The Royals

Kitty Kelley

"To my husband John, who makes dreams come true."

Once in a while a family has to surrender itself to an outsider's account. A family can get buried in its own fairy dust, and this leads straight, in my opinion, to the unpacking of lies and fictions from its piddly shared scraps of inbred history.

From The Stone Diaries

by Carol Shields

"I believe in aristocracy though, if that is the right word and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes and all through the ages and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos."

From a 1941 essay by E. M. Forster

Author's Note

February 13, 1997

If a cat may look on a king, as the English proverb goes, so can a Kitty. The ancient king had been succeeded by a modern queen by the time I started to take my look. So I wrote to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a matter of courtesy and said I was researching a book on the House of Windsor. I respectfully requested an interview, but her press secretary replied that the Queen does not grant interviews.

"Our policy," Charles Anson wrote on Buckingham Palace stationery, "is to try to help bona fide authors writing serious books on the Monarchy and the Royal Family with factual information on matters of public interest. I shall, therefore, be happy to do this for you if you can first give me some indication of the theme of your book and the specific areas in which you would like to put questions to me."

He asked me to submit an outline. "Naturally, I would treat this in complete confidence," he wrote. This puzzled me. Did he mean that he wouldn't show the outline to anyone, including the Queen and the rest of the royal family? Or was he going to keep it from the British press, which had been reporting (incorrectly) that I was writing a biography of the Queen's husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh?

Already the Duke was getting agitated about the prospect of someone writing a book about him that he had not authorized. In 1994, according to British reporters traveling with him, he threatened to sue me. While visiting New York, he was asked about "the

book that Kitty Kelley is writing," and he was quoted as saying, "I will protect my good name." His pronouncement caused a stir in the British press. "Never before has a member of the royal family personally issued such a blunt warning," wrote Chris Hutchins in Today. "Prince Philip says he is prepared to sue and Buckingham Palace lawyers are already `on full alert.'" The Daily Star reported the exchange as "Prince's Threat over Kitty Shocker: I Will Sue If Your Book's Too Saucy."

The stories prompted numerous calls to my office in Washington, D.C., from men and women claiming to be the illegitimate offspring of royalty. From Argentina, Australia, England, Wales, and New York, people called to tell me of their royal parentage. They volunteered to send photos of themselves, extracts from family diaries, and letters from distant relatives to substantiate their claim, but none produced a birth certificate. Yet even without authentic documentation, they remained convinced that they had been sired outside of marriage by a member of the British royal family.

When I Wrote back to the Queen's press secretary, I told him that I wanted to interview as many people as possible who could speak with authority on the House of Windsor. As an American writing for an international audience, I asked the Queen's press secretary to help me develop an accurate record on a subject of intense public interest. Many books have been written about the Windsors, but most contradict one another. Eminent historians differ on basic details. Few agree on anything except how the family spells its name.

Since I was still in the process of acquiring information, I explained that the form of the book was dictated by chronology, from 1917, when the royal family was renamed, to the present day. Instead of an outline, I submitted two pages of questions about marriages, finances, and knighthoods. In response, Mr. Anson sent me a 632-page book entitled The Royal Encyclopedia.

We exchanged more letters as I traveled back and forth between Washington, D.C., and London to do research. In 19951 was in England for the commemoration of V-E Day, May 8 the day in 1945 when the Allies announced the surrender of German forces in Europe. Again I contacted the Palace with more questions and

renewed my request for interviews. On this visit I spoke with Mr. Anson on the phone.

We discussed the stirring ceremonies that had been staged to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany. We talked about the moving scene of the previous day, when the ninety-five-year-old Queen Mother stepped onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave to the fifty thousand people assembled below. Fifty years earlier she had stood in the same place to accept the tribute of a grateful nation. Then, as now, she was flanked by her two daughters. But missing from the historical tableau in 1995 were her husband, King George VI, and his Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, both of whom had stood beside her in 1945. Still, the sight of her on the balcony reminded everyone of Britain's indomitable spirit during the war.

"These sorts of occasions," the Queen's press secretary told me, "are very unifying for the country. . . . They show that the monarchy is an arrangement that suits the British people

After I returned to Washington, D.C., to begin writing the book, Mr. Anson did not answer any more questions. He seemed concerned that I might be misinterpreting his cooperation so I could market my book as an authori~ed biography. He need not have worried. But he conveyed his anxiety to a reporter from the royal family's favorite newspaper, the London Daily Telegraph, which headlined its story "Palace Alarm over U.S. Book on the Queen."

The Palace press secretary was quoted in the story as saying: "Ms. Kelley has not been given any special cooperation, nor will she be. We have answered one or two factual questions put to us, as we do with any author writing on the royal household. This does not denote any special access.

Days later I received my last letter from Charles Anson. "I should emphasise at this point," he wrote, "that if the limited help we have given is misrepresented in any way in future, we will consider taking appropriate action." This, too, was reported in the British press. The Guardian's story "Action Stations at the Palace"~ran under a cartoon of two corgis guarding the Buckingham Palace kennels. With bared teeth, one dog growled: "Kitty! Grrrr. . . Even the name makes me angry.

Despite the well-publicized warning from the Queen's press secretary, I have been able to interview several hundred people over the last three years, many of whom are current or former members of the royal household. Because I never pay for information, I gave no one money, but I did guarantee confidentiality to those who feared retaliation from the Palace. Most members of the royal household sign confidentiality agreements when they are hired, so I knew they took great risks in speaking to me. If identified, those in royal service could lose their jobs; those retired could lose their pensions. Charles Anson had made the point in one of his earlier letters to me: "We take very seriously here any breach of confidentiality or of the undertakings given, for example, by employees of the Royal Household concerning their employment with the Royal Family."

Yet with the unattributed help of many people, including past and present employees, friends, and relatives, I was able to get an inside look at the British royal family and how they live. I started at Kensington Palace, a few miles from Buckingham Palace in the heart of London.

During a time when Princess Margaret was traveling abroad, a member of her staff, whom I already knew, offered me a personal tour of her living quarters. I accepted gratefully because I had never been inside a palace. When I showed up at the front gates, I was surprised to be waved through by cheerful security guards. They did not ask my name or question my purpose, probably because I was greeted by someone familiar to them.

We began with the apartments known as Grace-and-Favor Residences, which are given to select employees by the sovereign. Some of these small apartments looked like monk's cells. They're clean but cramped, with just enough room for the essentials bed, chair, couch, table. In some, the space is so limited that the private toilet is across the hall from the bathtub. But, as one appreciative employee pointed out, "They are rent-free."

When we walked into the residence of HRH the Princess Margaret, I gawked in disbelief; because I was standing in the home of the sister of the wealthiest woman in the world, I had probably anticipated something grander, more imposing. I half expected

diamond-studded walls and floors inlaid with rubies. Instead I saw plastic flowers arranged in vases on the windowsills and an electric heater with a badly frayed cord. A collapsible aluminum tray was stashed behind the door of the drawing room. I was told that it was placed in front of the television set when the Princess dined alone. Two large blackamoor statues guarded the entrance to the vivid blue room, where she displayed her vast collection of loving cups, crystal goblets, and pitchers. Lining the walls were porcelain plates and dishes embellished with great globs of gold. On a mahogany dumbwaiter by her desk, she had placed a collection of tiny porcelain boxes. One, circa 1800, carried an inscription: "May the King Live to Reward the Subject Who Would Die for Him."

My guide showed me through the rooms of the palace and patiently answered my questions about the royal family the Queen, the Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, Princes Andrew and Edward, and the Prince and Princess of Wales. When I asked about Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, I was told curtly, "She's not royalty." I gazed at the portraits and photographs, including the framed picture of Princess Margaret and her former husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, at a White House dinner with President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson. The photo, signed by the Johnsons, hangs in the bathroom.

The path from Kensington Palace to Buckingham Palace beckoned intriguingly as my research into the House of Windsor led me up and down the class system. Downstairs I interviewed footmen. Upstairs I conversed with courtiers. I listened to members of the House of Lords and House of Commons. I interviewed Tory and Labor Members of Parliament about the dominating influence of the monarchy.

At a meeting of women that I attended, actress Glenda Jackson, a Labor MP, said, "My constituents are angry about where their country is going, but you would never know their concerns from the press coverage, which is obsessed with royalty." The Tory MP Rupert Allason, who writes spy novels under the name of Nigel West, wrote to me about his high regard for the monarchy. "I am rather old fashioned about the Royals. Some of it may be unattrac

tive but it serves the country well and . . . [it] . . . is regarded over here as a cherished if anachronistic institution."

Lord Jacob Rothschild was more mischievous. Over dinner at the River Club in London, he mentioned he had dined recently at Buckingham Palace. "You are never supposed to say if you dine at the Palace. But what's the fun of knowing the royals," he said with a wink, "if you can't talk about them?"

His wife tried to shush him. She shook her finger at me for taking notes. "You must not write a book," said Lady Rothschild. "We have to protect our royal family from themselves. . . . We don't need a book by an objective American. You're not supposed to be objective about royalty."

My research also included tea with titled ladies married to gentlemen with a string of initials after their names. These abbreviations indicate the honors they've received from the Crown. In their country manors, I saw the ermine-edged robes they wore to the coronation and the little gold chairs they sat on during the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Many had known the Queen since childhood. She attended their weddings and wrote them "Dear Cousin" letters. "In this circle," explained one aristocrat, "everyone is considered a relation." (Even with the help ofDe6rett's Peerage, the bible of the nobility, I stumbled on the intricacies of British social precedence. More than once I fumbled a title or jumbled initials in addressing a letter, but my gaffes were graciously forgiven. "You're an American, dear," said one Countess. "You cannot be expected to know.") Royalists all, these aristocrats believe firmly in the Crown and maintain that the monarchy will survive as long as the White Cliffs of Dover. I'm grateful to all of them for their time and consideration.

Their insights contrasted sharply with those of republicans I interviewed. They believe the days of the monarchy are, or should be, numbered. Escorted by the writer Anthony Holden, I attended a meeting of the Common Sense Club in London, where British writers, editors, and scholars consider proposals for dismantling the monarchy, including a written constitution for the country that would terminate the House of Lords and separate church from state. The Common Sense Club takes its name from the pamphlet

Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, urging a declaration of independence. The son of a Quaker corset maker, he was arrested, convicted of treason, and outlawed from England. His revolutionary spirit still inspires Mr. Holden and his republican colleagues, who combine immense charm and wit with their politics. I enjoyed my time with them and appreciate their efforts to educate me.

Marc Pachter, Counselor for Special Projects to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, has conducted monthly seminars for the Washington Biography Group, which I attend for his wise advice. He believes that biography is a life lived and observed from the outside peering in. He tells us, "Write with your nose pressed to the window." So I have tried.

For expertise on British royalty, I turned to several social historians who lecture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Particularly enchanting were Virginia W. Newmyer; Stanley Weintraub, Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University; Edward Keefer, U.S. Department of State; Marlene Eilers; Roland Flamini, formerly diplomatic correspondent, Time magazine; Catherine A. Cline, professor of history, Catholic University; David Cannadine, professor of history, Columbia University.

For answers to my historical queries, I'm indebted to several librarians: Eugene Weber, manager of the Press Association of the United Kingdom, and his helpful staff: Adrian McLeay, Richard Peacock, and Katarina Shelley; Linda Amster, New York Times; Paul Hamburg, Simon Wiesenthal Center; Garner Shaw, the New York O6server; Gwen Odum, Palm Beach Dady News; Steve Glatter, Miami-Dade Public Library; Don Osterweil, Vanity Fair; Jeanette Brown, USA Today; Merle Thomason, Fairchild publications; Paul Cornish and Janet Bacon, British Information Service; Lisa Brody, American Film Institute; Terri Natale, New Statesman; Charles Seaton, the Spectator; Rodney Smith, New Orleans Public Library; Polly Townsend, Desmond-Fish Library, Garrison, New York; Janet Lorenz, National Film Information Service of the Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Margaret O'Sullivan, Putnam County [New York] News and Recorder; Patrick Wagner, Smithsonian Residents Program; the

reference librarians at the Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax, Virginia, Public Libraries; the Washingtoniana Room of the Martin Luther King Library in Washington, D.C.; the Foundation Center Library in Washington, D.C.

For documents and records on the British royal family, I'm grateful to the British Naval Office; the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, St. Catherine's House, London; and the presidential archivists and researchers at the libraries of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald W. Reagan; the National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the State of New York Department of Law; the Freedom of Information Act Offices at the Department of State, Department of Justice, including Federal Bureau of Information, Department of Defense, and Central Intelligence Agency. Reaves West did commendable research at the British Library in London. For advice on protocol, I turned to Jean P. Inman, American Embassy, London, and appreciate the assistance of the staffs at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the embassies of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Australia.

Some people provided information for the book; others provided hospitality for the author. Both are greatly appreciated. I extend thanks to the staff of the Athenaeum Hotel, where James A. Brown, Sally Bulloch, Alex Serra, and Donald Birraine made the first of many research trips to London so enjoyable. I'm particularly indebted to them for introducing me to the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who also was staying at the hotel. The hour I spent with this man was my first encounter with nobility.

Writers become unbearable while writing books and so they owe the deepest thanks to those who will put up with them. My list is long of people who saw me through the ordeal. For the last ten years my research assistant, Melissa Lakey, has brought her bright mind and huge heart to every task she's been given. Professionally and personally, she's a treasure. I also value the family she's extended to me in her mother, Jeannette Smalling, and her brother, Walter Smalling. Her relatives have supported this project with love

and patience and I'm indebted to all, especially Ray Rhinehart; Paul, Martha, and Allyson Gibson; Stephen and Margaret Gibson; Roger, Anne, Jeannette, and Rachel Buchholz; Jean, Bill, Mike, Doug, and Jon Lakey. I'm grateful to Melissa's husband, Bryan Lakey, for his patience with her long hours as she labored to deliver this book before the arrival of their first baby, Drew Edward Lakey.

My sisters, Mary Cary Coughlan and Adele O'Toole, provided loving encouragement throughout the writing, as did my dear friend Margaret Engel, director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Members of the International Women's Forum were extraordinarily helpful, particularly Sheryl Marshall, Joni Evans, Shirley Nelson, Peggy Czyzak-Dannenbaum, Martha Teichner, Barbara Hosking, Pam Garside, Susan Greenwood, Willie Campbell, Maureen Kin- del, Mary Lehman, and Fruzsina Harshani. I'm also grateful for the support of I.W.F. friends like Patricia Gurne, Michele Hagans, Sandra Taylor, Mitzi Wertheim, Lilia Ann Abron, Alexandra Armstrong, Esther Smith, Patricia Bailey, and Patricia Goldman.

