The (Almost Wasn't) King's Speech

Congratulations to The King's Speech for their Best Picture Oscar--I saw this wonderful movie back in January and loved it.  Between scenes, I told my friend in whispers all the back story--the Edward VIII/George VI generation is one of my favorites of the British royal family, there's something so adorable and cozy about the four (five)* brothers and their one lovely sister, all arranged in those adorable outfits.

(l-r, Prince Henry, later Duke of Gloucester; the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, laterLATER the Duke of Windsor; 

Prince John; Prince Albert, later Duke of York, laterLATER King George VI; Princess Mary, later the Princess Royal; 

and Prince George, later Duke of Kent)

The movie takes place during the '30s and as such, it is odd to realize--this is about the current Queen's father.  Just one generation ago, they were grappling with an abdication crisis, precipitated by the determination of the Prince of Wales to marry a divorcée, which was seen as completely unsuitable.  Oh, how times have changed!

I keep comparing it to a TV movie I watched through Netflix called Bertie and Elizabeth--quite different in scope (it encompassed a much longer period, from their courtship in the '20s through to his accession and World War II) , it nonetheless overlaps somewhat with The King's Speech.  And both of them have the Slutty Music Cue for Wallis Simpson--when she first appears on the screen, the soundtrack helpfully cues us what to think about her by blowing a hot blue riff on a sexophone saxophone.  

(Skip to 6:52--yep, there ol' Wallis is getting out of the car, primed for seduction and empire-razing.  Good times.)

At any rate, I've always had a fondness for the current queen's father--he had an idyllic. domestic life with his charming Scottish wife, Lady Elizabeth (born in haunted Glamis Castle!) and his two little princesses, Lilibet and Margaret Rose, "us four" as he termed them.  And then his feckless brother couldn't hack it as King and forced him to step up to the plate and he did so beautifully.  The King's Speech takes a few historical liberties but generally gets the flavor right--my favorite scene was when he is marching to the microphone to make the speech to his people at the end, on the cusp of World War II.  The look of terror and resolve on his face breaks your heart and makes you realize what an incredibly brave man he was.

Another fascinating portrait of that generation of Windsors is the BBC production The Lost Prince, about the events leading up to World War I from the point of view of Prince John.  Through the Prince we get to see not only that lovely, lost, pre-World War I European way of life, we also get to meet his cousins, the Romanovs, who were related to the Windsors in a couple of ways (Alexandra was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria).  In fact Nicholas and George V were twin cousins:

♫ They laugh alike, they walk alike, at times they even talk alikeYou can lose your mind ... when cousins are two of a kind! ♫

*I say five because of Prince John, the hidden sibling, one of my favorite phenomena.  There's something so interesting about a large family with a sibling that never emerges for whatever reason--the Kennedys had one (Rosemary, the oldest daughter, who had some kind of mental problem that was never satisfactorily identified before she was lobotomized) and my own father's generation had one--his youngest sister died quite young of a heart ailment.  Each one of those siblings is a whole life that was never fully realized--a whole story that was never told.  At any rate Prince John had epilepsy and lived away from court, and ended up dying at the age of 13, adding further fuel to the superstition that John is a bad luck name for English royalty.