Chapter 9 The British Monarchy

Chapter 9

The British Monarchy

Queen Victoria; Prince Albert; King Edward VII; King George V; King Edward VIII; King George VI 

                            

Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

Alexandrina Victoria Saxe-Coburg was Queen of the United Kingdom and Great Britain from 1837 until she died at the age of eighty one, in January of 1901. Victoria was only eighteen when she inherited the throne, and after her marriage to her German cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria gave birth to a total of nine children, all of whom survived past childhood. But the fourth son and eighth child Leopold, was a hemophiliac. He died at the age of thirty one.

Queen Victoria was very much like Princess Diana in character, although admittedly at first it is hard to see the resemblance. At the beginning of her reign Victoria was described by her advisors as a naïve, stubborn but placid young lady who needed to be handled very carefully. She had a phlegmatic temperament like Diana and just like Frida Kahlo, Victoria was completely besotted by her husband. But whereas Frida was melancholic, Victoria was phlegmatic.

The difference between Victoria and Diana was that Victoria as sovereign ruler held all the power in her hands, but Diana’s husband as heir to the throne, was the one who held all the power in his hands. Diana was not a royal princess until she married Prince Charles and she was more or less at the mercy of her husband.

If Diana’s husband had remained faithful to her and given her all the attention that she needed, their marriage might have followed along similar lines to that of Victoria and Albert. But Prince Albert and Prince Charles had different temperaments; Albert was a Choleric and Charles is a Melancholic. Just like Diana, Queen Victoria was a very needy woman and both women were prone to having hysterical fits of anger with their respective husbands.

Fortunately for Victoria, penniless Albert was looking for a place in history and he found it when he became consort to the popular Queen. They had a successful marriage because Albert was a dutiful, monogamous husband and he was careful to keep the Queen emotionally attached to him in order to insure his position as consort to the most famous Queen in the world.  

Victoria’s father died when she was only one year old and she tended to cling to those men in her life whom she saw as protectors. She was devastated when her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne was defeated in parliament and he did resign in spite of Victoria’s pleas for him to stay on in her government. She had become exceptionally close to the man who had become her great protector, her tutor and her advisor, and she wept bitterly when he left office. Throughout her life Victoria leaned on those strong men who acted as proxy father figures, men who gave her a sense of security and safety.

After Victoria became Queen, it wasn’t long before Prince Albert arrived on the scene and the young regent was so struck by his handsome appearance that she proposed to him after knowing him for only five days. Victoria was a woman who always wanted her own way and her phlegmatic stubbornness served to get her what she wanted, most of the time. Albert became her next protector. He was the father figure who guided and directed his naïve young wife to the point where he controlled her absolutely. But Victoria allowed this to happen because she was still a child at heart who didn’t want to grow up.

Prince Albert was not as besotted by Victoria as she was of him. His was a planned relationship; carefully planned out to afford him the best advantages and to take over the running of the country. It is generally believed that Albert deliberately impregnated the Queen time and time again just to keep her in a vulnerable state of pregnancy. This way he could direct and control affairs of state without her interference.

Victoria did not actually like being pregnant and was often depressed by the fact that although it is known that she liked having intercourse with her husband, it seemed that the only way to stop getting pregnant was to stop having intercourse and eventually this caused a rift in the marriage.

People who knew Queen Victoria described her as petulant, tearful, overly stubborn, and a woman who needed to be petted and cajoled into doing what was necessary. She was selfish with her time and she preferred to escape to her Shangri-La in the Scottish Highlands where she could cast off the affairs of state and relax in the tranquil surrounding of Balmoral Castle, the castle that her prince had built for her. But when Albert died at the young age of forty two, everything changed for the worse.

Queen Victoria went into mourning for her beloved husband and she mourned him for the rest of her life. From the time of his death, Victoria dressed herself in black and she actually created a culture of death around her, where everyone else felt that they also had to dress in black. Even the iron railings in London were painted black in keeping with this extremely, elongated period of mourning for the queen’s husband. Victoria hid herself away because she couldn’t cope with anything by herself. She had grown so dependent on her prince consort that she had lost her individuality, but just like Diana the phlegmatic Queen eventually found another man to lean on.

The new man in the Queen’s life was her Scottish Ghillie (gamekeeper) John Brown. John Brown was the man who managed to pull Victoria out of her long, drawn out sulk and the country heaved a sigh of relief. John Brown took over the reigns of her private life and the queen gladly handed them over. He became the next father figure in line and this resulted in Queen Victoria getting interested in living again, just because she had found another strong arm to lean on. The London newspapers ridiculed the relationship and even went as far as to call the Queen, Mrs. Brown, but Victoria brushed off the criticism because she needed a man to lean on and she needed a man who would never let her down.

It was the same with yet another of her prime ministers, a man by the name of Benjamin Disraeli. Disraeli was no fool and he knew how to ingratiate himself with the Queen. He also became a father figure to Victoria and she was content to have Brown on her right arm and Disraeli on her left arm, like two pillars holding her up between them. Once again the Queen became distraught when Disraeli died and when John Brown died only two years later she became extremely depressed.

Queen Victoria reigned for sixty three years and seven months, and she was the last British monarch of the house of Hanover. In her later years she leaned heavily on an Indian man named Abdul Karin whom she had first employed as a waiter and then she enabled him to rise up in position to become her clerk. He remained in her service until the day she died.