I appreciate the efforts of Bill Chaput of the Lotos Club in New York City; Rich Salke; Erna Steiner; James Henderson; Fabiola Molina; Germaine Attebery; Susan Nicholas; Silvia Costanos; Joan Worden; Deborah Cohen; Russell Kott; Eunice and Mones Hawley; Susan Mickelwaite; Patti Pancoe; Carolyn Telman; Forrest Mac Cormack; and Samuel Melman of Justine Melman, Inc.; Eliane Laffont, president of Sygma Photo News; and Mr. and Mrs. Louis J. Appell Jr., whose flat in Lenox Gardens became my London home.

For various research projects, I had expert help from Melissa Goldblatt; Aura Lippincott; Helaine R. Staver; Jacqueline Williams; Anne Whiteman, ABC News; Audrey Sands; Ray Boston; Barry Phelps; Sue Harmer; Mary Aylmer; Simon Nathan; Daphne Srinivasan; Lilly Lessing; Roger Law, Spitting Image; Pamela Warrick, Los Angeles Times; Ellen Warren, Chicago Tribune; Wade Nelson; Rachel Grady; Abby Jones Pauley; Emily Greines; Rebecca Salt, Reed Consumer Books, London; Phoebe Bentinck; Edda Tasiemka, the Hans Tasiemka Archives; Ann Geneva, Yale University Press; Ted Richards, Olsson's Books; Tim O'Connor, Palm Beach Polo Club; Frank Tenot, president, Hachette Filipacchi Presse.

For tapes and documentaries I received generous assistance

from Howard Rosenberg of CBS News and Richard W. Carlson, president and CEO of Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

For foreign-language translations I relied on the expertise of Vivian Glick, whose linguistic skills encompass French, German, and Italian. Maria de Martini assisted with Spanish interviews.

For investment analysis of royal finances, I was guided by Marvin H. McIntyre of Legg Mason Wood Walker in Washington, D.C., and his staff: Colleen Bradley, Kim Dexter, Don Metzger, Bob Parr, Swati Patel, A. J. Vector. I'm also grateful to Arnold H. Koonin of Coopers & Lybrand; and Steve Weisman and Tracy Noble of Weisman, Noble and Moore.

For legal advice I relied on Marc Miller of McLeod, Watkinson and Miller; Robert Wald, Michael Nussbaum, and Benjamin Zelenko of Nussbaum & Wald, Washington, D.C. My favorite lawyer is still my ninety-three-year-old father, William V. Kelley, of Witherspoon, Kelley, Davenport & Toole in Spokane, Washington.

In recent years I've spoken to many people about the House of Windsor. Among those generous with their time, knowledge, and insights were Peter and Pamela Evans; Robert Lacey; Sue Townsend; Michael Cole; Linda White; Steve Aronson; Patricia Bosworth; Peter and Kit Hammond; Barbara and Ken Follett; Mara Berni; Lecia Crystal; Ericka Barty-King; Andrew David Ball and Judith Ball; Nancy, Barbara, and David Morowitz; Bob Glick; Sheila and Dobli Srinivasan; Cissy Finley Grant; Lionel Epstein and Elizabeth Streicker; Lynette and John Pearson; Anthony Holden and Cindy Blake; Rosie Boycott, Esquire; Ross Benson, Daily Express; Peter McKay, Evening StandarJ; Gordon MacKenzie, Daily Mail; Hal Robinson; Michael Bywatter; Peter Kazaris; Roberta Ashley; Richard Cohen; David Patrick Columbia; Fiammetta Rocco, Independent on Sunday; Sue Crewe; Phyllis Stirman; Eric Weil, Buenos Aires Herald; Ivanna and James Whitaker, Daily Mirror; Barbara Cartland; Tim Heald; Giles Gordon; Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair; Francis Wheem, the Guardian; Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye; Matthew Evans; Caroline Michel; Larry Adler; Larry and Mary Devlin; Daryll Bonner; Nancy Pollard; Mark Hollingsworth; Norman Douglas Hutchinson; Anthony Summers; Muriel Fox and Shep Aaronson; Ken Burrows and Erica

Jong; Bonnie Goldstein, ABC-TV; Jim Grady; Myuki Williams; Jacqui and Jeff Weaver; Maurice Weaver, Daily Telegraph; Betsy and Ira Silverman; Monica Worth; Christopher Gulkin; William Norwich, New York Observer; Marian Lear Swaybill; Heather Per- ram; Richard Hough; Franklin Johnson; Fleur Cowles; Dominic Lawson, the Spectator; Margaret Gardner; Ken Jennings; Rex Reed; Eunice Roberts; Wendall (Sonny) Rawls; G. H. Hutchinson Smith; Geoffrey Bailey; Geoffrey Harley; Joyce Hopkirk; Emily Malino Scheur; Bevis Hillier; Veronica Forwood; Laura Zelenko; Rory Knight Bruce; Robin Knight Bruce; John Davey Beverton; Noreen Talor; Rosalind Miles; Richard Johnson, the New York Post; Richard Turley; Carlos Anessi; Nina Myskow; Grant McCahon; Mary Kyreakowdis; Carinthia West, Marie Claire; John Teenan; Philip Benjamin; Taki Theodoracopulos; Margaret Holder; Michael Thornton; Lady Colin Campbell; Sylvia Wallace; Jonathan Engel, Reuters; Michael Nagel; Geoffrey Acquilina Ross; Kevin Dowling; Jean Ritchie; Nicholas Haslam; Caroline Kennedy; John Barratt; Stephen Maitin; Lindka Cierach; Una Mary Parker; Jeanette Walls, Esquire; Majorie Wallace; Wendy Leigh; Richard Ingrams; Christopher Silvester; Jack Hedley; Willie Hamilton; Kenneth Jost, Congressional Quarterly; James Bellini; Philip Knightley; Andrew Rosthorn; Paddy Crerand; Desmond Ellott; Gant Gaither; Jody Jacobs; Sharman Douglas; Achtar Hussein; Arlene DahI; Pamela and Ronald Kessler; John Prince; Fornida and Nang Sang, People; Wanda Baucus; Mark Gisbourne; John Woods; Tony and Audrey Charles; Felicity Green, Daily Telegraph; Sheila Hailey; Geraldine Sharpe Newton, CNN; Susan Yerkes, San Antonio Express News; Ian Coulter; Angus Coulter; Heather Elliott; Gordon Graham; Marco Pierre White; Victoria Mather; Penelope Mortimer; Desmond Elliott; Ian Gordon; Michael Bloch; Ingrid Seward, Mafrsty magazine; Stephen Birmingham; Bob Jerome; Andrew Neil, the Sunday Times; Susan Watters, Women `5 Wear Daily; Judy (Demetra) Green; Roberta Klein; Charles Higham; Julie Schoo; Lissa August, Time; Connie Bransilver; Lester Hyman; Ann Landers; Lucy Scardino; Kevin McMannus, Town & Country; Warren Rogers; Joe Laitin; Lilla Pennant; Leslie Linder and Norma Quine; Tim Heald; Nicholas Monson; Stephen Haseler; Lindsay Mackie; Roy Green-

slade; Hugh Bygott-Webb; Magdalene de Blaquier; Nicki McWhirter, Detroit News; James Reginato, Women `s Wear Daily; Maxine Champion; Leslie and Andrew Cockburn; Robert Sam Anson; Martin Peretz, the New Republic; David Hume Kennerly; Norman Mailer; Annie Groer the Washington Post; Toni Aluisi; C. Wyatt Dickerson; Terry Lichstein, ABC-TV; Ed Curran; Barry Everingham; David Kogan, Reuters; Carolyn MacDonald; Gilbert Mathieu; Maxine Mawhinney, GMTV; Joan Worden; William Keating; Barbara Dixon; Susan Tolchin; Marianne Means, Hearst newspapers; Al Eisele, The Hilt; Evangeline Bruce; Dr. Nelson Lankford, the Virginia Historical Society; Priscilla Baker; Robert M. Eisenger; Gillian Pachter; Ronnie and Arnie Pollard; Ricki Morell; Nancy A. Poland; Penelope Farthing.

I also wish to thank my literary agent, Wayne S. Kabak of International Creative Management, who combines brilliance and good humor, even in the midst of crisis. He brings to mind Chaucer' 5 "verray parfit gentil knight." I value his counsel and the friendship extended by his wife, Marsha Berkowitz, and his children, Victoria and Benjamin. His I.C.M. staff makes the writing life less burdensome, especially his extraordinary assistant, Laura Blaustein. I'm also grateful to the London office of I.C.M. where Duncan Heath and his assistant, Lucy Morrison, were so helpful.

I salute Warner Books and its dynamic C.E.O. Laurence J. Kirshbaum, Chairman of Time Warner Trade Publishing; Maureen Egen, President and Publisher and C.O.O.; Chris Barba, V.P., Director of Sales and Marketing; Emi Battaglia, V.P., Director of Publicity; Jackie Joiner, Assistant to the President; Harvey-Jane Kowal, V.P., Executive Managing Editor; Diane Luger, Executive Art Director; Martha Otis, V.P., Director of Advertising and Promotion; Karen Torres, Director of Marketing; Nancy Wiese, Subsidiary Rights Director. My thanks to Sona Vogel for expert copy editing and Vincent Virga for compiling the photographs.

Writing is tough, so writers need mentors. Mine continues to be Mervin Block, who sets the standard of excellence. After twenty years of friendship, I still marvel at his skill and intelligence. Humbling as it was, I'm mighty grateful for the red pen he wielded on

my rough drafts and his insistence on making the contents shorter, sharper, stronger.

When the manuscript was completed, my publisher sent me a treasure in Carolyn Blakemore, who arrived in Washington, D.C., determined to turn hopsack into velvet. She departed with my affection and gratitude.

My deepest appreciation goes to my husband, Jonathan E. Zucker, to whom this book is dedicated. He came into my life five years ago and continues to fill my heart with joy.

ONE

Princess Margaret strode out of the theater. She had barely managed to sit through the opening scenes of Schindier's List.

She began squirming as soon as she saw the Jewish prayer candles burn down, leaving only wisps of smoke to evoke the ashes that would follow. She crinkled her nose at the sight of the captive Jewish jeweler being tossed a handful of human teeth to mine for fillings. As the nightmare unfolded, she stiffened in her seat.

On screen, the streets filled with screaming Jewish prisoners, brutal Nazi soldiers, and snarling police dogs quickly emptied, except for the scattered suitcases of those Jews who had just been hauled off to the death camps. At that point the Princess bolted out of her seat.

"I'm leaving," she said. "I refuse to sit here another minute."

Her friends were aghast but immediately deferred to her displeasure. They left their seats and accompanied Her Royal Highness back to her servants in Kensington Palace.

"I don't want to hear another word about Jews or the Holocaust," said the Queen's sister. "Not one more word. I heard enough during the war. I never want to hear about it again. Ever."

Margaret's friends later wondered why, feeling as she did, she had suggested going to the movie in the first place. She had to know that Schindier's List would depict the horrors of genocide. What they didn't understand was that the Princess had read reviews

of the movie and been taken with the portrait of the good German, Oskar Schindler, who had come to reap the spoils of war and ended up as a selfless hero who saved countless lives. That was the story she wanted to see enacted on screen.

For more than sixty years Margaret Rose had been a princess of the royal House of Windsor, reared to renounce her German roots, to deny the mix of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha blood that coursed through her veins, to repudiate the lineage of Wurttemburgs and Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg- Glucksburgs that haunted her ancestors.

She was not disturbed by searing childhood memories of Britain during the Blitz. When war broke out in 1939, she was nine years old. At sixty-four the Princess rarely reflected on the shattering bombs, the blackouts, or the deprivation that she felt she and her older sister, the Queen, endured to serve as public examples for others who were suffering much more. She no longer complained as much as she once did about being deprived of a normal childhood.

During those years, her royal image had inspired a thirteen- year-old Jewish girl in Amsterdam who was hiding from the Nazis. To remind herself of a better world, Anne Frank had pasted pictures of Princess Margaret Rose, and her sister, Princess Elizabeth, on the wall of the attic where she hid with her family for two years. But then the family was betrayed to the Gestapo and herded off in windowless boxcars on the train bound for the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Anne died there one month before Europe was liberated. When the Anne Frank House was opened to the public after the war, the pictures of Britain's little Princesses, yellowed with age, still smiled from the wall.

Princess Margaret was proud of her performance during the war and that of her earnest sister and her gallant parents, who had made sure that they presented the world with an image of royalty at its finest.

What Princess Margaret resented about Schindler `5 List and "those other tiresome movies about the Holocaust" was the lingering stench of Germany that continued to hang over her family. Their secrets of alcoholism, drug addiction, epilepsy, insanity, ho-

mosexuality, bisexuality, adultery, infidelity, and illegitimacy paled alongside their relationship with the Third Reich. Those secrets, documented by captured German war records and family diaries, letters, photographs, and memoranda, lay buried in the locked vaults of the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, safe from the prying eyes of scholars and historians. Few people remembered that Margaret's mother and father had been disinclined to oppose Hitler and preferred Chamberlain over Churchill as Prime Minister. Most people had forgotten that the Princess's favorite uncle had embraced Nazi Germany as Europe's savior and her princeling cousin had run a concentration camp, for which he later stood trial as a war criminal. Margaret Rose remembered but knew that these facts some secret, some sinister were best left buried.

Yet the Princess was not averse to expressing her opinions, which sounded astoundingly ignorant coming from a woman who professed to read as much as she did. Despite her public participation in the arts and her devotion to ballet and theater, Margaret Rose remained closed-minded to the world beyond her privileged view. She made no apologies for her prejudices. In a discussion of India, she said she hated "those little brown people." Shortly after the IRA assassination of her cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten, she denounced the Irish. "They're pigs all pigs," she told the Irish American mayor of Chicago while visiting the city. When the Princess was introduced to the respected columnist Ann Landers, Margaret looked at her closely. "Are you a Jew?" she asked. "Are you a Jew?" The columnist said she was, and the Princess, no longer interested, moved on. She dismissed Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the President of Guyana, as loathsome. "He's everything I despise," she said. "He's black; he's married to a Jew; and furthermore, she's American."

After walking out of Schindler's List, which she described as "a tedious film about Jews," she advised her butler not to waste his money on the Academy Award~winning film.

"A movie like Schindler's List just incites morbid curiosity," the Princess said when her butler served her breakfast the next morning. "I couldn't stand it. It was so thoroughly unpleasant and disgusting that I had to get up and leave."

The butler listened patiently, as always. Then he bowed his head and returned to the pantry. Later he repeated the conversation to an American, who asked if he were not offended by Princess Margaret's remarks. He seemed puzzled by the American's question.

"Oh my, no. You don't understand. The Princess is royalty.

Royalt~" he said, pronouncing the word with reverence. The Princess belongs to the House of Windsor the most important royal house in the world. She's the daughter of a king and the sister of a queen. That's as exalted as you can possibly be on this earth."

"Do you mean to suggest that royalty, especially British royalty, can do no wrong? That just because she's a princess, she's immune to criticism?"

