fell ill often.
He was easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears. He struggled with stomach problems and knockes in his youth and a pronounced stutter haunted him for much of his life. By 1910, both Queen Victoria and Albert’s grandfather, King Edward IIIth, had died. This moved Albert to second in line to the throne.
However, with a healthy older brother, Albert was still not expected to take on the crown. Instead, he focused on his studies at the Royal Naval College. Although Albert began to train on ships and worked his way to the rank of midshipman, he never took to the sea. He suffered from seasickness.
He did briefly see combat during World War I. First, he was medically evacuated to Aberdine only 3 weeks after the outbreak of conflict due to a bout of appendicitis. Although he returned to his ship by 1916, an ulcer removed him from conflict again, and this time he never [Music] returned. The sea never suited Albert. However, the creation of the Royal Air Force gave him another opportunity to distinguish himself.
He became the first member of the Royal Family to qualify as a pilot, and he took command of a squadron. Shortly after, Albert flew to France where he served on the RAF’s independent air force for the final weeks of the [Music] conflict. Although no one expected him to become king, he was still a member of the royal family and still had royal obligations.
[Music] In 1920, a few months shy of his 25th birthday, his father bestowed three new titles on him. As such, Albert began representing his father, particularly at industrial work areas like coal mines. He became known as the industrial prince. Unfortunately, he remained very obviously uncomfortable in public.
His stutter persisted, as did his embarrassment over it, which likely didn’t help when it came to another, more romantic royal duty. The king and queen gave Albert a fair amount of freedom in choosing his future wife. However, there were limitations, even to the spare. In 1918, Albert met Sheila Chisum, a married Australian socialite through his brother.
Edward was carrying on with Chisum’s best friend, Freda Dudley Ward. Albert was quite fond of Sheila Chisum. His parents were not. The pair continued to see each other for 2 years before the king intervened. He offered his son the juke of York in exchange for the end of his relationship with Chisum, which Albert accepted.
Bertie definitely had more leniency than any prince before him, but an Australian socialite was seemingly just too improper for a royal family [Music] member. That same year, Albert bumped into Lady Elizabeth Bose’s lion for the first time since childhood. He was smitten, but Elizabeth was less certain.
Traditionally, princes of Albert’s standing married princesses, but in an attempt at modernism, the king and queen stood ready to permit Albert to marry a well-standing peer. However, that didn’t mean Elizabeth was willing to step into the spotlight. Albert proposed in 1921 and she turned him down, fearful of the trappings of being a monarch.
Despite her reluctance, Elizabeth was welcomed into the royal family, even acting as a bridesmaid at the marriage of Albert’s sister, Princess Mary, in 1922. When Albert proposed again a month later, she refused. But Albert was determined. The third time that he proposed, Elizabeth accepted and they married in Westminster Abbey on April 26th, 1923.
The couple had two children, Margaret and Elizabeth. Albert continued with his expected royal duties, Elizabeth often joining him on royal tours. However, public speaking continued to be difficult for him. He still stuttered, making speeches painful for both himself and his audience. After a particularly grueling speech at the British Empire exhibition in October 1925, Albert faced the fact that something needed to be done.
He needed help with his speech impediment if he was going to continue in his royal duties. He hired a speech therapist, Australianborn Lionel Log. Log prescribed regular vocal and breathing exercises to help Albert relax and feel more confident in his speaking. Albert hired Log in 1926 and by his 1927 tour of Australia, everything changed.
Albert spoke confidently during the opening of Canbor’s new Parliament House. Log remained present in Albert’s life, supporting him before major speeches until the late 1940s. [Music] Albert was the second son, meaning that his brother Edward was first in line to take the throne following their father’s death.
Everyone saw it as highly likely that Edward would marry and have children, pushing Albert out of succession. In contrast to Albert, Edward seemed like the perfect future monarch. He was charming and charismatic. He could control a room, but he had a tendency to have too good of a time. and their father, King George V, had his doubts about Edward’s suitability to the crown.
He said, “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months.” In reality, it only took Edward 11 [Music] months. George V died on January 20th, 1936, and Edward immediately succeeded him as King of England with a coronation scheduled for May the following year. Edward quickly made himself a spectacle. He was careless in his duties, made comments without thinking, and put his vanity over tradition.
By December 11th, he’d abdicated, throwing the British monarchy into chaos and scandal, all in the name of a woman. Wallace Simpson was married to Ernest Simpson, her second husband, when she and Edward met. By the time Ed Medward took the throne, she was now twice divorced. The public and private opinion of all involved was that the British people would not tolerate a woman of such questionable morals to be their queen.
Essentially being told to choose the crown or the woman he loved, Edward chose Simpson and changed the course of his brother’s life forever. This move was unprecedented. To this day, Edward VIII is still the only British monarch to abdicate the throne. Having no children, this left the throne to his younger brother, Albert.
Albert had never expected nor wanted the throne. Despite having gone by Bertie for the entirety of his life, Albert’s full name was Albert Frederick Arthur George. When it came time to choose his royal name, he chose to become King George V 6th. This was a smart political move. The name was selected to highlight his connection to his father and restore the image of the monarchy as one continuous, infallible line rather than the scandal that Edward had plunged it into.