By her own request sentimental Queen Victoria was buried with a photograph and lock of John Brown’s hair hidden in her hand. It was rumored that they had been lovers and so the hair and the photo were hidden from the family members who had gathered around her. Victoria was a romantic and she had also requested that a plaster cast of her beloved Prince Albert’s hand should be placed beside her. She was interred beside the body of her husband.

Victoria had a very unhappy childhood. Her German mother forced her daughter to sleep in the same room with her until Victoria was made queen. Victoria’s mother was afraid that because Victoria was heir to the British throne, there might be assassination attempts made on the young princess. The crafty mother planned to become regent as soon as Victoria gained the throne, but she didn’t know her own daughter very well. With her new found power, the young queen threw off the strangulation hold of her mother and skipped off into her new life of freedom.

Albert the Choleric German prince was the perfect partner for the Queen. They were both virgins when they wed, Victoria was bilingual and spoke fluent German, and Albert found refuge in her adoring eyes. This Queen who gave birth to nine babies has been quoted as saying, “An ugly baby is a very nasty object and the prettiest is frightful.”

Queen Victoria left a rather dubious legacy in her wake. Although she was generally well liked by her British subjects, she was never willing to accept that her bloodline carried the hemophiliac gene. When he was a child, she had done her best to keep her young hemophiliac son hidden from the world and she refused to belief that hemophilia was part of her legacy to the royal families of Europe.

The faulty gene for hemophilia is carried only by the females in the family, but the dreadful, bleeding disease erupts only in the sons of the mothers who carry the gene. But not every male child is affected and not every female child is a carrier. Rumors were rampant throughout Europe that the blood of Queen Victoria’s royal family was tainted, but the lure of marrying into this powerful dynasty drew many of the princes and princesses of Europe into royal alliances through marriage.

The descendants of Queen Victoria populated the royal families of Europe and no one knew when hemophilia was going to strike. Her children and her grandchildren married into the royal families of Russia, Spain, Greece, Norway, Germany, Romania, Yugoslavia and Sweden and it is reported that the hemophilia surfaced in Victoria’s Spanish, Russian and Prussian descendants. There is a small chance that hemophilia will raise its ugly head in the British monarchy once more, but nobody can predict the likelihood.

Not only did Queen Victoria carry the gene for hemophilia in her royal blood line, it is believed that she also carried the gene for a disease called porphyria. King George III, a king who was known as “Mad King George” was Queen Victoria’s grandfather.

Today it is commonly supposed that his so called madness was actually caused by porphyria and this disease can be traced back through history to sixteenth century Mary Queen of Scots whose only son, James VI of Scotland, inherited the throne of England. One of the tell tale signs of porphyria, which is a very painful disease, is that the urine of those who have the disease turns to the color of burgundy wine. This is how porphyria can be traced in the royal family back through the centuries. The strange color of the urine was usually recorded by attending physicians.

The tragedy of disease strikes both rich and poor and none of us can count our blessings that our family bloodline is free of such genetic disorders. Just like the royal families of Europe these genes are there lurking in the blood-line waiting for an opportunity to strike down an unsuspecting victim.

Not enough money has been poured into research coffers so that doctors and scientists can discover cures for the numerous devastating, inherited diseases that plague our societies. Instead, billions worth of currency is poured into propagating wars around the globe. It’s a never ending cycle. Doctors work feverishly to save lives while leaders and insurgents work diligently to start wars that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

The day might come when all killing will stop but possibly, as predicted in the book of Revelation, it will take another world war to stop us.

Prince Albert (1819-1861)

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha influenced Queen Victoria in everything she did. He was a staunch family man, a patron of the arts, an artist and an innovator of technology. Albert had a choleric temperament and he was like many other Cholerics, he liked being a workaholic. He was never happy unless he was involved in a major project and it was actually Albert who in the end fashioned Britain’s constitutional monarchy.

This German prince was a highly intelligent and gifted man. He wanted to be useful but he also wanted to be recognized by the British peerage for a job well done. But the snobbish, British peerage refused to acknowledge the many contributions that Prince Albert made to improve British society and he passed away at the age of forty two, a sick and depressed individual who had worked himself to death.

It was generally believed that Albert had contracted typhoid fever and his body was too weak to fight off the fever but later research shows that Albert might have suffered from Crohn’s Disease which is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that can lead to severe complications of the gastrointestinal tract.

At the beginning of the marriage Albert was energetic and industrious. He embraced the new industrial revolution that was sweeping the country, he modernized buildings and he built hospitals and libraries. One of his hobbies was photography and he used his hobby to propagate the image of his huge English family as close knit group who were of sound mind and body and contented with their lot in life. But Albert was ambitious and he clashed with the old fashioned members of parliament who were determined to keep him in his place and out of public affairs. 

Prince Albert’s philanthropic projects were the reason that Britain’s monarchy did not collapse during the unrest that was sweeping through Europe. He took a lot of risks with his never ending desire to build buildings and make a mark for himself, and his choleric temperament gave him the impetus of always being able to finish any job that he had started. His most famous and lasting project was the Great Exhibition in the ‘Crystal Palace’ a building that went down in history as his best and greatest endeavor. 

The ‘Crystal Palace’ was a vast glittering edifice dreamed up by Prince Albert. The Palace was built almost entirely of glass and this building was to be the site of the greatest manufacturing display on earth because it held more than one hundred thousand incredible exhibits from around the world. This was Albert’s memorial to himself; the exhibition made a profit and it was his greatest achievement, but unfortunately the Crystal Palace burned to the ground in 1936 and it was never found out what had started the blaze.