"She is royalty," repeated the butler.

"And therefore above reproach?"

"Royalty is royalty," he said. "Never to be questioned."

TWO

Once upon a time . . . the House of Windsor was a fantasy. The figment of a courtier's imagination. The dynasty was created in 1917 to conceal the German roots of the King and Queen, and the deception enabled the monarchy to be perceived as British by subjects who despised Germany.

Until then, many English kings never spoke the King's English. They spoke only German because for almost two hundred years, from 1714 until this century, a long line of Germans ruled the British empire. By 1915 England finally had a king, George V, who could speak English without a German accent. Although he was a German from the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha line that had ruled England for eighty years, he considered himself to be indisputably British. His subjects, who hated Germany, Germans, and all things Germanic, were not convinced.

For years, especially in the early l900s, the English had become increasingly afraid of Prussian militarism. They felt threatened by the Kaiser's oppression. And they were "sore-headed and fed up," as George Bernard Shaw wrote, with Germany's rattling sabers. They viewed World War I as a war against Germany.

Newspapers carried eyewitness accounts of revolting cruelty by the Germans, who bombed undefended towns and killed civilians. Those actions shocked the world in 1915. In England, editorials denounced "The March of the Hun" and "Treason to Civilization"

as German U-boats sank British ships. The mounting death tolls on French battlefields caused hardships in England, which exacerbated Britain's hatred of foreigners.

King George V was disturbed as he watched his subjects stone butchers with German names and burn the homes of people who owned dachshunds. Pretzels were banned and symphony conductors shunned Mozart and Beethoven.

This antipathy was not unique to Great Britain. Blood hatred of everything German had infected all of Europe and spread to America, where Hollywood produced a string of hate films such as To Hell with the Kaiser, Wolves of Kultur, and The Katser: The Beast of Berlin.

The King of England deplored the "hysterical clamor," calling it "petty and undignified," but few listened. The image of the hideous Hun as a fiendish torturer who raped, pillaged, and murdered innocents had gripped the public imagination.

The King became so concerned about the reaction of his volatile subjects that he was afraid to protect his relatives of German descent. Instead he stood by silently as his beloved cousin Prince Louis of Battenberg was vilified simply because of his German name. When war had threatened, Battenberg as the First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy mobilized the Admiralty with speed and efficiency, so that when war broke out, England was ready. But Battenberg, a naturalized British subject, became a target for abuse: his name was German, he was born in Germany, he spoke with a German accent, he employed German servants, and he owned property in Germany.

Despite his total loyalty to the Crown, he was forced to resign his military position and relinquish his princely title. The final humiliation occurred when the King told him to change his name. Shattered, Prince Louis dutifully anglicized Battenberg (berg is "mountain" in German) to Mountbatten to make it acceptable to the English.

The King tried to mollify his cousin by making him a British noble. Louis accepted the title of Marquess of Milford Haven because he wanted his children to be noblemen, but he never recovered from the shame of renouncing his ancestry. Somehow, though,

he kept his sense of humor. He wrote in his son's guest book: "June 9th arrived Prince Hyde; June 19th departed Lord Jekyll."

His younger son and namesake, Louis, was shocked by the news of his father's resignation. "It was all so stupid," he recalled years later. "My father had been in the Royal Navy for forty-six years. He was completely identified with England, and we always regarded ourselves as an English family. Of course, we were well aware of our German connections; how could we not be? It certainly never occurred to any of us to be ashamed of them rather the contrary. We are a very old family, and proud of it. . . . My father had worked his way to the top of the Royal Navy by sheer ability and industry. And now his career was finished all because of the ridiculous suspicion that he might be in secret sympathy with the very people he had come to England to avoid!"

Next, the King moved to cleanse the rest of his German family. Like the monarchs of mythology who bring magic clouds with them wherever they go, King George V waved his royal wand. Overnight, one brother-in-law the Duke of Teck became the Marquess of Cambridge, and the other Prince Alexander of Teck became the Earl of Athlone. One stroke of the royal quill eradicated all traces of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, Hesse, and Wettins from the King's lineage: the ugly German ducklings were transformed into beautiful British swans. The royal family's Teutonic dukes, archdukes, and princelings instantly became English marquises.

But the King felt he still needed to make the monarchy appear less imperial to survive. He decreed that members of the royal family could marry into the nobility. So, for the first time in history, royalty could marry commoners, whether they were titled or not. This paved the way for his second son, Albert, known to the family as "Bertie," to propose to a sweet-faced Scottish girl, reared as an Earl's daughter, although her mother has been rumored to have been one of the Earl's Welsh servant girls (these rumors, never officially acknowledged, have yet to be borne out by any evidence). Ironically, Bertie's marriage in 1923 to the commoner, Elizabeth Bowes~Lyon, brought stability to the British throne and propped up the dynasty for several generations.

During the First World War, concern was voiced over the bloody role of the King's German cousin Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein, who was in charge of British prisoners of war in a camp outside Berlin.

"He's not really fighting on the side of the Germans," said the King defensively. "He was only put in charge of a camp of English prisoners."

"A nice distinction," Prime Minister Asquith later observed to a friend. His successor, Lloyd George, was even more blunt. When he received a royal summons to the Palace, he turned to his secretary and said: "I wonder what my little German friend has got to say to me. The Prime Minister's antipathy spread to his staff, who kept the King's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, waiting on a wooden chair in the hall and refused to rise when he entered their office. The private secretary ignored the discourtesy. "We are all servants," he told shocked courtiers, "although some are more important than others."

As the devoted secretary to Queen Victoria, Lord Stamford- ham was by far the most important of the King's men. He had served Victoria's heir, King Edward VII, who had put him in charge of his own son, George, at an early age. "He taught me how to be a king," said the master of his servant.

It was Lord Stamfordham who received the unenviable job of telling King George V about D. H. Lawrence, who had been hounded into hiding because he married a German woman. The once revered writer had married the sister of German military aviator Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary Red Baron, credited with shooting down eighty Allied planes during World War I. After their wedding, Lawrence and his bride, Frieda, were forced by public hostility to seek refuge in the English countryside, where they hid in barns like animals.

This news was unsettling to the King, who also had a German wife. But the clever Queen Mary of Teck speaking English with a slight guttural accent, began referring to herself as "English from top to toe." The King immediately stopped addressing Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the commander of the German forces sweeping across Europe, as "sweet cousin Willy." His German-hating

subjects, who avoided references to sex, began referring to the male member as a "Willy."

Still, the hatred of Germans became so intense in England that the King's mother begged him to remove the Kaiser's honorary flags from the chapel. "Although as a rule I never interfere, I think the time has come when I must speak out," wrote Queen Alexandra. "It is but right and proper for you to have down those hateful German banners in our sacred Church, St. George's, at Windsor."

The Queen Mother sent her letter to "my darling little Georgie" after the Daily Mail had excoriated him for allowing the eight flags of "enemy Emperors, Kings and Princes" a place of honor at Windsor. "As long as the offending banners remain, their owners will be prayed for," thundered the newspaper. "What are the King's advisors doing?"

The King ignored the criticism until it came from his "darling Mother dear." Then he yielded and had the banners removed. "Otherwise," he told a friend, "the people would have stormed the chapel."

The King then threw himself and his family into the war effort. He dispatched his sons to the western front, sending the Prince of Wales (Edward, but known to the family as David) to France, while Prince Albert (Bertie) served on the battleship HMS Collingwood. The King banned alcohol and began strict rationing at the Palace to set a national example.

In March 1917 his cousin the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia ("dear Nicky") was forced to abdicate, in part because he, too, had a German wife whom the King blamed "for the present state of chaos that exists in Russia."

The King's equerry was more brutal on the subject: "The Empress is not only a Boche by birth, but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal for his weakness and submission to her promptings."

That was all the King needed to hear. Concerned about the survival of his throne, he withdrew the warm friendship he had once extended to his "beloved cousin." When the Czar appealed for asylum for himself and his family, the King refused, prohibiting

them entry into England. The King felt he needed to separate himself from Russian imperialism, especially when wrapped with a German ribbon. So he wrote his cousin that he did not think it "advisable that the Imperial Family should take up their residence in this country." He suggested instead Spain or the South of France. At that point the revolutionaries in Russia realized that the King would not use military force to save his relatives. Thus abandoned, the Czar and his family were seized and sent to Siberia.

The King was more determined than ever to hang on to his threatened monarchy. He resented references to his German ancestry and raged over the caricatures of Max Beerbohm, who drew him as a comical and lugubrious figure. He lost his temper when a Labor Member of Parliament called him "a German pork butcher," and he erupted again when H. G. Wells branded him a foreigner. In a letter to the Times, the British journalist and novelist called for an end to "the ancient trappings of the throne and sceptre." He damned the royal house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha by calling it "an alien and uninspiring Court."

"I may be uninspiring," boomed the King, "but I'll be damned if I'm an alien."

He resolved then and there to rid himself and his royal house of what he saw as its dreadful German taint. With the greatest sleight of hand since the sorcery of Prospero, he asserted his divine right and rechristened himself with the most euphonious, melodious British name conceivable. His courtiers had spent weeks searching for just such a name that would reestablish the monarchy as thoroughly English.

Finally, Lord Stamfordham found it and secured his place in history by proposing the name of Windsor. That one word summoned up what the King was looking for a glorious image that resonated with history, stretching back to William the Conqueror. For Windsor Castle, the most thoroughly British symbol extant, had been the site of English monarchs for eight hundred years. Although no king had ever lived there, several had died in Windsor Castle, and nine were buried in its royal crypt. The name was enough to redeem a tarnished crown.

The proclamation of the House of Windsor was announced on July 17, 1917, and appeared the next day on the front pages of England's newspapers. The British press dutifully reported that the King had renounced his German name and all German titles for himself and all other descendants of Queen Victoria and that henceforth he and his issue were to be referred to as the House of Windsor.

In the United States, news of the British royal family's reinventing itself was reported on page nine of The New York Times. In an editorial, the Times noted "the unnaming and renaming" was approved in a meeting of the largest Privy Council ever assembled and suggested that the name of Windsor, an Anglo-Saxon fortress where the legendary King Arthur sat among the Knights of the Table Round, might have been selected for its "sense of continuity, of ancientness." America's newspaper of record praised England's King for choosing "a venerable name for his house."

In Germany, the news was reported with less reverence. The Kaiser laughed at his quixotic cousin and said that he was looking forward to attending a performance of that well-known play The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. But the Kaiser appreciated the political necessity of accommodation. As he pointed out, "Monarchy is like virginity once lost, you can't get it back."

Still, he exacted revenge nineteen years later when the King died by sending the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to his cousin's funeral in Windsor Castle. The Duke wore his Nazi uniform.

George V never expressed any qualms about his actions. He pragmatically buried his German roots to save his throne and then systematically ostracized his foreign relatives. He did this without compunction, even after receiving news from Russia that the Czar and Czarina and their four daughters and young son, who were moved from Siberia and Ekaterinburg, had been massacred by the Bolsheviks.

"It was a foul murder," he wrote piously in the diary he kept for posterity. "I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men and a thorough gentleman."

By keeping his distance, the King of England had held his crown in place. He then proceeded to rule the House of Windsor for the next two decades with probity. There was no scandal

attached to his reign, and like his grandmother Queen Victoria, he excelled at the virtues the English prize most: duty and punctuality. His subjects saw him as a simple, decent man whose plain tastes reflected their own.

The King had started his adult life as the Duke of York and spent seventeen years shooting grouse on the moors of Sandringham. He became the heir apparent when his older brother, the Duke of Clarence, died. Even then the King kept the clocks at Sandringham set forward an hour to provide more time for shooting. A proper country squire, he enjoyed tramping across his twenty-thousand-acre estate in Norfolk. He adored his wife, indulged his daughter, and terrorized his five sons. "I was frightened of my father, and I am damn well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me," he said.

Poorly educated, he rarely read, shunned the theater, and did not listen to classical music. He ignored the arts, letters, and sciences. For recreation he licked postage stamps and placed them with childlike percision in blue leather stamp books. By the end of his life he had compiled an enormous collection of stamps from places he never wanted to visit. Known as "the Sailor King," he did not travel for education or pleasure. "Abroad is awful," he said. "I know because I've been there." Except for touring military installations, he took few trips. He made an exception in 1911 to go to India for his coronation and in 1913 to visit relatives in Germany.

"My father, George V, took quiet pride in never having set foot in the United States," said his eldest son.

"Too far to go," said the King.

What he was, his children would become. In later years his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who became the Duke of Windsor, was so humiliated by his father's ignorance that he reneged on an agreement to write a book of royal family reminiscences. He confided the reason to his publisher: "I'd hate for the world to know how illiterate we all were." The Prince of Wales embarrassed himself at a dinner party by not knowing the name of the Bronte sisters, who in their short lifetimes wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both considered classics of the English novel. The Prince of Wales,

who rarely read, did not know who they were or how to pronounce their name. "Who are the Bronts?" he asked.

Unenlightened about mental illness, the Prince of Wales considered the condition of his youngest brother, Prince John, a source of shame. The last of the monarch's six children, John was mentally retarded and an epileptic. He was secretly removed from the family at an early age and lived on a farm on the Sandringham estate, where he died in 1919 at the age of thirteen.

As uneducated as the King was, George V won wide respect from his subjects for his conscientious performance of royal duties and for his numerous military uniforms and the obvious pleasure he took in wearing them in royal parades. His subjects looked up to him as the father of their country and the personification of their values. England had gained enough land by conquest during the First World War to give her dominion over a quarter of the globe and a fourth of the world's inhabitants, thus making George V the last great Emperor King. During his reign, the sun truly never set on the British empire.

By the time King George V died in 1936, his beleaguered country was on the brink of another world war with Germany, which would end Britain's imperial power. And the House of Windsor, which he had built on the quicksand of illusion, started sinking under the weight of scandal.

For the last two years of his life, the King agonized over his heir. He dreaded leaving the monarchy in the hands of his feckless son, who at the age of forty-one was still unmarried. Following a fbufleen-year affair with another man's wife, the Prince of Wales was now besotted with a married American woman, once divorced, named Wallis Warfield Simpson. Already Mrs. Simpson envisioned herself as the next Queen of England. The concept of a divorced person in royal circles was considered such sacrilege in those days that the King refused to receive his son's "unholy lover." He forbade his son to bring a woman defiled by divorce into his royal presence. When the King realized he was dying, he made his wife swear that she would never receive the despised Mrs. Simpson. The Queen, who regarded the King as more than her husband "He's my almighty Lord and sovereign" obeyed his command for the rest of her days.

At the end of his life, King George V cursed the laws of primogeniture that barred his solidly married second son from succeeding him. Although Bertie's stutter and stammer irritated him beyond bearing, he would have done anything to save the Crown from the Prince of Wales and his wenching ways.

"After I am dead," he said, "the boy will ruin himself in twelve months." In that the King proved prescient.

