by The Laird o’Thistle
July 15 2007
This coming Tuesday, 17 July, marks the ninetieth anniversary of the proclamation changing the British royal family’s dynastic designation and surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. And although the precise day differs, it also can be regarded as marking the anniversary of the Battenberg family’s transformation into Mountbattens.
It was tempting to begin this column with the formulaic phrase, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” For although the Queen just recently met some of the last handful of surviving WWI veterans; the world into which the House of Windsor emerged is certainly now far distant in both time and character. And the great miracle may be the survival of the Windsor dynasty.
Consider the times. The disaster that we refer to as World War I began in the summer of 1914 and involved all the major European dynasties of the era. The horror of trench warfare and the slaughter of so many of the troops were ripping to shreds the social fabric of the various participants. The Russian Revolution had begun earlier in 1917, though the massacre of the Romanovs was still some months in the future. The collapse of the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties was also in the offing, along with that of all the various minor German royal houses such as Hanover and Wittelsbach, though that outcome was still not at all a certainty in the Spring of 1917.
In Britain, the long war had given rise to an ongoing and aggressive anti-German xenophobia that spawned grumblings against anyone and anything associated with the enemy “Hun.” The King and Queen were also deeply shaken by the popular response to the fall of the Tsar and became more so as days and weeks passed. (It should be remembered that a major piece of the popular hatred of the Tsarist regime is that Empress Alexandra was widely, and falsely, suspected of being strongly and actively pro-German.) The concerns during the late spring and early summer of 1916 were significant enough that the King backed off from his initial instinctive offer of asylum to the Tsar’s family, and probably sealed their fate by so doing. The situation was further aggravated by some of the British Socialists who saw the discontent as an opportunity to press for the abolition of “an alien and uninspiring Court” – as H.G. Wells put it – and the establishment of Workers and Soldier’s Councils. There were fears, however unrealistic they seem now, that what had happened in St. Petersburg could happen in London.
George V’s retort in response to the Wells’ remark is famous, “I may be uninspiring, but I’ll be damned if I’m alien!” The worried Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was lobbying the reluctant king to make that fact dramatically evident by changing the family name. But it took a remark made by Lady Maud Warrender at a Buckingham Palace dinner party in May 1917 to finally overcome the royal resistance. The King reportedly “started and grew pale” when he overheard Lady Maud confiding to Queen Mary concerning the many rumours circulating that the royals were pro-German. Leaving the party immediately, the next day he agreed to the P.M.’s proposal.
And so the quest began to find a new, more British, name for the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha dynasty. Two of the principal participants in the process were King George’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, and the King’s cousin Prince Louis of Battenberg. To the secretary belongs the credit for suggesting the name of Windsor, taken from the grandest and most historic of all the royal residences. (As was noted at the time, many dynastic names originated with the names of important territorial possessions of the house in question.) Prince Louis’s contribution came more in the realm of sorting out what to do about the other relatives who were also being renamed and re-titled, principally his own family and Queen Mary’s Teck relatives. For his family, Prince Louis simply translated Battenberg into Mountbatten and unwittingly created the surname that has now become part of the royal heritage of Elizabeth II’s descendants.
The declaration of 17 July proved to be decisively popular, and the worst part of the “alien Court” crisis passed. Meanwhile, the war and the Russian Revolution continued to drag on. It was a year later, almost to the day, that two other major turning points occurred. On 15 July 1918, the last great German offensive was launched by the Kaiser at Champagne, a battle which was lost on 18 July after which Wilhelm began his journey into exile. Meanwhile, on 16 July the Romanovs were murdered by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg. It so happened that it was at Windsor that George V received the news of his Russian cousins’ deaths on 21 July. He and Queen Mary were utterly horrified.
None of the current British royal family was living at the time of the change of the names. Prince Philip comes the closest in age, being born in 1921, but he did not adopt his mother’s family surname until 1947… a mere 60 years ago! The Queen, at 81, is the senior member of the Windsor family. The Duke of Kent is the senior male member, but he was born some 18 years after the change.
What I think is most notable in this whole episode is that it is indicative of the adaptive nature of the British monarchy that allowed it to survive both then and now. The other great dynasties fell largely because they had become too hidebound and inflexible to survive. (The real root of the downfall of the Romanovs, for instance, lay in the resistance to change dating back to Nicholas II’s father, the reactionary Alexander III.) Meanwhile, the ultimate failure of the more extreme British Socialists to form their own version of a Soviet system is attributable precisely to the willingness – albeit initially reluctant – of the Court to listen to the Prime Minister and, through him, to the voice of the people.
The subsequent history of the Windsor dynasty has continued to be characterized by their mindful adherence to the principle of careful and constitutional adaptation to the will of the people. The unfortunate experience of Edward VIII’s abortive reign provides the only major exception to date and is a perpetual cautionary tale. The far-less-historically-significant and often sensationalized “kerfuffles” of the “Annus Horriblis” of 1992, and the week of Diana’s death and funeral in 1997 are examples of the rule at work.
A last footnote in the surname saga is to recall the more recent change from Windsor to Mountbatten-Windsor. The story is well known that some rather gloating remarks by Lord Louis Mountbatten (the younger son of old Prince Louis) at the time of the Queen’s accession provoked Queen Mary and Winston Churchill to press the young Elizabeth II into making a declaration that the dynasty and family would continue to be “Windsor.” Prince Philip was said to have grumbled afterward that he’d been reduced to “a bloody amoeba” thereby. On 19 February 1960, shortly before the birth of Prince Andrew, the Queen did a partial turnabout, declaring that while the dynastic name would remain Windsor, the surname of her descendants not carrying the style of Royal Highness or the title of Prince or Princess would be Mountbatten-Windsor. The explanatory statement accompanying the declaration further clarified that the surname of both herself as a married woman, and of her children, was (and is) Mountbatten-Windsor. Two surnames, born out of the same historical moment, conjoined henceforth.
So it stands. Given the high probability that the currently vigorous Elizabeth II will still be on the throne in ten years, she will then have the satisfaction of presiding over the centenary of the Windsor dynasty created by her “Grandpapa England” and Queen Mary. By that time she will have presided over quite nearly two-thirds of its history. Given the recently announced pregnancy of the Countess of Wessex, it will be interesting to see if 2007 ends with the birth of the first male child to openly carry the Mountbatten-Windsor surname. (Just as the recently married Lord Nicholas Windsor was the first male to bear the Windsor surname in 1970.) In the meantime, the grand old lady of Windsor obviously continues to relish her cherished role as chatelaine of the Castle that ninety years ago gave her family the shelter of its name.
Yours Aye,
– Ken Cuthbertson
P.S. Briefly, on another topic, I was amused this week by the report of the Queen’s flare of pique with Annie Leibovitz during their photographic session in March. Having complimented the results in a previous column, it feels right to note the episode here. Apparently some “creative” editing by the BBC – which will apparently be corrected in the broadcast version – made it seem more dramatic than what actually occurred, and Ms. Leibovitz has indicated that she rather admires H.M. for growing weary of the bother of having to don such get-ups. The thing I actually find the most interesting is that the Queen felt the freedom to let her feelings show as she did while being filmed by the BBC crew. That is quite striking, really.