The Queen’s consort was a fierce man but just like Queen Elizabeth II, he had been trained to keep his emotions under control. He used hunting as an outlet for his anger, he whipped his children into obedience and he tried to create a rigid, morally upright tribe of conscientious children who would bring harmony to Western Europe when they married and produced families of their own. But that was an impossible dream.

The Russian and European royal families started to lose power and not only did the descendants of Albert and Victoria pass hemophilia on down through the generations, but they left behind them a badly behaved young son, King Edward VII, who brought the name of the family into disrepute.

The royal families of Russia and Western Europe declined in popularity and some of the monarchies were abolished, but the most famous descendants of Victoria and Albert were the Russian Romanovs who went down in history as the royals who were brutally murdered because the British refused to give them sanctuary. Victoria and Albert’s second son, Prince Alfred, married the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia who was the daughter of Tsar Alexander II, but hemophilia can only be transmitted from mother to son. It wasn’t Prince Alfred who brought hemophilia to the Russian nobility. It was his sister Alice.

Alice Maud Mary who was Victoria and Albert’s third child married a Hessian prince and their daughter Alexandra married Nicholas II tsar of Russia. This Russian Romanov family produced three daughters and a son. Their son Alexei was a hemophiliac and the whole family was shot and bludgeoned to death during the Russian revolution.

There are conflicting reports about Albert’s childhood. He grew up in one of the duchies of Germany and he was happy when he was engrossed in his studies and his hobbies. But his parents had a difficult marriage and eventually they were divorced. Albert and his older brother were probably affected in a negative way by the distressed relationship between their parents, and soon after the divorce they lost contact with their mother when she married her lover and was banned from court.

 Albert grew up with a high moral standard that was probably the result of his open disapproval of both his father and his brother’s profligate way of life. Like many offspring of disappointing parents, Albert set his mind to do better with his own marriage and his own children. To his credit he did do a better job than his parents did except when it came to his son and heir.

In one of his speeches Prince Albert said, “Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition which tends rapidly to the accomplishment of that great end to which, indeed, all history points-the realization of the unity of mankind.”

Queen Victoria was a romantic but Prince Albert was an idealist. Idealists get lost in any society because their Utopian dreams can never come to fruition as long as the aggressive nature of mankind remains untamed. The dream of brotherhood among nations will never exist until ethnic differences and different religious beliefs are laid aside. As American, President Ronald Reagan put it, “Someone remarked that the best way to unite all nations on this globe would be an attack from some other planet. In the face of such an alien enemy, people would respond with a sense of their unity of interest and purpose.”

King Edward VII (1841-1910)

Albert Edward Saxe-Coburg, was the second child and first son of Victoria and Albert, and the two parents were not pleased with their eldest son. From the age of three ‘Bertie’ as he was called, gave his parents cause for concern because Bertie just didn’t want to be educated. His father, Prince Albert, had designed a long and very extensive curriculum of study for his young son because Albert had decided that this heir to the British throne was going to be the best king that Britain ever had. But what Albert didn’t understand was that Bertie was like his mother Queen Victoria. Bertie was a Phlegmatic and just like his mother he leaned towards being stubborn, selfish and lazy.

Just like his mother the child threw temper tantrums whenever he was pushed beyond his limits, and just like his mother, he wanted his own way in all things. It didn’t matter what new methods were brought in for the purpose of taming the young child, nothing worked; Bertie was a naughty boy. Bertie was rude to his tutors who considered him to have a weak intellect and these tutors were vocal in their opinions that the young child had no powers of endurance.

The young child refused to accept or cooperate with the gruesome curriculum that had been laid out for him and this resulted in his parents calling him names and castigating him frequently for his bad behavior. They referred to their son as a cunning lazybones, a stubborn little boy who had become a thorn in their flesh, a useless character who ought never to be king.

What Albert and Victoria failed to understand was that because of his phlegmatic temperament, Bertie would have thrived better if he had been handled gently and slightly spoiled in the same way that Albert had spoiled his petulant wife. But the name calling continued on into Bertie’s adult life.

Victoria and Albert were horrified when they found out that in his teens, Bertie had adopted a lifestyle of gambling, horse racing and smoking cigars. His parents believed that their eldest son was belittling the monarchy with his unacceptable behavior and when they discovered that on top of everything else he was having sex with loose women, it became an all out war. Victoria referred to Bertie as thoughtless, weak and depraved; a vulgar philistine who was indifferent to culture and who spent his life in pursuit of frivolous pastimes; an idle boy who was going to bring the family to ruin.

When Prince Albert died a few days after having an altercation with his son, Victoria blamed Bertie for the death of her beloved husband and she would not forgive the boy. It wasn’t until years later and a few minute before she died that Victoria held out her arms to the son who would be king. But it was too late. It was the one and only time that Bertie had been allowed inside his mother’s bedroom because she had make it clear that she couldn’t stand the sight of him and couldn’t bare to be in the same room with him.

Queen Victoria was looking at an exaggerated version of her own self. Her phlegmatic son had learned well at his mother’s knee and all of Victoria’s character weaknesses shone forth in this future heir to the throne. His libertine life was an attempt to cover up the pain of rejection that he endured from his parents throughout his entire youth.

Because of the long reign of his mother, King Edward VII ascended the throne when he was fifty nine years old. He had spent his life in pursuit of pleasure and even journeyed to France so that he could visit the famous Parisian brothels, without fear of being found out by the London newspapers. He also had many mistresses. The young prince was as extravagant as he was greedy and the older he grew the fatter he became. He was the epitome of gluttony but he went down in history as a jolly old fat man who looked like Santa Claus.