He wanted the throne to pass to his second son and then to his beloved granddaughter Elizabeth, who called him "Grandpapa England" because he referred to the National Anthem ("God Save the King") as his song. She sat on his lap, tousled his hair, pulled his beard, and plucked food from his plate for her Welsh corgi dogs. She also made him get down on his hands and knees to play "horsey" with her. The old King doted on his first granddaughter and held her in his arms on the balcony of Buckingham Palace so she could hear the crowd roar. "They're cheering for you, you know," he told her. Later he confided to an equerry: "I pray to God that my eldest son [Edward] will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

Critically ill for days, George V died on Monday, January 20, 1936, at 11:55 PM. His end was hastened by Lord Dawson, who gave him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine. The courtier wanted the King to die before midnight so that his death could be announced in the morning Times rather than in the less prestigious afternoon newspapers. The King, who had renamed the royal family, now lost his life to meet a newspaper deadline. Such was the legacy of the House of Windsor, which would eventually rise and fall as a puppet show for the media.

THREE

Winston Churchill puffed on his cigar and pondered the problem that was threatening a constitutional crisis: The new

king, Edward VIII, wanted to announce his engagement to the American Wallis Warfield Simpson.

"Why shouldn't the King be allowed to marry his cutie?" Churchill asked.

"Because," retorted playwright Noel Coward, "England doesn't wish for a Queen Cutie."

The new King, who was forty-one years old and had never been married, intended to make his mistress his wife as soon as she got her second divorce. Upon his coronation he wanted her crowned as his consort. But he was up against the British establishment, which would not accept Wallis as Regina. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said it was outrageous to think that an American woman with two failed marriages could marry the King and become Queen of the British empire. The King insisted he would be supported by public opinion. The Prime Minister polled the Commonwealth and reported back the results: Either abandon Mrs. Simpson or abdicate.

"The throne," said the King, "means nothing to me without Wallis beside me."

Within ten months of his accession, the new monarch renounced the crown. He made public his abdication over the radio

on December 11, 1936, in a speech that Churchill had helped him write. The evening broadcast from Windsor Castle was relayed around the world wherever the English language was spoken. In New York City cabdrivers pulled over to the curb to listen to the King say he could not continue to reign without the help and support of the woman he loved. The British public, which had learned of the crisis only weeks before, had sent telegrams and cables to Fort Belvedere, pleading with the King: "Stay with us!" and "Please don't desert us!" Now they wept as they listened to him give up his throne. "He Wuz Robbed!" said the Beaverbrook press. Journalist H. L. Mencken wrote, "It was the greatest news story since the Resurrection."

When the King married Mrs. Simpson six months later, Queen Mary wrote in her diary, "To give up all this for that!!!!" The Prime Minister repeated a music hall joke: "He was Admiral of the Fleet, but now he's the third mate of an American tramp."

The man known to his family as David was born HRH the Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David. For twenty-five years before becoming King, he was the most popular Prince of Wales in history. In every country he visited he was hailed as gallant and charming, a mesmerizing knight with shining gold hair and sad blue eyes. He bestowed the magic of royalty wherever he went, and people bowed eagerly in his presence. He was one of the most adored heirs ever to grace the British empire.

"Probably no one in our history has ever had so marked a power as this young Prince to rivet the ties of emotion and sympathy between the Mother Country and the millions of men, women and children in the outlying commonwealth of nations," wrote Frances Donaldson in her definitive biography of Edward VIII. "The emotions felt for England could never be explained merely by political or economic advantage, and there is no doubt that the monarchy was the greatest single influence in welding these disparate nations together. . .

Women were especially thrilled to be in the company of such a man. Even meeting someone who had met him was exciting. This gave rise to a popular lyric of the time: "I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales."

One of those women was the daughter of a Scottish earl, Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon. As the ninth of ten children, she was pampered and spoiled by her indulgent father. Like other women of her generation, she was formally uneducated but well versed in the arts necessary to marry well. Yet at the age of twenty-three she was still single while most of her aristocratic friends had husbands. Then she met the Prince of Wales, the most dashing man of the era. She relished the attention she received when the Daily News of January 5, 1923, reported:

"Scottish Bride for Prince of Wales. Heir to Throne to Wed Peer's Daughter."

The paper did not identify her by name, but she was obviously the young woman in question. "The future Queen of England is the daughter of a well-known Scottish peer, who is the owner of castles both north and south of the Tweed."

"We all bowed and bobbed and teased her, calling her `Ma'am,' " Henry "Chips" Channon wrote in his diary. "She is more gentle, lovely and exquisite than any woman alive, but this evening I thought her unhappy and distraught."

She knew the rumor of romance was untrue, and to her chagrin, the newspaper printed a royal retraction a few days later. "We are officially authorized to say that this report is . . . devoid of foundation

Only in her old age did she admit to a friend that she was one of the many young women in the 1 920s who had fallen in love with the Prince of Wales. "He was such fun," she said. "Then."

At the time, the Prince was interested only in other men's wives who were thin, streamlined, and looked as androgynous and anorectic as he did. He was not in the least attracted to the dumpling fullness of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. In fact, years later he and his wife mischievously nicknamed her "Cookie" because of her unfashionable plumpness and fondness for food.

In April 1923 Elizabeth married Bertie, the Prince's younger brother, the Duke of York, who had proposed to her after Lady Maureen Stanley had rejected him. He suffered from such excruciating nervousness that he stuttered, blinked incessantly, and could not control the muscles around his mouth. "Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was determined to marry into the royal family," said biographer Michael Thornton, "so after his third proposal, she settled for the runt of the litter. I say this because I interviewed the Duke of Windsor to chronicle the blood feud between the Duchess of Windsor and the Queen Mother. I asked him why the Queen Mother continued to be so implacable toward his wife in later years, so unrelenting in her hatred of the Duchess.

`Jealousy,' he said. `To put it politely, she wanted to marry me.

"Now, of course, so many years later, her friends deny this, but that's what the Duke told me a few years before he died."

Upon the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, his younger brother, Albert, known to the family as "Bertie," ascended to the throne. To keep continuity with the reign of his father, he became King George VI. His wife, who as a little girl had dressed up to play queen, now became a real one. The news was delivered to the public by newsreels and radio, but the coronation on May 12, 1937, was not broadcast. The ceremony in Westminster Abbey was considered too sacred to be aired. The Archbishop of Canterbury feared men in pubs would listen with their hats on.

Upon his accession, the new King, George VI, was determined to keep his older brother out of England to avoid competing with a second court. Churchill recommended the Duke of Windsor be appointed Governor of the Bahamas. But the King objected because the Queen felt that even that insignificant position was too good for the Windsors.

"She wanted them banished and completely stripped of all status," said Michael Thornton. "She was so vengeful that she wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Lloyd, and said that to make the Duchess of Windsor, a divorced woman with three living husbands, the wife of the Governor of the Bahamas would result in a disastrous lowering of standards."

Sir Walter Monckton, the royal courtier who acted as intermediary, also recognized the Queen's motivation. As he wrote in his diary:

I think the Queen felt quite plainly that it was undesireable [sic] to give the Duke any effective sphere of work. I felt then, as always, that she naturally thought that she must be on her guard because the Duke of Windsor, to whom the other brothers had always looked up, was an attractive, vital creature who might be the rallying point for any who might be critical of the new King, who was less superficially endowed with the arts and graces that please.

Despite the Queen's objection, the appointment was made.

"She wreaked her sweet revenge later by making sure the Duchess of Windsor never received a curtsy or was addressed as Her Royal Highness," said Thornton. "The Queen helped institute the Letters Patent, which bestowed upon the Duke of Windsor `the title, style, or attribute of Royal Highness' while withholding such title, style, or attribute from his wife and his descendants."

The King referred to the Duchess as "Mrs. Simpson," while the Queen disparaged her as "that woman."

Together, Their Majesties instructed the Lord Chamberlain to wire their new ruling to all Government House officials. His telegram from Buckingham Palace read:

You are no doubt aware that a lady when presented to HRH the Duke of Windsor should make a half-curtsey. The Duchess of Windsor is not entitled to this. The Duke should be addressed as "Your Royal Highness" and the Duchess as "Your Grace."

The Duke of Windsor drafted a passionate, bitter letter of protest to Winston Churchill:

I am up against the famous Court ruling . whereby the King (or shall we say the Queen?) decreed that the Duchess shall not hold Royal Rank. ... I am quite sure that had your wife been the target of the vindictive jealousy . . . you would have the same repugnance to service under the Crown that I have. . .

Until this time, every wife automatically enjoyed the status of her husband. Now the rules were suddenly changed to deprive the Duchess of Windsor of royal acceptance. If the twice divorced American was not fit to be Queen of England, then she certainly was not fit to be a member of the royal family or admitted into their exalted circle. So no member of the House of Windsor ever received her until her husband's death, and even then she was accorded only minimal courtesy. "They were polite and kind to me," she said, "but they were cold. Very cold." The Duchess of Windsor died several years later at the age of ninety, alone and shriveled by infirmity.

Long before she became Queen, Elizabeth and her husband had assumed responsibility for restoring the royal family's reputation. Stolid and middle-class, they had drawn a stark contrast between themselves and the Champagne-swilling heir to the throne who cavorted at Fort Belvedere with his married lovers. The Yorks, or "Betty and Bert," as some newspapers called them, embodied domesticity. Elizabeth fostered this image by posing for pictures pouring tea and walking her corgis in the park. She invited Lady Cynthia Asquith to write The Married Lifr of the Duchess of Thrk, a book whose cover announced that it was "Written and Published with Personal Approval of Her Royal Highness." After the birth of her first child, she allowed Miss Anne Ring, a former member of her staff, to write The Story of Princess Eli~abeth, Told with the Sanction of Her Parents. With these frothy concoctions, she began establishing a myth that would elevate her beyond reproach.

"All done with mirrors," was how Noel Coward described the cunning mystery of mythmaking. But Elizabeth did it with feathers, a dazzling smile, a soft voice, and a tiara. With these ingredients she produced her souffle' of magic.

She was born in 1900 during the reign of Queen Victoria and lived through many monarchs and prime ministers. She survived two world wars and watched the British empire shrink to a small commonwealth. As she aged, she was celebrated as a befeathered emblem of a glorious past. She was history the continuum that linked generations to their best memories of courage and duty and steadfastness.

From the beginning she understood the enduring power of image on the public imagination the curtsies, the uniforms, the

prancing horses, the movie star waves from the golden coach. She instinctively knew the value of such pageantry in stirring people's hearts. She was a genius at marketing herself and her husband, especially during the war years, when she propped up the weak, faltering man she had married and made him look like a king.

As the first commoner to marry into the House of Windsor, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon showed the country how royalty should behave. She ingratiated herself as the Duchess of York with twirly little waves and gracious smiles. But she earned mass adoration as Queen during World War II when she stayed in London during the Blitz. She was photographed standing with the King in the bombed- out ruins of Buckingham Palace. "I'm almost happy that we've been hit," she said. "It makes me feel I can look the blitzed East End in the face."

Endearing herself forever to her embattled country, she refused to flee England to seek safety for herself and her children.

"They could not go without me," she said. "I could not possibly leave the King, and the King will never go."

When she and the King toured London's East End to inspect the bomb damage, a Jewish tailor advised the monarch "to put the empire in the wife's name." She became such a morale booster that Adolf Hitler called her the most dangerous woman in Europe. After the war, a grateful soldier rhapsodized:

She put on her finest gown, her gayest smile

and stayed in town, while London Bridge was falling down.

A photograph of the Queen in her crown was turned into a Christmas card during World War II and sent to every man and woman serving in the armed forces. It was a cherished keepsake from the monarch to his subjects.

Elizabeth was so ingenious at humanizing the royal family that she became an international media sensation in the newsreels shown in movie houses before the advent of television. Her radio speeches inspired hope throughout Occupied Europe as she told her listeners: "Wherever I go, I see bright eyes and smiling faces. For though our road is stony and hard, it is straight, and we know that

we fight in a great cause." The sight of her smiling in the face of German bombardment inspired patriotism.

She put a caring face on the monarchy by visiting bombed sites throughout England. Beforehand, she had consulted with her couturier, Norman Hartnell, to make sure she was properly dressed. She would not wear anything as masculine as a military uniform, and she knew better than to appear imposing and regal. After urgent discussion, she decided she must never wear black the color of mourning~or red, which would be too festive in wartime. Instead, as Hartnell wrote later, he designed a series of combat frocks" in "the gentle colours~dusty pink, dusty blue and dusty lilac. .. because she wished to convey the most comforting, encouraging and sympathetic note possible."

Walking through bomb damage, she always wore her hat and her jewels. When asked if it was appropriate for her to wear her best dress while visiting the bomb-stricken areas, she smiled. "Of course,'' she said. ``They would wear their best dresses if they were coming to see me.

She, in turn, despised Germans and declared she would shoot them before ever surrendering. Having watched the sorry parade of fallen kings and queens limping into London after their countries had been invaded, she vowed to defend herself and her crown. So she started taking revolver lessons every morning and insisted the King do likewise. "I shall not go down like the others," she declared.

She and the King became incensed by the Windsors' public admiration of Hitler. In April 1941, the Duke was reported as saying, "It would be very ill-advised of America to enter the war against Germany as Europe was finished anyway." The Duchess agreed. "If the U.S. entered the war, this country would go to history as the greatest sucker of all times." Then the Duke told the editor of the U.S. magazine Liberty, ". it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown.

The Queen became more irate after seeing newsreel footage of the Duchess of Windsor traveling by luxury liner while people in England stood in freezing queues to collect morsels of fresh fish and bread. With her hand-tooled Hermes handbags, the Duchess

traveled in high style during the war. She wore emeralds as big as eggs and enough furs to carpet a room, while war-rationed Britons mended old coats to stay warm. The Queen became especially agitated by a newspaper story about the Duchess flying first class from the Bahamas to New York just to get her hair done.

The Queen had demonstrated stout resolve in facing other obstacles in the past; the most pressing was her inability to get pregnant during the months after her wedding. The fertility problem stemmed from the "nervousness" that afflicted her husband, producing his debilitating stutter, distracting twitches, rickety legs, and bleeding ulcers. Most disturbing to the new bride was his inability to impregnate her. This was a disorder he shared with his older brother. When the Duchess of Windsor was asked why she had no children with her husband, she joked about the disability: "The Duke is not heir-conditioned."

