Mary of Teck

Her father, the Duke of Teck, had no inheritance or wealth and carried the lower royal style of Serene Highness because his parents' marriage was morganatic.During the First World War, the Crown Princess of Sweden helped pass letters from May to Augusta, who lived in enemy territory in Germany until her death in 1916.[b] On 3 December 1891 at Luton Hoo, then the country residence of Danish Ambassador Christian Frederick de Falbe, Albert Victor proposed marriage to May and she accepted.[15] Albert Victor's brother, Prince George, Duke of York, now second in line to the throne, evidently became close to May during their shared period of mourning, and Queen Victoria still thought of her as a suitable candidate to marry a future king.[17] Mary married Prince George, Duke of York, in London on 6 July 1893 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace.This second woman, anxious to suggest that the children preferred her to anyone else, would pinch Edward and Albert whenever they were about to be presented to their parents so that they would start crying and be speedily returned to her.Despite Mary's austere public image and her strait-laced private life, she was a caring mother and comforted her children when they suffered from her husband's strict discipline.[17] Edward wrote fondly of his mother in his memoirs: "Her soft voice, her cultivated mind, the cosy room overflowing with personal treasures were all inseparable ingredients of the happiness associated with this last hour of a child's day ...For eight months they toured the British Empire, visiting Gibraltar, Malta, Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, South Africa and Canada.[26] From October 1905 the Prince and Princess of Wales undertook another eight-month tour, this time of India, and the children were once again left in the care of their grandparents.The tour was almost immediately followed by a trip to Spain for the wedding of King Alfonso XIII to Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, at which the bride and groom narrowly avoided assassination.Although the two were on friendly terms, Alexandra could be stubborn; she demanded precedence over Mary at the funeral of Edward VII, was slow in leaving Buckingham Palace, and kept some of the royal jewels that should have been passed to the new queen.[31] During the First World War, Queen Mary instituted an austerity drive at the palace, where she rationed food, and visited wounded and dying servicemen in hospital, which caused her great emotional strain.[32] After three years of war against Germany, and with anti-German feeling in Britain running high, the Russian imperial family, which had been deposed by a revolutionary government, was refused asylum.Queen Mary described her shock and sorrow in her diary and letters, extracts of which were published after her death: "our poor darling little Johnnie had passed away suddenly ...[36] She maintained an air of self-assured calm throughout all her public engagements in the years after the war, a period marked by civil unrest over social conditions, Irish independence, and Indian nationalism.Mary disapproved of divorce as it was contrary to the teaching of the Anglican Church, and thought Simpson wholly unsuitable to be the wife of a king.After receiving advice from British prime minister Stanley Baldwin, as well as the Dominion governments, that he could not remain king and marry Simpson, Edward abdicated.Although she was reluctant, she decided to live at Badminton House, Gloucestershire, with her niece Mary, Duchess of Beaufort, the daughter of her brother Adolphus.[49] From Badminton, in support of the war effort, Queen Mary visited troops and factories and directed the gathering of scrap materials.[55] In 1924, the famous architect Sir Edwin Lutyens created Queen Mary's Dolls' House for her collection of miniature pieces.[59] In addition to being an avid collector, Mary also commissioned many gifts of jewellery, including rings which she presented to her ladies-in-waiting on the occasion of their engagements.[67][68] Actresses who have portrayed Queen Mary include Dame Flora Robson (in A King's Story, 1965), Dame Wendy Hiller (on the London stage in Crown Matrimonial, 1972),[69] Greer Garson (in the television production of Crown Matrimonial, 1974), Judy Loe (in Edward the Seventh, 1975), Dame Peggy Ashcroft (in Edward & Mrs. Simpson, 1978), Phyllis Calvert (in The Woman He Loved, 1988), Gaye Brown (in All the King's Men, 1999), Miranda Richardson (in The Lost Prince, 2003), Margaret Tyzack (in Wallis & Edward, 2005), Claire Bloom (in The King's Speech, 2010), Judy Parfitt (in W.E., 2011), Valerie Dane (in the television version of Downton Abbey, 2013), Dame Eileen Atkins (in Bertie and Elizabeth, 2002 and The Crown, 2016), Geraldine James (in the film version of Downton Abbey, 2019), and Candida Benson (in The Crown, 2022).[72] Sir Henry "Chips" Channon wrote that Queen Mary was "above politics ... magnificent, humorous, worldly, in fact nearly sublime, though cold and hard.