During this time of debauchery, Bertie married Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte was a beautiful woman and she was Queen consort of the United Kingdom for the nine years that her husband sat on the throne. Her family was relatively penniless and although Denmark was at enmity with the Prussians who were at that time in favor with the British, Victoria and Albert made the choice to marry the two of them and hope for the best.

Bertie was genuinely fond of his wife but throughout their marriage and throughout his nine year reign he continued to dally with other women. Alexandra turned a blind eye to her husband’s affairs because she really had no other choice. She was slightly deaf, she had no other options, she had a choleric temperament and the prize waiting for her at the end of the tunnel was the title of Queen Empress Consort. But Alexandra only managed to hold on to her prize for nine short years before her husband who adopted the name King Edward VII, died from the combination of emphysema and a series of heart attacks.

It is reported that Queen Alexandra really loved King Edward VII in spite of the fact that he had had many love affairs and kept company with prostitutes. Together they had six children two of whom died, and it was reported that Alexandra was a very good mother who adored her children and took care of them very well. Her son George was heir to the throne.

 During Bertie’s short nine years on the throne he completely changed the monarchy. His mother had never allowed him to have any part of government and she had never taught him how to handle the duties of a future monarch. It was difficult for Bertie to adjust to the responsibility of being a monarch but in the end, because he was basically a gentle natured man, he is remembered as one of Britain’s most popular kings.

King Edward VII was extravagant by nature. He lavished money on décor and he lavished money on pomp and circumstance. His coronation was an incredible glittery affair and in one fell swoop he totally abolished the gloom and doom of his mother’s prudish Victorian era. The king did start to work hard and take on responsibility, and thanks to his wisdom the British navy got a new set of warships which helped them to win World War I against the king’s cousin Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.

But King Edward VII came to power too late. He died in his bed with both his wife and one of his mistresses in attendance. Bertie lived a life of excess and he died young as a result. It is reported that among the king’s many lovers, one of them was Lady Randolph Churchill who was Winston Churchill’s mother, and another was Alice Keppel, the great grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles who is now married to Prince Charles, the current heir to the British throne.

Bertie treated his wife badly because he was addicted to sex and pornography. As with all addictions it takes an enormous amount of mental strength to give up a powerful addiction and get back on the straight and narrow path through life. Many addicts understand that their addiction is ruining their health as in the case of alcoholism and drugs, but a sexual addiction is more perverse because the addict doesn’t experience any immediate side effects; it seems to be pure enjoyment all the way. But there are serious side effects.

It is impossible for a sex addict to experience love. It is impossible for them to give real love and it is impossible for them to receive real love. Worst of all, they die hating themselves. The king chased after romantic love and sexual love which are fleeting at best. He was never able to accept and enjoy the true love that was offered to him by his faithful wife.

In a complaint to his mother about how badly the British treated native Indians, King Edward VII has been quoted as saying, “Because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute.” He was a pacifist king.

 King George V (1865-1936)

George Frederick Ernest Albert was a Choleric like his mother Queen Alexandra, and his Grandfather Prince Albert. He was a no-nonsense kind of person, always punctual, not given to extravagance like his father, and he did try to do the best job that he could considering that he had not been raised to be king.

From the age of twelve, George and his older brother spent their youth first as cadets in the Royal Navy, and then when he decided to make the navy his career, he was appointed as commander of HMS (His Majesty’s Ship) Melampus. The death of George’s older brother ended his naval career. George became heir to the British throne next in line behind his father, King Edward VII.

But George was totally unlike his notorious, deviant father. The boy was a rather dull but dutiful, utilitarian Choleric, who preferred to stay home and collect stamps and he fulfilled the marriage expectations of a king by marrying his second cousin Mary of Teck, a woman who had previously been promised in marriage to his older brother. Mary’s father was a German nobleman and her mother was a descendant of King George III. She was also one of Queen Victoria’s cousins and this royal couple produced six children who were potential heirs to the British throne.

King George V and his melancholic wife became extremely wealthy due to the fact that Mary was a very covetous woman. Whenever she noticed something of value in anyone’s residence, she would make a point of waiting for the owners to present the valued object to her as a gift, or if that didn’t happen she would offer to purchase the item at a ridiculously low price.

It was rumored that Queen Mary often pilfered what she wanted if the owners preferred not to part with the priceless object. Some of the Russian crown jewels actually ended up in her hands, but it is unknown how she acquired them. It was said that she purchased most of her jewels at bargain basement prices from deposed royal families who had been forced to flee their homelands when the monarchies of Europe collapsed.

However choleric King George V and his melancholic Queen did have a stable marriage and it is reported that they were genuinely fond of each other. George V became king in 1910 and soon found himself embroiled in politics. It was an age of turmoil and revolutions and because of the Russian revolution King George V went down in history as the king who refused sanctuary to his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

At first the British government offered sanctuary to the beleaguered Romanov family who were in dire danger and surrounded by revolutionaries, but it was King George V who persuaded the government to renege on the offer. George feared that an association with the Russian Tsar would reduce his own growing popularity with the British people and as a result of George’s narrow mindedness, the Romanov family ceased to exist; they died in a hail of bullets.

King George never acknowledged the part he played in the deaths of his cousin’s entire family and it can be supposed that he felt that he was only doing his duty. As a British monarch he probably felt that he had to put his own country first, ahead of any duty that he might have towards his Russian relatives.