Neither was his brother. For two barren years the Duchess of York was unable to conceive. She consulted several gynecologists and obstetricians about the problem. Finally, on the advice of her doctor, Lane Phillips, she and her husband submitted to the unorthodox science of artificial insemination. The arduous procedure of mechanically injecting his sperm into her uterus finally enabled her to get pregnant. Only because of this manual fertilization was she able to produce her first child, Elizabeth, in 1926, and her second, Margaret Rose, in 1930. The only comment recorded from her doctors after the birth of Elizabeth referred to the delivery by cesarean section: "A certain line of treatment was successfully adopted." Beyond that, the deferential British press did not report that the future Queen of England was a product of artificial insemination. "This was well-known in our circles at the time," said a royal family friend whose mother was a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. "My mother and the Duchess of York talked about it because they shared the same gynecologist. . . . The Duke had a slight . . problem . . . with . . . a . . . his `willy.' . . ."As George Bernard Shaw wrote: "Monarchs are not born; they are made by artificial hallucination."

As a commoner, the Duchess was respected for accepting the royal responsibility of producing an heir and a spare, even if it

meant being artificially seeded. "Our family knew that Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were born by artificial means," said a relative of the Earl of Arran. "It was revolutionary at the time, but it was not discussed publicly and probably never should be

By the end of the war, the Queen Mother had become a living saint to be praised and preserved. Because the country lionized her, the press followed suit and never printed a negative word about her. Even when every intimate detail of the royal family became newspaper fodder, she alone remained immune. The media respectfully refrained from reporting that as a result of intestinal surgery she wore a colostomy bag. Her incessant drinking, which might be described as incipient alcoholism in anyone else, was dismissed as mere tippling. Her propensity for gambling was never reported as an addiction, just an innocent pastime of a sweet old lady who happened to have installed in her house her own personal "blower," or bookie wire, to receive up-to-the-minute race results. Her support of white minority rule in Rhodesia was tagged not as racist, but rather as a right-wing political quirk. By the standards of her time, she was excused for calling people of color "blackamoors" and nig nogs." "She is not fond of black folk," wrote Paul Call an in the International Express, "but these are, of course, traits typical of her age and class."

Even the satirical television program Spitting Image held back on lampooning the most beloved member of the royal family. "For the first show, we had prepared a sketch of the Queen Mother arm- wrestling Princess Margaret over a bottle of vodka," recalled Roger Law, "but the producer, John Lloyd, refused to let us debut with that skit. . . . We had to wait until the public accepted the show. The shock was that we treated the royal family as an ordinary family

"The Queen Mother was so untouchable by 1994 that I was prohibited from alluding to the possibility of her death in a piece of fiction," said writer Sue Townsend, author of The Queen and L "When I adapted my book to be a play, the artistic director of the Royal Court Theater, Max Stafford-Clark, refused to let me use the scene of the Queen Mother's funeral. He was afraid of the public outcry and what might happen to him as a result. So I had to rewrite that part. I went along with it because I was in awe of the director and wanted the play produced."

When another writer reported some harmless remarks the Queen Mother had made over lunch, he was called a scoundrel. "I was denounced . . . as a cad for repeating the old lady's conversation," said A. N. Wilson, who broke the taboo of never repeating the unrehearsed words of a royal personage.

Writing in the Spectator, he reported the Queen Mother's merry recollection of an evening during the war when she met

T. S. Eliot. She was worried that her children were not receiving a proper education, so she asked that a poetry evening be arranged at Windsor Castle.

"Such an embarrassment," she recalled. "We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem . . . I think it was called `The Desert.' And first the girls got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King."

`The Desert,' ma' am? Are you sure it wasn't called `The Waste Land'?"

"That's it," said the Queen Mother. "I'm afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked in a bank, and we didn't understand a word."

"I believe he did once work in a bank," said the writer. He was roundly criticized for presenting the beloved Queen Mother as a philistine. By then she had become an icon.

"Perhaps the most loved person in the Western world," suggested Sir Edward Ford, former assistant private secretary to the Queen.

"She is the embodiment of what royalty should be," said writer Robert Lacey.

She solidified her pedestal with more than seventy years of royal engagements: cutting ribbons, visiting regiments, christening ships, and laying cornerstones. That's how she earned her keep, which eventually cost British taxpayers about $1 million a year. She waved gaily, tilted her head coquettishly, and smiled sweetly.

"Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on earth," she said.

To the British, she was worth every shilling they paid to support her one butler, two drivers, two security guards, three castles, four maids, four ladies-in-waiting, eight footmen,ten servants, and fifteen stable personnel (to look after her fourteen horses).

"The Queen Mum is my love-the only one in the royal family I care about," said artist Fleur Cowles. "I don't know any of the others and I don't care to." Opening the door to her London drawing room, she pointed to a plush velvet love seat. "When Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother comes for dinner, that's where she sits. And when she leaves, she always turns in the doorway, kicks up her heels like a chorus girl, and throws her arms in the air. It's such a cute exit."

The soft, cuddly appearance and sunny manner concealed layers of duplicity. Underneath the Queen Mother's feathers was flint. Stout-hearted and tough, she protected royalty's mystique by keeping its secrets. Throughout her life she was the warden who ensured that anything detrimental to the sweet myth was destroyed or buried forever. She had helped rescue the House of Windsor, and she intended to keep it standing. Even when she was well into her nineties she exercised enough influence to keep the British government from releasing the remaining evidence of the Windsors' sub-rosa contacts with the Third Reich. For more than fifty years she had guarded documents that detailed the Duke of Windsor s proposed separate peace agreement with the Nazis. She had kept sealed in the vaults of Windsor Castle all the King's papers including the captured German war documents that summarized the Windsors' 1937 visit to Germany to meet with Hitler.

Within those documents were notes of a plan to return the Duke of Windsor to the throne after Germany's conquest of Europe. In July of 1940, as he was considering the invasion of Britain, Hitler decided to kidnap the Windsors and hold them in Berlin, from where the Duke would appeal to the British people to change governments and seek peace with Germany. Once the treaty was signed, the Duke and Duchess would be restored to the throne as puppet monarchs. Although the plan was never enacted, the Windsors' possible complicity with the Third Reich continued to taint the royal family.

The Queen Mother sailed into old age, smiling and undaunted. When she was ninety-six years old, she had hip replacement surgery. A few weeks after her hospitalization, she put on her blue silk hat, grabbed a walking stick, and visited an old age home. "I'm the oldest one here," she told the enfeebled pensioners. She bestowed smiles and sweet words and then departed, leaving the elderly residents feeling almost blessed.

"She has tremendous charm," said one woman. "All she says is `I know, I know' and you feel rewarded. What a marvelous phrase. She changes inflection for every occasion: if she approves, she smiles and says, `I know. I know.' If she's consoling someone in grief, she pats the person's arm and whispers, `I know. I know.'

Few people only her household staff and her immediate family ever see the iron frame under the marshmallow.

"A steel hand within a velvet glove," was how her husband's Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, described her.

"She was tough and ruthless," said historian John Grigg.

She herself agreed. "You think I am a nice person," she once confided to a friend to whom she was speaking about the Windsors. "I'm not really a nice person.

She had become the Crown's most ferocious custodian, and having invested her life in the monarchy, she would protect it until her death. She became more royal than royalty in guarding their mystique. Over the years she became the keeper of the secrets. She had learned early from her father.

For years she had shrouded the details surrounding her own birth. She airily dismissed questions about why her father, after eight children, missed the six-week deadline for registering her birth. He then put his historic name as fourteenth heir of the Earl of Strathmore to a lie. In doing so, he risked life imprisonment, which in 1900 was the extreme penalty for falsifying an official document. Instead he paid a fine of seven shillings and sixpence and stated that his daughter was born at St. Pauls Walben Bury, the family home in Hertfordshire. The Queen Mother maintained she was born in London.

This conflict gave rise to rumors over the years that after producing eight children, her thirty-nine-year-old mother finally had

had enough. Some people have suggested that her father may have had an affair with a Welsh maid who worked at Glamis Castle in Scotland, and that this union produced the baby know as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. No evidence has been found to verify the suspicion, which may have arisen because of the unorthodox way her father filed her birth certificate.

"It really doesn't matter where she was born or if there were inaccuracies," said a Clarence House spokesman. "Strathmore did the evil deed and he is dead. If he did wrong, it didn't show."

The Queen Mother deflected scrutiny of her lineage to hide her family's hereditary defects. For generations the Strathmores had been haunted by the Beast of Glamis, which according to legend was the misshapen creature born to her grandfather's brother. Shaped like an egg with twisted spindly legs, this baby boy supposedly grew into a grotesque monster covered with long black hair. He was locked away in the castle for decades, his existence known only to his brother and three other people. The family covered their shame with secrecy. "We were never allowed to talk about it

said Elizabeth's older sister, Rose. "Our parents forbade us

ever to discuss the matter or ask any questions."

This attitude toward physical deformities and mental illness was prevalent around 1920 when Elizabeth's young nieces were born. Katherine and Nerissa Bowes~Lyon, both retarded at birth, were secretly locked away in the mental hospital in Redhill, Surrey, where they lived for decades. So great was the disgrace felt by the family that they recorded the two women as dead in 1941 in Burke's Peerage, the bible of British nobility.

"If this is what the family of the Bowes-Lyon told us, then we would have included it in the book," said Harold Brooks-Baker, editor of Burke's Peerage. "It is not normal to doubt the word of members of the royal family. Any information given to us by the royal family is accepted, even if we had evidence to the contrary. . .

Such deference to the Crown helped the Queen Mother conceal any secrets that might have shamed the royal family. She hid the alcoholism of her husband and the homosexuality and drug addiction of his brother, Prince George, who eventually married and

became the Duke of Kent. After the war she buried an explosive military report to King George VI from Field Marshall Montgomery and two confidential reports from Lord Mountbatten, which he described in a television interview as "too hot and uninhibited" to publish. She knew that these three documents, if ever made public after her husband's death, would reflect unfavorably on his stewardship during the war.

"The King was told everything," she admitted to Theo Aronson in 1993, "so, of course, I knew about everything as well. That is when I learned to keep things to myself. One heard so many stories, I became very cagey. And I have been very cagey ever since. . .

FOUR

The Yorks, now the King and Queen of England, cultivated important American friendships in hopes of influencing public

opinion in the United States. They wanted America to enter the war before it was too late for Great Britain.

In the spring of 1939 the King and Queen had invited Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, and his wife, Rose, to spend a weekend at Windsor Castle. Over dinner in the Garter Throne Room, the Queen seated herself between the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Ambassador Kennedy. She had told the Ambassador how much she and the King had enjoyed their recent trip to the United States and how charmed they were by President and Mrs. Roosevelt, who entertained them at Hyde Park with hot dogs and beer.

That royal visit had caused a political ruckus in America, especially among upper-crust Republicans, who venerated Great Britain as "the mother country." One grande dame became so upset by the prospect of the monarchs' being subjected to the President's informal hospitality at Hyde Park that she appealed to the British Foreign Office to cancel that part of the visit.

"There is no proper arrangement for Secret Service men and police even in ordinary times," she wrote. "The house has no proper suites and rooms, etc., and the service represents a scratch lot of negroes and white, English and Irish. The Footman is a lout

of a red-haired Irishman, and should only be carrying wood and coals and polishing shoes. . .

The President, who was widely suspected correctly of trying to take America into a European war, was facing a tough reelection campaign in 1940. The Neutrality Act, then being debated in Congress, would limit America's ability to supply Britain with arms in case of war as well as limit Roosevelt's powers as President under the Constitution. Roosevelt hoped the act would be revised.

Roosevelt wanted the royal visit to be a public relations success so that Americans would be positively disposed to Great Britain and see the wisdom of giving military aid. But the President was almost stymied by the snobbery of Britain's class system, even among servants. He had tried to help the Hyde Park staff prepare for the royal visit by dispatching two black ushers from the White House. This incensed his mother's English butler, James, who refused to work with men of color in serving the monarchs. He insisted on taking his annual leave during the royal visit.

"Oh, but James," said Sara Roosevelt, "that's just when Their Majesties are going to be here."

"Madam," replied the butler, "I cannot be a party to the degradation of the British monarchy."

The King and Queen had requested that eiderdown comforters and hot-water bottles be provided for their ladies-in-waiting, which amused the President: the monarchs were visiting in June, when the weather was usually hot, even unbearably humid. He was also surprised by the attitude of his mother's butler, but then he did not understand that British servants could be as haughty as those they served. The President laughed aloud when he heard that the footman to King Edward VIII had walked off his job three years before when he encountered his master behaving in what he called "a most unbecoming manner." The footman explained: "Well, the butler, Mr. Osborne, sent me down to the swimming pool with two drinks. When I got there, what did I see but His Majesty painting Mrs. Simpson's toenails. My sovereign painting a woman's toenails! It was a bit much, I'm afraid, and I gave notice at once."

Showing the same hauteur, the Roosevelts' English butler left for vacation the day before the King and Queen arrived at Hyde

Park. When Their Majesties were en route, the U.S. Ambassador to France, William C. Bullitt, sent a confidential memo to the President:

The little Queen is now on her way to you together with the little King. She is a nice girl~eiderdown or no eiderdown~and you will like her, in spite of the fact that her sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, goes around England talking about "her cheap public smile." She resembles so much the female caddies who used to carry my clubs at Pitlochry in Scotland many years ago that I find her pleasant. . . The little King is beginning to feel his oats, but still remains a rather frightened boy.

The King and Queen had made a royal visit to Paris the year before that was a public relations success with everyone except the French Premier, Edouard Daladier. He privately denounced the King as "a moron" and said the Queen was "an excessively ambitious young woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world so that she might remain Queen."

Ambassador Bullitt's 1939 memo to the President advised Roosevelt not to mention the Windsors to the King and Queen because about a month ago the Duke of Windsor wrote to Queen Mary [his mother] that Bertie [his brother, the King] had behaved toward him in such an ungentlemanly way because of `the influence of that common little woman,' the Queen, that he could have no further relations with Bertie. Brotherly love, therefore, not at fever heat."

The King and Queen arrived with their valets, maids, dressers and ladies-in-waiting, and the British servants immediately started squabbling with their American counterparts.

The King's valet complained about the food and drink, saying it was far below what he was accustomed to in Buckingham Palace, which supposedly was getting by on war rations. Although the public was led to believe that the King and Queen and the two little Princesses were depriving themselves of meat, bread, and butter like everyone else in the country and sharing England's bleak fare

of boiled potatoes, gray Brussels sprouts, and powdered eggs, those behind the Palace gates knew differently. The King and Queen sidestepped the country's strict food rationing and regularly ate roast beef and drank Champagne. Butter pats were monogrammed with the royal coat of arms, and dinners were' served on gold plates.

"During the war, when the King and Queen were in London and their daughters at Windsor, the Princesses used to order their own meals," recalled Rene' Roussin, the French chef who worked for the royal family from 1937 to 1946. "A typical day's menu for them began with buttered eggs for breakfast; boiled chicken with sieved vegetables even when they were both in their teens, they still liked their vegetables sieved potato crisps, and hot baked custard for lunch; bread and butter, cake, jelly, and toast for tea; and just some kind of broth followed by compote of pear with whipped cream for supper.