5 months later, Albert sat in the chair at Westminster Abbey and officially became King George V 6th of Britain as well as the emperor of India. By the time he took the throne, the role of the British monarch was largely performative. They could offer counsel to politicians and were a public face for the nation, but they had no real say.
This meant that as tensions grew in Europe, Albert could do little about it. While history has made Neville Chamberlain’s move to appease Hitler with the Munich Agreement in 1938 look particularly poor, Albert publicly supported the prime minister, inviting him to appear with the family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
In the summer of 1939, Albert and his wife left for a tour of Canada and the United States. The prime motivation of this tour was political. America was never obligated to join Britain in battle, and new changes meant Canada was free to decide their support as well. The aim was to encourage public support should Britain be pulled into conflict once [Music] more.
Albert had only been king for a little under 3 years when Germany invaded Poland and World War II commenced. Though Parliament was ultimately responsible for navigating the conflict, in many ways the monarchy became the public face of British spirit and determination in the face of adversity. When the Blitz began in 1940 and the Germans began to rain bombs upon London, Albert and Elizabeth could have left for a safer location.
But they didn’t. While they typically spent their nights in Windsor Castle, they remained at Buckingham Palace throughout the conflict. On September 13th, nearly a week after the start of the Blitz, two German explosives landed in the palace’s courtyard, nearly injuring the royal couple, who were in residence.
The conflict gave Albert and his family an element of relatability that hadn’t existed prior. They faced the hazards of the Blitz. They rationed food within the palace. And in August 1942, they joined the nation in mourning a personal loss. Albert’s brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed during active service.
World War II equalized the royal family in a way no other event had, and it increased the people’s goodwill towards Albert and his family, even in the face of an impending political change. Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister in 1940. Albert and the new PM initially got off on the wrong foot as Churchill appointed Lord Beaverbrook to the cabinet, a move Albert didn’t approve of.
However, their frequent meetings and the pressure of conflict quickly bonded them. Together, they would not just change history, but define it. Every Tuesday, they would meet for lunch and discuss the conflict openly. It was likely one of the few places each felt they could talk frankly with an equal. During this, they developed what is typically considered the closest relationship in modern history between a monarch and the prime minister, one that persisted even after World War II.
While Albert may not have held the power to make decisions in the same way Churchill did, the people of Britain still valued his role during the conflict. In 1945, as the nation celebrated V-Day, crowds chanted, “We want the king.” A request Albert gave them, inviting Churchill to appear on the balcony as well. At home, the people loved Albert.
Out in the world, his image was somewhat different. England had spent much of the 19th century building their empire. They proceeded to spend much of the 20th century dismantling it. And Albert’s reign saw some of the biggest changes. 1,184. The first steps had already been taken during his father’s reign with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which turned Britain’s dominions into separate sovereign states.
The rest would crumble following World War II. By the end of the 40s, they would become a commonwealth with many sovereign states connected to the monarchy through formality alone. India had been fighting for independence for some time. They’d also been struggling with internal religious struggles.
The separation of India and Pakistan in August 1947 was a first move in handling both these issues. The empire of Britain was well and truly sunk by the time that Albert’s reign ended. Albert had struggled with many health complications early in life. As he aged, these problems only grew worse. March 1949 marked the start of his decline.
He postponed a planned tour of Australia and New Zealand due to a blockage in his right leg and never fully served his royal duties again. Instead, his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, went on the tour in his place. Elizabeth and Philip began taking on more of Albert’s duties from this point on.
In May 1951, Albert opened the Festival of Britain. However, by June 4th, things had taken a dramatic turn. The royal family announced that Albert would need a complete rest starting immediately, disrupting the arrival of Norway’s king that afternoon. 3 months later, after the discovery of a tumor, half of Albert’s left lung was removed.
Although he gave his Christmas broadcast that year, it was recorded in sections and spliced together. He made his last public appearance on January 31st, 1952. He went to London airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their Australian tour. Those closest to him had advised him not to go, but he did as he wished. A good thing for Elizabeth, as this was the last time she saw her father alive.
King George V 6th, known as Bertie to his family, passed in the night between February 5th and [Music] 6th. As was custom for a passing monarch, his body laid in state at Westminster Hall from February 11th until the 15th. His funeral was held at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. In 1936, when his brother abdicated the throne, George V 6 wrote in his diary about his reluctance to give up his life in order to take the crown.
He wrote that he broke down and sobbed like a child when he told his mother the news of his brother’s abdication. However, this reluctance soon turned into a sense of patriotic duty that changed the world. In Albert’s own words, he inherited a rocking throne that he tried to make steady again.
His brother’s actions could have sunk the monarchy at a time when approval was already luring. Instead, Albert’s calm acceptance of leadership combined with the existential threat of war ushered the monarchy into a modern [Music] world. Thanks for watching History Expose. If you love uncovering the best stories in history, hit like and subscribe to keep exploring with us.
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