But being a Choleric, George was a practical man and when World War I broke out he was clever enough to change the name of the house of the British royal family from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor because he didn’t want to be associated with the German war machine under his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II. By nature King George was not a sentimental man. He was all about the business in hand and was very much like his grandfather Prince Albert who set about to prevent revolution in England.

Under King George V’s rule Ireland gained independence except for the nine northern counties of Ulster that chose to remain as part of the United Kingdom. Parliament also gained more power when King George V was in charge and the lot of the common working man did improve greatly. King George V is also given credit for ending a strike that had been called out for the entire British navy.

Britain won the Great War (World War I) that lasted from 1914 until 1918 and this made the king more popular than ever with his subjects. Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German warmonger leader, was King George’s cousin and in order to appease his British subjects, King George V and all his relatives who had made Britain their home, relinquished their German titles and sub titles; they also adopted British names. All of the King’s relatives who had supported Germany during the war were cut off and their British peerages (honorary titles) were removed.

World War I took a great toll on King George’s health. Before the war King George V was a world traveler but after the war he reverted to being a home body again. He was a man of the people, he had a high moral standard and like his father he was extremely vocal in expressing his dislike of racism. He was not anti-Catholic like many of his English compatriots and he was sympathetic to the common working people who labored hard and lived in sub standard homes.

The king was also astute enough to view the rising Nazi party in post war Germany with suspicion and he predicted another world war if the Nazis gained power; little did he know that his prediction would come true.

King George V began to suffer from ill health. In 1915, after suffering a riding accident, he developed breathing problems that were related to his heavy use of cigarettes. He suffered from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and pleurisy (inflammation of the lining surrounding the lungs.) He also developed septicemia (blood poisoning.) The king’s ill health forced him to hand over the reins to his eldest son Edward although he was vocal in his disapproval of his son’s free and easy lifestyle.

King George V’s son Edward was a lot like his grandfather King Edward VII. He had had many love affairs; he lived a life of pleasure and he kept company with people who were deemed unacceptable companions for a future king. But whereas King Edward VII was phlegmatic, his son King George V was a Choleric like his mother and his grandson Edward was a Choleric like his father.

King George V was actually euthanized. His doctor gave him a lethal dose of morphine mixed with cocaine so that the gossipy, tawdry, evening newspapers would not be able to print the news of the king’s death. That honor was to be given to the classier morning newspapers that would show deference to the royal family in their grief.

Not much has been written about King George’s early childhood except that he was not an intellectual and he was sent to the navy when he was twelve. His mother Queen Alexandra doted on all of her children and on being given the news of his father’s death George V expressed his deep love for his father who had been his best friend.

Because he had parents who loved him King George V probably had a happy childhood but he is quoted as having made this comment about his heir and oldest son, “After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.” Once more King George V was astute enough to know his own son well enough to predict his son’s demise. But George V the choleric king did not do a good job of parenting two of his sons, two sons who were destined to be kings. He was too strict, too overbearing and unable to show affection to his children.

The fact that Queen Mary was covetous had a detrimental effect on the reputation of her husband the king. In a marriage, spouses are mirror images of each other and although it was obscured by history, King George V was also covetous. Above all he coveted his reputation. He coveted the reputation he had earned as a king who always tried to do what was right. He spoke boldly against those who were racist, he spoke boldly against those who were anti-social and he acted boldly in the face of opposition from his parliament. King George V has been quoted as saying, “My father was frightened of his mother; I was frightened of my father and I’m damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.”

But George V failed the true test of character when he secretly spoke against providing sanctuary for the Romanov family, two adults and five children, one of whom was a gravely ill little boy who had hemophilia. King George V coveted his reputation. His public image was more important to him than the lives of seven Russian relatives, but the public image that he tried so hard to protect, fell to pieces when it was discovered that he had refused to help his frightened, suffering relatives, a refusal that resulted in a death sentence being carried out.

The real truth about the inner workings of the human mind takes up residence in the person’s own memory. For some strange reason everyone wants to go down in history as ‘hail fellow well met.’ But history makes blunders and often the real truth about historical figures gets lost among the storytelling myths that have grown up around them.

The storytelling myths are not important. That which is truly important is the reality and the truth of what actually happens in the life of any given person. If history is so important to us, there must be a reason we give it such importance. Could it be that as is foretold in the Bible, all will be revealed in the end, and every individual’s history will be unraveled in order to pass judgment? Our brains are like computers, it won’t be a difficult task to unravel our own histories and uncover all our own misdeeds and evil actions.       

King Edward VIII (1894-1972)

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David was King Edward VIII of Britain for less than twelve months. The whole world watched and listened breathlessly when he read the speech that would change his life forever. King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England in order to marry the woman he loved and the woman he loved was a twice divorced American woman named Wallis Simpson. King Edward VIII was a Choleric like his father and he didn’t really love Wallis Simpson, he was obsessed by her, and the reason he was so obsessed by her was because Wallis reminded him of his melancholic mother, Queen Mary.

Wallis Simpson had a dismissive, melancholic temperament just like Queen Mary and that is only one of the mannerisms that attracted Edward to her side. It was well documented that the more Wallis castigated her royal playboy, the more he liked it. She sometimes treated him with contempt and it must have been a great psychological relief for the future King of England to be back in the only too familiar territory of his childhood.  Instead of being surrounded by fawning individuals who kept company with him just because he was rich and because he was the future king of Britain, Edward truly believed that finally he had found a real person to relate to.