In London, no restaurant was allowed to charge more than ten shillings for a meal. But at the Palace, the King ordered two eggs and six rashers of grilled bacon for breakfast every day and grouse in season for dinner every night. The Queen, accustomed to a full meal at teatime, continued having her daily oatcakes, a rich dessert prepared by the Palace chef, which caused her to gain twelve pounds in one year.

"Her Majesty will not give up oatcakes," said her maid, who admitted having to let out the seams of the Queen's gowns.

The Queen insisted her tea be a special blend of China and Ceylon, brewed with London water that she had shipped to the United States with her luggage in heavy casks.

The vast amount of royal luggage bulky wardrobes, numerous suitcases, crates of hatboxes, bins of shoes surprised the President's domestic staff, which had assumed the British monarchs were abiding by the same restrictions on clothes coupons as their subjects. The British servants reacted defensively. They knew what the public did not know that the King was dazzled by goldbraided military uniforms and spent hours with his personal tailor being fitted every day. This obsession with fashion had started early.

"Unfortunately, Bertie takes no interest in anything but

clothes, and again clothes," his father had complained. "Even when out shooting, he is more occupied with his trousers than his game!"

Equally concerned about his wife's appearance, the King winced when he heard her described as "dowdy." So he summoned couturier Norman Hartnell to the Palace to design a flattering wardrobe for her. Although silk was banned from sale to the public and used only to make parachutes, exceptions were made for the Queen, and by the time she left for America, she was changing her outfits as least four times a day.

During one photography session with Cecil Beaton, she posed in a pale gray dress with long fur-trimmed sleeves and a gray fox fur collar. She changed into a ruby-encrusted gown of gold and silver with ostrich feathers, then appeared in a spangled tulle hyacinth blue dress with two rows of diamonds as big as walnuts. For the last pose, she appeared in a champagne lace garden party dress that had been hand sewn with pearls to match the pearls that she had strewn through her hair.

The Queen's dresser had a full-time job just laying out the Queen's various outfits for the day and coordinating the morning and evening jewels she wanted to wear with each ensemble. The royal dresser felt insulted when she was interrupted by a White House usher to relay a message from the Queen to a lady-in- waiting.

"I am Her Majesty's maid," snapped the woman, "not a messenger girl." The White House usher did not understand the difference. Britain's rigid class system extended from the top of society to the bottom, or "the lower orders," as they were commonly called. In the hierarchy of royal service, household servants came first. They even had their own sitting room and dining room in the Palace. From their lofty perch, they looked down upon the stewards, clerks, and stenographers and refused to perform duties they deemed beneath them.

The King and Queen seemed unruffled by the fuss among their underlings. They felt at home in the country atmosphere of Hyde Park, especially when they found a tray of cocktails awaiting their arrival.

"My mother thinks you should have a cup of tea," said the President. "She doesn't approve of cocktails."

"Neither does my mother," said the King, gratefully reaching for a drink.

When the King and Queen returned to London, they dined with the U.S. Ambassador, and the Queen related this and other homey details of the Roosevelts' picnic for them at Hyde Park. She mentioned the emotional farewell she and the King received when hundreds of people gathered at the train station and spontaneously started singing "Auld Lang Syne."

Ambassador Kennedy had read the glowing press accounts of the royal visit to America in 1939. "The British sovereigns have conquered Washington, where they have not put a foot wrong," wrote Arthur Krock in The New York Times, "and where they have left a better impression than even their most optimistic advisers could have expected."

"They have a way of making friends, these young people," said Eleanor Roosevelt.

Even Kennedy, an isolationist, was impressed. But over dinner, as the Queen inched the conversation toward American foreign policy, he flared.

"What the American people fear more than anything else is being involved in a war," he told her. "They say to themselves, `Never again!' and I can't say I blame them. I feel the same way."

"I feel that way, too, Mr. Kennedy," said the Queen. "But if we had the United States actively on our side, working with us, think how that would strengthen our position with the dictators."

The President agreed with the Queen. Within months Roosevelt asked for Kennedy's resignation. When the President heard that the Ambassador had told his private secretary, "Roosevelt and the kikes are taking us into war," FDR told his wife, "I never want to see that son of a bitch again." By that time the Ambassador he relinquished the position but never the title was despised in England for his appeasement policies. "He left London during the Blitz," said Conor O'Clery, Washington correspondent for the Irish Times, "and the British never forgave him."

The Queen did not have to resort to a hard sell with her Amer-

ican show business friends. The feeling among artists and entertainers was that if Britain were involved in a war, the United States was bound to come in sooner or later, because living in a totalitarian world was unthinkable.

The Queen was naturally drawn to show business people. The American theatrical producer Jack Wilson enjoyed special access to the Palace because he was the close friend and business partner of Noel Coward, who was the Queen's favorite playwright and part of her high camp coterie. After the abdication, Coward had endeared himself by suggesting that statues of Wallis Simpson be erected throughout England for the blessing she had bestowed on the British. "She gave us you," he said, "and saved us all from the reign of King Edward VIII." So when Wilson telephoned the Queen to say hello in 1939, he was immediately invited for tea.

Jack Wilson arrived at Windsor Castle and was escorted through the grand dining room, where the King and Queen had hired an artist to paint the backs of the Constable, Reynolds, and Gainsborough canvases with the cartoon faces of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to liven up the gloomy atmosphere for their children. Wilson was amused when the King's footman confided this small detail of royal family life. The servant then tiptoed across the Aubusson carpet, reached up, and slyly turned over a gilded portrait of Charles II to reveal the goofy grin of Walt Disney's floppy-eared dog Pluto.

Wilson followed the footman into the Queen's sitting room, where her thirteen~year~old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was playing on the floor. Wilson smiled at the youngster and greeted her pleasantly.

"Well, hello there, cutie pie," he said. "How're you doing today?"

The footman froze, unable to continue into the room. The youngster stared hard at the producer. Then she raised her arm and pointed to the floor.

"Bow, boy, bow," she told the forty-year-old man.

The teenage heir to the throne had been trained to demand her royal entitlements.

"And you know what I did?" said the producer, lau~hin~ as

he recalled his introduction to the young woman who would become the sixty-third sovereign of the oldest royal house in Europe. "I bowed my arse off because that little girl scared the living bejabbers out of me.

The Lord Chamberlain had had a similar experience when he encountered the Princess in a Palace corridor.

"Good morning, little lady," he said.

"I'm not a little lady," she snapped. "I'm Princess Elizabeth."

Hearing the youngster's uppity tone disturbed Queen Mary, her grandmother. An hour later the elderly Queen Mother had her granddaughter in tow as she knocked on the Lord Chamberlain's door.

"This is Princess Elizabeth," announced Queen Mary, "who hopes one day to be a lady."

Days later the Princess, in a fury, demanded a favor of her governess. The governess said no, but the Princess persisted. Finally she shouted: "This is royalty speaking." Her mother remonstrated: "Royalty has never been an excuse for bad manners."

Still, the young Princess never learned to conceal her imperiousness. From the age of ten she had been reared as the next Queen of England.* Platoons of liveried butlers, footmen, and chauffeurs bowed to her whenever she entered a room, and maids, nannies, and dressers fell to the floor in obeisant curtsies. And whenever she entered or departed the royal houses of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Balmoral, and Birkall, the scarlet- uniformed guards at the gates snapped to attention and performed the stately exercise of "presenting arms" saluting her with a rifle or saber.

This royal treatment fascinated her. The first time she discovered the attention she commanded, she slipped away from her nurse and paraded back and forth in front of the Palace guard, who clicked his heels, raised his rifle, and stood ramrod straight each time she passed.

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*Between themselves, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor referred to the winsome Princess as Shirley Temple, who was the most successful child star in Hollywood history. Responding on cue to her mother, who said, "Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle," the movie moppet sang and danced and shook her ringlet curls to hecome the biggest box office draw of her day.

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Her name was given to bone china, to hospitals, and even to chocolates. Her wax figure, sitting on the white pony she received for her fourth birthday, stood in Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Flags were flown on her birthday, and her face appeared on a sixcent stamp in Newfoundland. Her portrait hung in the Royal Academy, and her picture appeared on the cover of Time magazine. This reverence worried her father, who wrote to his mother, Queen Mary: "It almost frightens me that the people should love her so much. I suppose it is a good thing, and I hope she will be worthy of it, poor little darling."

The young Princess had a few ordinary experiences, such as Christmas shopping at Woolworth's, riding in the top deck of a bus, and traveling incognito on the underground. But she had never ridden in a taxi or placed her own telephone call. She was so protected that she had never contracted the childhood diseases of measles or chicken pox.* Her usual transportation consisted of a horse-drawn golden carriage, where she sat with her mother and grandmother, or the royal train with its nine cream leather coaches, gold-plated ventilators, gold electric light fixtures, and gold telephone. She was always accompanied by her governess, Marion ("Crawfie") Crawford; her guardian and dresser, Margaret ("BoBo") MacDonald; and her nurse, Clare ("Allah") Knight.

"We used to say that the first thing Nanny teaches a royal is how to ring for service," said a Palace employee. The youngster, who called herself Lilibet, certainly had learned that lesson well. By the age of seven she also knew her place in the line of succession.

"I'm three and you're four," she told her younger sister.

"No, you're not, said Margaret Rose, who thought her sister was talking about their ages. "I'm three and you're seven.

Knowing that his oldest daughter, Elizabeth, would follow him to the throne, the new King decided that she should be better prepared for her role than he was for his. He had been traumatized by the prospect of giving up grouse shooting every day to become King.

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*In 1971, when Queen Elizabeth was forty-five years old, she caught chicken pox from her seven-year old son, Edward. in 1982, at the age of fifty-six, she had her first wisdom tooth extracted.

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Minutes before his brother's abdication, he told his cousin Louis Mountbatten: "This is the most awful thing that has ever happened to me. I'm completely unfitted [sic] to be King. I've had no education for it."

He said that would not happen to his daughter, whom he began tutoring at an early age. He instructed her in the ceremonial duties of being a sovereign, and he made her study on her feet so she would become accustomed to long hours of standing in heavy robes to have her portrait painted. He told her she must keep a daily diary and showed her how to review troops and take a salute. He also shared the red boxes containing top-secret state papers that were delivered to him every day. Soon she approached new tasks by asking: "Will I have to do this when Papa dies?"

The first time her younger sister saw the King's equerry call for Elizabeth and escort her to the King's study to "do the boxes," she was curious.

"Does this mean that you will have to be the next Queen?" Margaret asked.

"Yes, someday," replied Elizabeth.

"Poor you," said Margaret Rose, who was disgusted when her father became King and the family had to move into Buckingham Palace.

"What?" Margaret had asked. "Do you mean forever? I hate all this. I used to be Margaret Rose of York, and now I'm Margaret Rose of nothing."

But Elizabeth was wide-eyed when she saw a letter on the hall table addressed to "Her Majesty the Queen."

"That's Mummie now, isn't it," she said, awestruck.

By 1939 Lilibet was prefacing her sentences with "When I be- come Queen.

"She makes it very plain to the Queen [her mother] that whereas she, the Queen, is a commoner, she, Princess Elizabeth, is of royal blood," said the Duke of Devonshire.

Although four years separated the two Princesses, they were reared as twins, and until they were teenagers, their mother dressed them identically in matching brown oxfords, coats with velvet collars, and little hats fastened on their heads by elastic bands. Fea

tured frequently in the newspapers and newsreels, they became the paradigm for how all little girls should dress, sit, walk, talk, and behave.

The two Princesses played games together and performed plays and pantomimes for their parents on the stage built for them at Windsor Castle. Their mother liked to sing dance hall songs, while the King enjoyed dancing in a conga line. Their world, once described by their father as "us four," was filled with dogs and horses and servants but very few friends. They listened to Bing Crosby records, took weekly dancing classes, played the piano, and sang constantly. Because their mother stressed music over mathematics, they excelled at the former and neglected the latter.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Britain declared war. Soon women and children were evacuated from London. The two Princesses remained in seclusion at Windsor for the next five years, traveling to London only to see the dentist. The Palace issued a statement that Princess Elizabeth, the heir presumptive,* was discontinuing her German lessons and, in another ploy for American intervention, would start studying U.S. history. Nothing was said about the education of Princess Margaret because she did not count: she was only a spare to the heir. Later, when Margaret wanted to study history with her sister's Eton tutor, she was told, "It is not necessary for you." Margaret exploded, "I was born too late!"

The biggest investment of time and attention was made in Elizabeth as the future sovereign, and she became as orderly, dutiful, and responsible as her father. "She is exactly the daughter that plain, conscientious King George and matronly Queen Elizabeth deserve," said Time magazine. "And that is precisely what her future subjects want her to be." Elizabeth shared her father's passion for horses, grouse shooting, and deer stalking. Like him, she did not much enjoy going to church. When a minister in Scotland promised to give her a book, she thanked him and asked that it not be about God. "I know everything about Him," she said.

She inherited her father's broad vaudevillian sense of humor,

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*Because she is female and first in line to the throne, she is presumed to be the heir. If she were male (far more preferable), she would be called the heir apparent.

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and together they laughed at the exaggerated antics of slapstick clowns wearing droopy drawers and doing pratfalls. Margaret, more like her mother, preferred sophisticated comedy and drawing room repartee. She was so spoiled as a child that her servants found her "terrible" and "absolutely impossible," but her proud and indulgent parents saw her outrageous behavior as merely "entertaining and engaging." They didn't bother holding Margaret accountable because she was never going to be Queen. As she once joked: "I don't have to be dour and dutiful like Lilibet. I can be as beastly as I want."

Inside the fortress of Windsor Castle the two Princesses bickered on occasion but became each other's best friends for life, with the older sister assuming the mentor's role.

"Margaret almost forgot to say `Thank you,' Crawfie," Elizabeth reported to her governess, "but I gave her a nudge, and she said it beautifully."

Yet when Elizabeth became patrol leader for her own troop of Girl Guides, she spared no one, including her chatterbox sister.

"Here," she told Margaret, "I am not your sister, and I'll permit no slackness."

Margaret stuck out her tongue, not at all intimidated by her future sovereign. "You look after your empire," she told her at one point, "and I'll look after myself."

Nor was Margaret above berating the future Queen of England for overeating, especially when she indulged in sweets.

"Lilibet," she said, "that's the fourteenth chocolate biscuit you've eaten. You're as bad as Mother you don't know when to stop."

Mother knew best how to handle her outspoken younger daughter. She simply ignored her, declining to react to any of Margaret's taunts.

"Mummy, why are you wearing those dreadful hairpins?" Margaret asked her mother one day. "They do not match your hair."

"Oh, darling," said the Queen before gliding off with a smile. "Are they really so awful?"

The two little Princesses shared the small, isolated world of royalty, where everyone tried to entertain them because that's what

the King and Queen wanted~especially the King, who felt guilty that the war was depriving his daughters of a normal life. "Poor darlings," he wrote in his diary, "they have never had any fun yet." So he seized every opportunity to amuse them.