Edward the future king showered Wallis with expensive jewelry. Deep down in his choleric psyche, Edward was still a little boy who was pining for his mother, and he even tried to make Wallis look like his mother. Both women loved to dress up. They loved to adorn themselves with expensive, beautiful clothing and they loved to wear sparkling jewelry dripping with precious gem stones. They both had an ability to be gracious and charming whenever the mood suited them and what first attracted Edward to Wallis was the regal dignity with which she carried herself, just like his mother the Queen.  

Like Queen Victoria who adored her husband Prince Albert, King Edward VIII put Wallis Simpson on a pedestal. But Queen Victoria was a phlegmatic woman who adored a choleric husband whereas King Edward VIII was a choleric man who adored a melancholic woman.

History has given Wallis Simpson a bad name. It was said that she was a woman who had such a grip on the emotions of a king that she was to blame for his abdication. But years later the truth was revealed in some of her personal letters to one of her ex-husbands. Wallis was trapped with a man that she really didn’t want to marry. She had no way out the mess that she herself had created because the king had threatened to commit suicide and slit his throat if she refused to marry him. Either way Wallis Simpson was a condemned woman. She was condemned to spend the rest of her life with a man she didn’t love and she was condemned by the British for seducing their popular king, something that as a married woman she should never have done.

Edward’s father King George V was a hard taskmaster who despaired of his eldest son. The boy did not thrive under his father’s strict discipline although the little prince did start out in life as a bright, curious and talented little boy. But according to his parents, by the time he had grown into adulthood he was a good for nothing scoundrel who was bringing the royal family into disrepute. The boy prince needed to have a woman on his arm at all times because his parents had emasculated him.

Edward leaned heavily on women in order to make himself feel loved, and he openly disparaged the old fashioned British monarchy that he was part of. He was very much like his mother in only one respect. Whereas Queen Mary coveted treasures, her first son coveted women. He was a very needy individual and like many needy men he needed to feed off the inner strength of women in order to feel strong and capable.

As a young man Edward, much like his playboy grandfather Edward VII, wanted to have fun. He was widely condemned for having many love affairs because unlike his phlegmatic grandfather, the young prince wasn’t wise enough to keep his affairs out of the public eye. He was a rebel who flaunted the rules of upper class society but he would have made a good king if he had settled down with the right woman, and Wallis Simpson was not the right woman for him.

Not enough credit was given to Edward VIII for what he tried to achieve. He was a man of the people, cared nothing for status, and was genuinely interested in helping his beleaguered nation to rise up and prosper.

During World War I, Edward visited British soldiers who were holed up in the trenches of Europe and he even wanted to join the army and take part in the fighting. But because he was heir to the throne, Edward’s desire to fight for his country was denied, and because he was heir to the throne, the restrictions that were imposed on him by both his father and the stuffy, old-fashioned British politicians of the day, turned him into a man without a purpose. He had no idea that his father’s reign would be short lived and he had no idea that his country would be plunged into World War II shortly after he abdicated. If World War II had broken out before King Edward VIII had abdicated, chances are that people would have stopped caring who he loved and who he wanted to marry.

Because he was choleric man who had not developed any thinking skills, King Edward VIII made a dreadful miscalculation when he decided to abdicate in favor of his younger brother. Edward had no idea how badly his abdication would be received. Not only did he loose his title, he lost the huge income that came with the title. He lost his family, he lost his right to remain in England and he lost the goodwill of the people.

Sir Winston Churchill who was not the British Prime Minister at the time suggested the idea of a morganatic marriage for Wallis and Edward to the British parliament. In a morganatic union the couple could be married but she would remain a commoner with no royal title. But the British Prime Minister at that time rejected that idea because he wanted to be rid of the rebellious king.

In actual fact King Edward VIII was forced off the throne of England; he didn’t really abdicate, he was deposed. Because Edward openly expressed his opinions and because he had never learned how to filter his language, the British government viewed their sovereign as ‘a loose cannon.’ Princess Diana was not the first royal who was thought to be a ‘loose canon.’

Edward didn’t realize that he would no longer be welcome in his own country or even in his own family. He was cast aside as a person who had failed to do his duty for the country, failed to do his duty for his family and a man who had sullied himself by marrying a scandalous, foreign woman. On top of being a foreigner, the woman the king wanted to marry was a divorcée twice over who had the reputation of being a loose woman.

King Edward VIII believed that because he was the king, he held the power of government in his own hands and he could do whatever he wanted to do. But he underestimated the power of a group of old men who were more experienced than he was and these government ministers were more than ready to depose a king whom they despised.

King Edward VIII threatened to abdicate if he was denied permission to marry Wallis Simpson and the Prime Minister called his bluff. Because he had voiced his intention to give up the throne for the love of a woman, Edward was forced to carry out his threat in spite of the fact that Wallis begged him not to do it. She even voiced her concern that they could never make each other happy, but she never told him that she was still deeply in love with her last husband. King Edward VIII had no intention of giving up his proxy mother because he desperately needed her and he could not function without her.

King Edward VIII had movie star looks. He was friendly, boyish, open and charismatic, and he hated the formality of the royal family, its court and the government surrounding it. He preferred to be informal, he liked to chat with ordinary people and he loved to have fun.

Wallis Simpson was described as dignified, charming, wise and witty. She had good taste, carried herself well but she was manipulative and ambitious. Wallis loved the glitz and glamour of the jet set life she was experiencing as the future king’s lover, but she was wise enough to know that this should have been a temporary affair. However Wallis Simpson wasn’t wise enough to know that she had bitten off more than she could chew.

If he had not become king, Wallis would have cast off her clingy, obsessive boyfriend and he might have become a stalker, following her around the world wherever she went. At one stage of their relationship Wallis Simpson made it known to the king that she planned to disappear for a while. The king’s response to her was, “I’m the king of England. I can find you anywhere you decide to go.”

Unfortunately for Wallis and other women like her who are stalked by obsessive compulsive men, these women become like stand-ins for the stalker’s own mother. The women who are stalked do not necessarily look like the mothers who gave birth to these men, but in personality and temperament they are identical. There is always something about the woman that triggers some kind of recognition in the man who wants to keep her for himself.  

As with lots of children, Edward had a very unhappy childhood. He was afraid of his bad tempered father, abused by his nanny and he didn’t receive enough attention from his mother. He and his younger brother, who became king in his stead, had so much potential but their fierce controlling father managed to destroy the lively character of his two eldest sons.

This was the predecessor for Queen Elizabeth II and her troubled sister Princess Margaret but in the case of the two princes the younger prince succeeded in creating an honorable reputation for himself and the older prince failed. With the two princesses the older princess created an honorable reputation for herself and the younger princess failed.

Edward the Choleric was being groomed to be king but he rebelled because his choleric father and his melancholic mother were too severe and too strict. Under such conditions the boy Edward became needy, bitter and angry. He married his divorcée but he lost all when he made that choice. His life was a disaster.

Edward VIII’s niece, Elizabeth the choleric princess was being groomed to be Queen but her choleric father and her phlegmatic mother were both kind and loving parents who adored their firstborn child. Under such conditions Elizabeth flowered into womanhood. She met and married a man whom she loved and who loved her in return. Her life was a success and she is still beloved by the people.

George VI who was both Edward’s brother and Elizabeth’s father, was a nervous choleric boy who always stood in the shadow of his older brother, therefore he received less punishment and less negative attention. Since he was not being groomed to be king, George VI settled down to become a dutiful and obedient son and because he stuttered, he was not suited to becoming a playboy or a lady’s man like his older brother. He met and married a woman whom he loved and who loved him in return. Although he died young, George VI’s life was a success and he was beloved by the people.

Princess Margaret who was George VI’s younger daughter was not being groomed to be a Queen therefore she did not receive the same kind of quality care as that given to her older sister. Margaret also fell in love with a divorced man but made the decision to give him up so that she could keep her royal privileges. Her life became a useless endeavor just like King Edward VIII, her renegade uncle. In the end Princess Margaret was scorned by the people for her numerous and questionable love affairs.

King Edward VIII, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret were four people, two men and two women who all had choleric temperaments. But differences in their upbringing, two different parenting styles and the different circumstances surrounding each of their lives, all worked together to dictate how their lives would play out.

Three of these royals were fortunate enough to meet and marry persons whom they fell in love with. But whereas two of the lovers were suitable matches, one of the lovers Wallis Simpson, was not deemed to be a suitable match. Love is a powerful emotion and thwarted love or the wrong kind of obsessive love can destroy lives. King Edward VIII’s abdication speech is as follows:

“I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do, without the help of the woman I love.” Sadly the woman he loved did not love him back.

King George VI (1895-1952)

If it hadn’t been for World War II, Albert Frederick Arthur George would have been written off in the history books as a good man who had an uneventful life and if it hadn’t been for the abdication of his brother King Edward VIII, Albert would never have been king. He and his family might have passed into obscurity if his older brother whom he was very fond of had done his duty and married a woman who could have produced an heir for the British throne.

But this shy, fearful, bad tempered, stammering, choleric individual became King George VI of Britain and in the end the people loved him for his steadfastness, his devotion to duty and his steady hold on the reins of government, a government that helped Britain to win the war.

Like his older brother, Bertie as he was called, was bullied by his father. He grew up with very low self esteem not only because he was bullied by his father but because he had a speech impediment and he also suffered from knock knees, knees that forced him to wear painful leg splints during most of his childhood. The boy was a Choleric like his brother and he didn’t have a hope of excelling in the big game of life except for the fact that he was afforded a chance in a lifetime to become somebody special. He was given the chance to be a king and he turned out to be a very good one.

But before he became king, Bertie fell in love with a sweet, kind, young phlegmatic woman who, after twice refusing his proposal of marriage, ended up walking down the aisle with him. Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was a British aristocrat who grew up in Scotland on her family estate, and at first she was not interested in becoming a royal princess.

But because of his persistence, and because he was so much in love with her, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon eventually did relent and she accepted Bertie’s marriage proposal. Later in life she confided to a friend that she married Bertie in order to help him out and only afterwards did she fall in love with him. King George VI and his Lady Elizabeth continued that love affair until the day he died.

The young couple had two daughters, Princess Elizabeth (the current Queen) and Princess Margaret and they had a very happy family life. Bertie doted on his daughters and his daughters doted on him and it was his wife who was the glue that held the family together. Bertie’s wife was a very good mother and she was basically content with her life until the great abdication disaster happened.

All was well in the world with this family until the king’s abdication struck fear and trembling into their hearts. King George V died unexpectedly and then twelve months later Edward VIII abdicated the throne. It was such a shocking turn of events for the young family, so shocking in fact that when it was reported to Bertie that he was now the new king, he collapsed in tears in front of his mother. He had no confidence in himself because as a child he had been browbeaten to death. But the reality of who he really was and what he really was, had escaped even his own notice.