When Noel Coward began filming In Which We Serve, the movie based on the heroic exploits of Louis Mountbatten and the ship he commanded, HMS Kelly, the King and Queen were invited to visit the set, and they took the two little Princesses, who were entranced by the world of make-believe.

The King enjoyed the company of the glamorous Mountbatten, despite his excessive ambition and blatant self-promotions. The King secretly envied his cousin's dashing style and easy charm as he sailed along the surface of life without dropping anchor. The King even tolerated Mountbatten's exaggerated vanity and seemed more amused than offended when he took his medals and decorations on tour, producing them with theatrical flourish from a custom-built box with stacks of trays: "Did I show you my Star of Nepal?" The Queen was not so impressed. She distrusted Mount- batten because of his continuing friendship with the exiled Duke of Windsor, and years later, when he was Viceroy of India, she blamed him "for giving away the empire." Nor did she like his sleek, elegant wife, Edwina, who had inherited an immense fortune from her father, including Broadlands, the family estate in Hamp~ shire.

"She's only partly English, you know," the Queen told one of her ladies-in-waiting. "Her mother was half-jewish." The implication was that the "half-jewish" part accounted for Edwina's taste in jazz, fast cars, cocktail parties, and moonlight swims in the nude--all unacceptable to the Queen, who now saw herself as the embodiment of English respectability.

"The Queen was far too clever to slam with a sledgehammer," said john Barratt, Mountbatten's private secretary. "She despised Edwina, who was named one of the best-dressed women in the world and looked like a gazelle in her Chanel suits, while the Queen made her suits look like slipcovers on fire hydrants. But the Queen never overtly sliced Edwina up. Rather, her cuts were sly and deftly delivered, even in death. When Lady Mountbatten

died in her sleep in 1960, the Queen, who by then was the Queen Mother, attended the funeral service in Romsey Abbey but returned to Clarence House to view the burial at sea on television. As Edwina's coffin was lowered into the water, she smiled and said: `Oh, my. Edwina always did want to make a splash.'"

During the early days of their reign, the King and Queen felt insecure as they struggled to lift the weight of Edward's abdication from the throne. They worried that Winston Churchill was stealing their limelight. "K. and Q. feel Winston puts them in the shade," the Conservative MP Victor Cazalet wrote in his diary of June 1940. After visiting with the King's courtiers, he wrote, "We talk of K. and how Winston quite unconsciously has put them [King and Queen] in background. Who will tell him?"

The motives of Lord Mountbatten, or "Uncle Dickie," as he was known to the family, were even more suspect. The Queen objected when he started addressing the issue of her elder daughter's future husband. He first raised the subject when Princess Elizabeth was only thirteen years old; the Queen dismissed the discussion as premature, although her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, already had compiled a list of eligible young men to be considered. Her possibilities, all of royal blood, included Prince Charles of Luxembourg, who was considerably younger than Elizabeth, and Prince Gorm of Denmark.

Unfazed, Mountbatten persisted through the years by strategically placing his handsome nephew Prince Philip of Greece at various family affairs. He encouraged the young man, whom he treated as a surrogate son, to ingratiate himself with the King and Queen and to get to know Lilibet, who was his third cousin. Mountbatten suggested that Philip correspond with Elizabeth ("A card here, a note there, would be very nice, my boy") during the war, so by the time Philip was eighteen, he, too, was seeing himself as a potential prince consort.

When he went to sea, Philip shocked his navy skipper by divulging his uncle's scheme. Vice Admiral Harold Tom BaillieGrohman was Captain of the battleship Ramillies in the Mediterranean during the summer of 1939. As a favor to Lord Mountbatten, he had taken on board the midshipman known as Prince Philip of Greece. He told the young man, who was born in Greece to a German Danish father of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg and a German mother (Battenberg/ Mountbatten), that he would not be able to advance in the Royal Navy as a Greek citizen. Philip understood and said that he wanted to become a naturalized British subject. He knew his career in the British navy would not progress if he didn't give up his Greek nationality. Greece was then a neutral country, and England could not risk having even a distant heir to the Greek throne (Philip was sixth in the line of succession) killed by enemy action while serving on a British warship.

"Then came the surprise," the Admiral wrote in his diary.

"Prince Philip went on to say: My Uncle Dickie has ideas for me; he thinks I could marry Princess Elizabeth.' I was a bit taken aback and after a hesitation asked him: `Are you really fond of her?'

`Oh, yes, very, was the reply, and `I write to her every week.'

The Admiral added to his diary entry in brackets: "I wrote this conversation down directly afterwards and so it is pretty correct."

Two years later, in 1941, Philip, twenty years old, was still corresponding with the fifteen-year~old Princess. During a holiday visit in Cape Town, South Africa, his cousin Princess Alexandra of Greece saw the midshipman bent over his stationery. She asked to whom he was writing.

"Princess Elizabeth of England," said Philip.

"But she is only a baby!"

"But perhaps I'm going to marry her."

Alexandra was crestfallen. "I suspect I was a little in love with Philip myself," she admitted years later. "In my teens, there was a prospect that I might marry him. . . . Our families discussed it."

Philip had become the ward of relatives when his own family fell apart. His father, Prince Andrew, was the seventh child of George I of the Hellenes. His mother, Princess Alice, was the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg, First Sea Lord of England at the outbreak of World War I. His father was a professional soldier in the Greek army. When Turkey invaded Greece in 1922, Andrew was accused of treason for disobeying orders and abandon-

ing his post under enemy fire. He was tried, convicted, and jailed. As he sat in prison facing possible execution by a firing squad, his wife appealed to her powerful British relatives to save her husband's life. The King, George V, remembered what had happened to his Russian cousin ("dear Nicky") and dispatched a ship to Greece to forcibly remove Andrew and his family. The Prince, accompanied by his wife, who was deaf, and their four daughters, boarded the HMS Calypso. He was carrying an orange crate that contained his only son, Philip, eighteen months old.

The platinum blond toddler had been born on a kitchen table on the Greek island of Corfu in a house, Mon Repos, with no electricity, no hot water, and no indoor plumbing. He learned sign language to communicate with his mother, who had turned deaf after catching German measles at the age of four. He also learned English, French, and German but did not speak a word of Greek. After being evacuated from Greece with his family, he spent nine years living outside Paris with his parents, who were royal but not rich. In disgraced exile, they lived in borrowed houses, wore shabby hand-me-downs, and accepted the charity of relatives and friends to feed, clothe, and educate their children.

Within nine months in 1930, Philip's four older sisters, who had been educated in Germany, married German noblemen. One was an SS Colonel on Himmler's personal staff, and the others were Princes who supported the Nazis during World War II. One sister, Sophie, named her eldest son Karl Adolf in honor of Adolf Hitler. With his four daughters securely married, Philip's father abandoned his borrowed home to live on the yacht of his mistress in Monte Carlo, where he became addicted to the gaming tables. He left behind his ten-year-old son. His wife Alice, Princess of Greece collapsed. After the separation she suffered a nervous breakdown, which in retrospect appears to have been a traumatic menopause. No longer able to care for her young son, she was institutionalized in Switzerland.

She emerged a few years later, found religion, and established the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, an order of nuns who helped the sick and needy in Greece. During the war she sheltered Jewish families in Greece and was posthumously honored for hero-

ism by Israel. Even though she had been married and borne five children, she dedicated herself to celibacy. For the rest of her days she wore a gray habit belted by a white cord and with a veil and wimple.

While Philip's mother was incapacitated, his maternal grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, stepped in to care for the ten-year-old boy, who was sent to England. When she died a few years later, the responsibility for Philip fell to her oldest son, George, the Marquess of Milford Haven. His wife, Nada, who bathed her feet in Champagne, was as exotic as Edwina Mountbatten. Both were rich, restless, and reputed to be sexually adventurous. During the 1934 custody trial for Gloria Vanderbilt in New York City, a maid testified to seeing evidence of a lesbian relationship between young Gloria's mother and Nada. "She put her arms around Mrs. Vanderbilt and kissed her," said the maid. The lurid testimony about "kissing on the lips" was not reported in the British newspapers because the Milford Havens were close to the British royal family and the press would not report anything that reflected negatively on the monarchy. That royal protection extended to Nada's husband, George Milford Haven, who was bisexual and obsessed with pornography. According to his personal financial records, he spent more than $100,000 amassing a vast collection of albums of erotic photographs and sadomasochistic books dealing with incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and family orgies, where mother and son joined father and daughter in sexual relations. George invested a fortune in buying catalogs for artificial genitalia, aphrodisiacs, horsewhips, and instruments for self- flagellation. After his death, part of his pornography collection ended up in a private case in the British Museum. He was only forty-six when he died of cancer in 1938, and the task of looking after Philip fell to George's younger brother, Lord Louis Mount- batten. "That's when Uncle Dickie took over," said Philip. "Before that no one thinks I ever had a father. . . . Most people think that Dickie's my father, anyway."

Within ten years Philip had attended four schools, all paid for by various relatives. One rich aunt financed his first two years at The Elms, a school for wealthy Americans in St. Cloud, near Paris.

His British relatives paid for his next four years at the Old Tabor School, Cheam, in Surrey, one of England's oldest, most traditional preparatory schools. Then his sisters decided he should be educated in Germany, so at the age of twelve in 1933 he was enrolled in Schloss Salem in Baden, a school run by a brother-in-law. "Scholarship was not important when Philip and I were going to school at Salem," recalled actress Lilly Lessing. "The emphasis then was on courage, honesty, and taking care of people who were weaker than you. . . and Philip, who was very athletic, excelled even then. He was very much influenced by Dr. Kurt Hahn we all were

but Dr. Hahn was Jewish, so he had to leave Germany. He sought refuge in Scotland, where he started Gordonstoun, and Philip followed him a year later."

Kurt Hahn, who was described by some former students as strong and dogmatic, probably a repressed homosexual," ran an experimental school that became the forerunner for Outward Bound. All discussion of sex was forbidden at Hahn's school, where the military curriculum included a rigorous regime of exhausting exercise,two icy showers a day, and bracing hikes before breakfast. Philip, who became one of Hahn's most devoted followers, thrived at Gordonstoun, earning good grades and excelling at sports. He became captain of the cricket and hockey teams.

In his five years at Gordonstoun, his family never visited him once, and without a home of his own, he was shuffled off to relatives for holidays. He received some spending money from one of his uncles, the Crown Prince of Sweden, but it was never enough to cover all his expenses. Frequently he had to borrow clothes from his friends, who remember scrambling to find him a suit, cuff links, and collar studs so that he could be dressed properly for the wedding of his cousin Marina to the Duke of Kent.

After graduation from Gordonstoun, Philip wanted to join the Royal Air Force and become a fighter pilot. But his uncle Dickie steered him into the navy, saying it was the only branch of military service acceptable to the aristocracy. "The RAF is for the working class. . . . All of our best kings have served in the Royal Navy," said Mountbatten. "I firmly believe that a naval training is the best

possible training for royal duties." So Philip enrolled in the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.

He was quite candid about why when he met the political diarist Sir Henry ("Chips") Channon. While visiting his mother in Athens, Philip spoke openly to Channon about his reasons for not becoming a fighter pilot, and Channon recorded the conversation on january 21, 1941: "I went to an enjoyable Greek cocktail party. Philip of Greece was there. He is extraordinarily handsome. He is to be our Prince Consort, and that is why he is serving in our Navy."

By then the young midshipman knew his life's direction and was steering himself toward an arranged marriage to the future Queen of England. Yet three years before, he had fallen in love with the most photographed girl in the world. Her name was Cobina Wright Jr., and Philip was bewitched. He met her in Venice during a holiday visit to his aunt Aspasia, the widow of King Alexander of Greece.

Philip had grown up around royalty~in addition to his uncle the Crown Prince of Sweden, another uncle was the exiled King of Greece, who was married to Princess Marie Bonaparte. She had once been the lover of the Prime Minister of France and later a disciple and patroness of Sigmund Freud. Philip's cousin Princess Alexandra married the King of Yugoslavia, and his favorite cousin, Princess Frederika, granddaughter of the Kaiser and a former Hitler Youth member, became Queen of Greece. As a child Philip had spent time at Kensington Palace in London, the royal palaces of Bucharest and Sinaia, and the royal residence in Transylvania, visiting his cousin Prince Michael of Rumania. He called Queen Marie of Rumania "Aunt Missie." He also visited another aunt, Queen Sophie of Greece, who was the Kaiser's sister.

Accustomed to White Russians with gray teeth and European royals with high cheekbones, Philip had never experienced the dazzling megawatt glamour of American movie stars. Cobina Wright Jr. was all of that and more. She was Hollywood and high society, which was America's version of royalty. A spellbinding blond beauty, she had appeared on the covers of Lzfe and Ladies' Home Journal as part of the Brenda Frazier debutante set. "That was when

society really mattered," said her mother, Cobina Wright Sr., a society columnist for the Hearst newspapers and a social mountaineer on the level of Philip's uncle Dickie.

"My little Cobina was more than just a mere starlet," she said. "After all, her father my former husband was a multimillionaire who was in the Social Register." Following a nasty public divorce, Cobina Sr. lost her lofty listing in the Social Register. Without her husband's money she was forced to earn a living, which she did by collecting the celebrities of her day generals, politicians, movie stars, and those she breathlessly described as "the creme de la creme of society."

"Mother was well, so boisterous, so aggressive, always striving so hard to get to know the most famous, the most important people, that it used to embarrass me," her daughter said.

An enterprising stage mother, Cobina Wright Sr. was grooming "little Cobina" for a career in the movies to be capped by an illustrious marriage. "Certainly, Cobina is the `most' girl," she said in 1938. "Most photographed, most publicized, most sought after." By then her promotions had persuaded press agents to dub her eighteen-year-old daughter as "Miss Manhattan of the New York World's Fair," "the Best Dressed New York Supper Club Hostess," and "the Most Beautiful Girl in Palm Beach." She also made sure her daughter was described as "the darling of high society."

At the time Cobina Jr. met Prince Philip, she was singing in nightclubs, modeling for John Robert Powers, and working under contract to 20th Century-Fox, along with Linda Darnell and Gene Tierney, later the sultry lover of john F. Kennedy and future wife of Oleg Cassini.

Philip was attracted the minute he saw the stunning young woman sitting in Harry's Bar in Venice with her mother and an Italian Countess. He was struck by her blinding good looks. She had none of the stony haughtiness of his royal European female cousins and looked more beguiling than the snooty young women of the aristocracy who were pursuing him so aggressively. This young woman combined the sunny insouciance of California beaches with the sleek sophistication of Manhattan nightclubs. Blond, lithe, and graceful, she was as bright and shiny as a new

American penny. Her long, lean, leggy beauty matched his Own. He immediately left his cousin, Princess Alexandra, and strode across the room to Cobina's table, where he nonchalantly accepted the curtsies of the two older women, who jumped up as he approached. They had recognized him at once and were enthralled to be in his presence. Young Cobina did not know who he was, but she stood up anyway and started to curtsy like her mother. Philip quickly extended his foot as if to trip her.