King George VI was a brave man. During World War I in spite of his frail constitution, he had served in the navy, and he had conducted himself with dignity in spite of the jeers and taunts that he was subjected to from his father. He even honored his father’s memory by adopting his father’s name George, and he rarely complained openly about his lot in life. With the help of his peaceful phlegmatic wife, George VI pulled himself together and started to lead the country in a quiet and dignified manner.

What helped the king enormously was the fact that his wife had been able to develop a good rapport with the ordinary people on the street. The young couple was fighting to restore a sense of decency to the monarchy and they were determined to shore up the dissent that had started to show its face among their British subjects. Elizabeth and Bertie put their faith in God. Fortunately for them their strong religious beliefs kept them going because they firmly believed that it had been God’s will for them to be King and Queen of Britain, especially when World War II started to rear its ugly head.

King Edward VIII who had abdicated and was now called the Duke of Windsor, acted foolishly. He was convinced that his weaker brother and his brother’s non aggressive, little wife would fail to impress the British people, and he, the Duke was ready to step in and save the day. Edward felt that the monarchy was doomed to failure, Britain would become a Republic and the beleaguered Duke was ready to offer his services as leader of the new Republic.

Before war broke out, the Duke of Windsor and his wife Wallis Simpson who had gained the title Duchess of Windsor visited Nazi Germany as honored guests of Adolf Hitler. Supposedly Adolf Hitler was so confident that he would gain victory over Great Britain that he had made plans to install the Duke of Windsor as a puppet king who would do what he was ordered to do under the supposed new world leader, Adolf Hitler.

When the war started, it is reported that Wallis Simpson was glad to see bombs dropping on London because she hated the country that had rejected her as a potential Queen. If Hitler had managed to conquer Britain, Wallis believed that she would eventually sit on the throne of England and gain some justification for what she had done.

But the new King and Queen held their ground and they were able to lift up the spirits of the British people throughout the entire war. Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times and because the royal family had not fled the country, nor had they sent the two princesses off to Canada for safety as had been suggested by the government, the family of four became more popular than ever.

In the beginning, when the government put Winston Churchill in charge of the war effort King George VI was an unhappy man because he didn’t like Churchill and the king was convinced that Churchill was not a good choice to lead the country. But over the passage of time, Churchill won the king over and it is said that the king actually played the role of Churchill’s confessor when they conferred together and plotted out the direction they wanted the war to take.

King George VI knew about the Holocaust and he knew about the rush to develop an atomic bomb. The war with Japan was not over and King George VI knew that the Americans were going to drop two atomic bombs on Japan, one on Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki. It was a fearful responsibility to be the King of Great Britain during World War II and the king carried out his responsibilities well. It was a case of a good choleric man becoming a great choleric king.

After the war was over King George’s greatest fear was that he would lose his eldest daughter to marriage. He knew that Princess Elizabeth had fallen in love with her third cousin, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark. The two young lovers were both descendants of Queen Victoria and at first the king, who was a very protective father, did not want his daughter to marry this penniless pauper of a prince. At that time, Royal Princesses were only allowed to marry Protestants but since the only Protestant Princes available for marriage were all hated Germans, the king finally relented and agreed to accept Prince Philip as his new son-in-law. Prince Philip was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church but before the marriage was accepted into the Church Of England.

  Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married when she was twenty one years old and her father King George VI died when she was twenty five years old.

The whole country went into shock when the king died because his ill health had been kept a secret. He had been a chain smoker all of his adult life and it was not surprising that he developed lung cancer. It was said that for years the king had walked with the grim reaper as his daily companion and finally death claimed him when was only fifty six years old.

His wife the phlegmatic Queen had a way of not looking at things she didn’t want to see, so she actually made public announcements that his surgery for removal of a lung had been successful. She made public announcements that he was doing well and would make a full recovery but instead he died of a blood clot in the lung. The Queen, who was now referred to as the Queen Mother, never remarried and she lived on to the ripe old age of one hundred and one.

King George VI’s brother the Duke of Windsor came to London in order to attend the funeral but the women of the house of Windsor did not make him feel welcome because the Queen Mother had never forgiven her brother-in-law for his abdication. She blamed the Duke of Windsor for the early demise of her husband because she felt that the strain of being king had been too much for her husband to bear.

The Duke of Windsor was not to blame for the death of his brother. In actual fact the Duke did have the absolute right to abdicate the throne if he wanted to, and his younger brother always knew that if anything happened to the eldest son, he was next in line for the throne. It was his chain smoking that killed King George VI. Much enmity had developed between the brothers over the years and regretfully this enmity was never resolved.

King George VI has been quoted as saying, “The highest of distinctions is service to others.”

Today, divorces are only too common among the members of the royal family and it is interesting to note that of the four children born to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, three of them are divorced and two of them are twice married. There are few Princes and Princesses left for the British royals to marry and that is a good thing, because it lessens the chance of hemophilia and porphyria once more raising their ugly heads.

The British royal family always did need an infusion of new blood to sparkle up the twenty first century monarchy and like the rest of the European royals they have started to marry commoners. They don’t have any cheerful Sanguines in the immediate family to brighten things up for them, but the monarchy goes on because the British public wants to keep it.

The heir to the throne is Prince Charles who is a Melancholic, his first son William is a Phlegmatic, his second son Harry is a Melancholic and Prince William is married to Catherine Middleton who is also a Melancholic.