"Don't you dare," he said. "I'm just a discredited Balkan prince of no particular merit or distinction. My name is Philip of Greece."

"just Philip of Greece? No last name?" she asked.

"just Philip of Greece," he said.

Little Cobina was intrigued as Philip tried to explain that, traditionally, royal princes did not have last names because everyone in the land was supposed to know who they were. Only the lower orders needed last names for identification. "Because there are so many of them," said Philip, smiling, "and so few of us."

He told her how he always crossed out "Mr." at the top of the Admiralty forms and wrote in "Philip, Prince of Greece." Somehow he managed to sound almost democratic and down-to-earth as he described the imperial prerogatives that separated royals from commoners. He dismissed the ceremonial rights as bothersome, and Cobina was charmed. Philip was so entranced that he stayed in Venice for the next three weeks to be her escort. They accepted every party invitation her mother engineered, dancing and dining and drinking other people's champagne. Later, Cobina Sr. said the couple spent "passionate evenings in gondolas on the Grand Canal. "Afterward Philip followed me to London," confided her daughter.

Ignoring the marriage that awaited him with Princess Elizabeth, Philip gave his heart to the American beauty. He proposed to her, insisted they consider themselves engaged, and looked upon Cobina Sr. as his future mother-in-law. He even inscribed a photograph of himself: "To my dear Madre, from Philip." He vowed to pursue her daughter to the United States.

"I shall come to America and get a job," he said, "and take the name of Augustus Jenks."

Cobina Sr. was ecstatic that a prince was proposing marriage to her daughter. That he sprang from one of Europe's most discredited royal families and lived on charity was only a slight concern. "A prince without a principality" was how she described the handsome young Viking. With or without money, he was still royalty. So she was determined to encourage his affair with her daughter. She gleefully accepted his suggestion that he leave Venice to follow them to London, and she was flattered when he invited himself to share their invitation from British actress Bea Lillie for a weekend at her country home.

"Philip gave me an impression at the time of a huge, hungry dog," said his cousin Alexandra, "rather like a friendly collie who had never had a kennel of his own and responded to every overture with eager tail wagging."

After three weeks in Venice, Cobina and Philip spent another week in England, dining, dancing, and walking London's streets, hand in hand. They cried as they watched the French film Mayerling, a sad romance starring Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux. The night before Cobina and her mother sailed for America, Philip went to the Claridge Hotel to say good-bye. He gave Cobina a small gold bracelet with the words "I Love You" dangling close to a Greek flag. He cried again as he kissed her good-bye.

For the next three years he wrote to her twice a week. "They were impassioned love letters," said Gant Gaither, one of Cobina's lifelong friends. "He said he planned to woo her to marriage, no matter what. He desperately wanted to marry her, but Cobina Jr. just wasn't all that interested."

Other friends confirm the romance. "No question about it," said writer Stephen Birmingham, who spent hours with Cobina Jr. in 1973 to write an article for Town & Country. "She did have an affair with Prince Philip, and her mother wanted her to marry him, but she just didn't want to. She fell in love with Palmer Beaudette instead and married him in 1941. Her mother never forgave her."

Cobina Sr. kept writing to the young Prince long after her daughter had discarded him to marry Beaudette, an heir to an auto-

mobile fortune. The resilient Prince, still serving in the Royal Navy, resumed correspondence with his cousin Princess Elizabeth of England. But for the rest of his life, he, like his father, would be susceptible to the charms of actresses.

"At that time, most girls had someone they wrote to at sea or at the front," recalled Elizabeth's governess, Marion ("Crawfie") Crawford. "I think at the start she liked to be able to say that she, too, was sending off an occasional parcel and writing letters to a man who was fighting for his country."

One day Crawfie noticed Philip's photograph on the Princess's mantelpiece.

"Is that altogether wise?" Crawfie asked. "A number of people come and go. You know what that will lead to. People will begin all sorts of gossip about you."

"Oh, dear, I suppose they will," the Princess replied.

The picture disappeared a few days later. In its place was another one of Philip with a bushy blond mustache and beard covering half his face.

"There you are, Crawfie," said the Princess. "I defy anyone to recognize who that is. He's completely incognito in that one."

Rumors started anyway, and soon the backstairs gossip ended up in a newspaper item that it was Prince Philip of Greece whose photograph graced the bedroom of Princess Elizabeth. Uncle Dickie was delighted.

"Dear Philip" and "Dear Lilibet" letters crisscrossed from Windsor Castle to destroyers in the Mediterranean, the Straits of Bonifacio, Algiers, Malta, Suez, Ceylon, and Australia. The midshipman, who had formally renounced his claim to the Greek throne, was promoted in 1942 from the rank of sublieutenant to lieutenant. The next year Philip returned to England and did not go back to sea for four months. During that time he was invited to Windsor Castle for Christmas. Years later he said he accepted the invitation "only because I'd nowhere particular to go." He told flsque' jokes to Queen Mary, who pronounced him "a very bright young man. He regaled King George VI with reports of German aircraft dive~bombing his ship off Sicily and bragged about dodging mines and torpedoes, accentuating his part in helping win a great

victory. "It was a highly entertaining account," the King said later. Knowing that Philip had been cited for valor, the King had listened attentively, but there was something about the brash young man with his loud laugh and blunt manner that irritated him. As an overprotective father, he could not envision his beloved Lilibet marrying any man, and certainly not one as rough as Philip. Even worse, he wasn't rich and didn't dress like a gentleman. "His wardrobe is ghastly," said the King. "Simply ghastly."

Lord Mountbatten's valet, John Dean, agreed. "Prince Philip did not seem to have much in the way of civilian clothing," he recalled. "His civilian wardrobe was, in fact, scantier than that of many a bank clerk. . . . I think he had to manage more or less on his naval pay. He did not bring much with him when he came to London, sometimes only a razor. . . . He did not have his own hairbrushes. . . . Either he was not too well looked after in the navy, or he was careless, for often he did not have a clean shirt. At night, after he had gone to bed, I washed his shirt and socks and had them ready for him in the morning. I also did his mending."

Philip's father, sixty-two years old, died in 1944 in the arms of his rich mistress. He had not seen his wife or son for five years. Penniless, Prince Andrew left his only son an estate that consisted of a battered suitcase filled with two moth-eaten suits, a worn leather frame, and a set of ivory shaving brushes. Philip did not get around to collecting his meager inheritance until 1946. Then he had the suits altered to fit him so he would have civilian clothes to wear when not in uniform. But the shiny gabardine hand-me-downs did not impress His Majesty, who counted a man without tweeds or plus fours as a man without breeding. Elizabeth had insisted that her father invite Philip to join them for a grouse shoot at Windsor, but the King balked because Philip did not own plus fours. Philip didn't know what they were. The King explained that the trousers were so called because they were four inches longer than ordinary knickerbockers the baggy knee pants that golfers wore.

"Then he can wear a pair of yours," Elizabeth said to her father.

The King grudgingly agreed. He still retained reservations about the young man who never wore pajamas or bedroom slip-

pers, had no formal clothes, and was unembarrassed by his scuffed shoes. The King felt that Prince Philip had been reared as a commoner, not as a royal.

The King's private secretary, Sir Alan (Tommy) Lascelles, dismissed Philip as a hooligan. "He was rough, ill-mannered, uneducated, and would probably not be faithful," he said, according to writer Philip Ziegler.

The monarch marked a man by what he wore and could not understand his lack of interest in buttons and bows. While Philip was always courteous and deferential to "Uncle Bertie and Aunt Elizabeth," he was still too assertive and familiar to suit the King. As far as the Queen was concerned, Philip made himself too much at home; she rebuked him several times for ordering the servants around. Neither she nor her husband realized then that their gawky seventeen~year~old daughter had marked the young man for marriage.

"I realized they were courting long before it got in the newspa~ pers," said Charles Mellis, who for twelve years was chef on the royal train. "I saw something of the way they laughed, teased, and looked at each other while traveling together. And I shall never forget the time I heard the Queen Mother call out to them, `Now, you two, stop kicking each other under the table and behave properly.'

Princess Margaret teased her sister unmercifully about having a crush on Philip, but the King and Queen seemed oblivious. They noticed that Elizabeth was growing up in 1944 when they attended a small dinner dance given by the Duchess of Kent. There they saw Philip dancing almost every dance with their eldest daughter and being photographed helping her with her fur coat. But they never considered the prospect of marriage until shortly after Elizabeth's eighteenth birthday, when Uncle Dickie nudged his cousin King George of Greece to broach the subject with her father. King George VI turned on Mountbatten, saying he "was moving too fast." Later, in a letter to his mother, Queen Mary, he wrote:

We both think she is far too young for that now. She has never met any young men of her own age. . . . I like Philip. He is intelligent, has a good sense of humour and thinks about things in the right way. . . . We are going to tell George that P. had better not think any more about it at present.

Philip's plotting uncle was not to be discouraged. He seized the promise implied by "at present" and began campaigning to get Philip to switch his citizenship and religion so he would be perfectly situated for a royal marriage later. With British troops engaged on the side of the Greek government in the civil war, Mountbatten was told that making Philip a British subject might be misinterpreted and indicate British support for the Greek royalists or, conversely, be misconstrued as a sign that Britain regarded the royalist cause as lost and was giving Philip some sort of sanctuary. So the issue had to be postponed until the Greek general election and plebiscite on the monarchy had been held in March 1946.

Mindful of the animosity toward his own German roots, Mountbatten worried about Philip's guttural surname SchleswigHolstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg and his ties to his sisters and their German husbands, who supported Hitler's Third Reich. Philip was especially close to his brother-in-law, Berthold, the Margrave of Baden. Mountbatten also fretted about Prince Philip of Hesse, for whom Philip had been named. That German relation was Hitler's personal messenger and functioned so effectively for the Fuhrer that he was awarded an honorary generalship in the Storm Troopers. Until his death in 1943, another of Philip's uncles Prince Christopher of Hesse was the head of the secret phone- tapping service in Goering's research office; this unit eventually became the Gestapo, the Nazi's secret state police.

Mountbatten was determined to put as much distance as possible between Philip and his German roots. The wily uncle knew how crucial it was for his nephew to be accepted by the British establishment, so he wrote to the British Commissioner of Oaths, saying that Philip had lived most of his life in England and joined the Royal Navy before the war with the intention of making it his life's career. "He has been brought up as an Englishman who rides well, shoots well, and plays all games such as football with more than usual ability," wrote Mountbatten.

He then wrote to Philip, saying that he was proceeding "full steam ahead" on the naturalization process so that Philip would be "totally acceptable" to pursue his romance with Princess Elizabeth. Philip pleaded with his uncle to slow down.

"Please, I beg of you," he wrote, "not too much advice in an affair of the heart or I shall be forced to do the wooing by proxy."

Philip knew how upset the King and Queen were about the article that had appeared in The New Thrk Times entitled "Marriage

a la Mode" and asserting that the most likely candidate for the hand of Princess Elizabeth was Prince Philip of Greece. The story had been officially denied by the Palace. But factory workers in England, depressed by six years of war, were starved for romance. When their future Queen made her first public appearance after the unconditional surrender of Germany in 1945, the crowds startled her with their boisterous shouts: "Where's Philip?" "How's Philip?" "Are you going to marry Philip?"

"It was horrible," she later told her Sister.

"Poor Lilibet," said Margaret. "Nothing of your own. Not even your love affair."

FIVE

By 1945 the House of Windsor had been remodeled. The Windsors had repainted their dark German foundation with bright British colors and fashioned the exterior with an attractive new facade. The false front concealed the family flaws and allowed the renovated German house to look decidedly English so English that by the end of World War II, the dynasty designed by dodgery was never more popular. Having removed itself from politics and no longer in danger of being damaged by factional disputes, the institution stood as a model of respectability. The monarchy, personified by the royal family, symbolized duty, decorum, and decency.

After the Allies crushed Nazi Germany, Britons discarded their courageous wartime leader Prime Minister Churchill, but they embraced their shy little monarch. On the day Germany surrendered, crowds surrounded Buckingham Palace, cheering and shouting for their beloved King and Queen. The royal family, which embodied Britain's sense of high moral purpose, had become the center of life in the United Kingdom. As the royal couple stepped out onto the balcony to wave, a voice in the throng shouted: "Thank God for a good King!" Deeply moved, George VI stepped forward and stammered: "Th-th-thank God for a g-g-good people!"

With the war finally over, the King wanted to make up for lost time with his family, especially with his eldest daughter. He planned picnics at Balmoral and shoots, hunts, and deer stalks at Sandringham so she could take part in his favorite pursuits. Elizabeth enjoyed spending time with her father, but the nineteen-year-old heir presumptive, who had been confined to Windsor Castle for six years, longed to sample the swing music of London nightclubs.

The dutiful daughter was growing up. She had her own lady~ in~waiting, her own bedroom suite, and her own chauffeur~driven Daimler. She had never gone to school or visited a foreign country and had yet to draw her own bath, prepare a meal, or pay a bill; but she was selecting her own clothes. While her future subjects were still restricted to clothing coupons and wearing skirts made of curtains and trousers cut down from overcoats, she had her own couturier and was ordering strapless satin evening gowns.

"I'd like a car of my own, too," she told a friend, "but there's so damn much family talk about which make I must have that I don't think I'll ever get one."

Everything pertaining to Elizabeth was subject to intense discussion. Her father was not a man of initiative. Afraid of putting the wrong foot forward, he worried constantly about appearances and what people might think. He did not feel secure about making a decision until he had consulted all his courtiers. His wife, who rarely worried about anything, could not always make up her mind about what was best for their older daughter. So whether it was a car, a fur coat, or a new horse for Elizabeth, it was never a casual decision for her parents.

"They wanted the best for her," recalled Crawfie, her governess, "and it is never easy for parents to decide what that best is."

The only topic the King and Queen quickly reached agreement on was Philip of Greece. They felt their daughter was far too interested in the navy lieutenant, but only because she had not met any other men. So they started organizing tea dances, dinner parties, theater outings, and formal balls so she could meet the eligible sons of the aristocracy. They also invited the single military officers stationed near Windsor Castle. Elizabeth prOnounced the chinless aristocrats as "pompous, stuffy, and boring," and her sister dismissed the officers as afflicted with "bad teeth, thick lips, and foul- smelling breath." Her parents' diversionary tactic was not lost on

her grandmother Queen Mary, who referred to the cluster of young officers suddenly popping up at the Palace as "the Body Guard." Queen Mary's lady-in-waiting thought the King was simply an overpossessive father who could not face the prospect of his elder daughter's falling in love. "He's desperate," she said.

In 1946, when Philip returned to England, Elizabeth invited him to visit the family at Balmoral. She had not seen him for over three years. It had been Christmas of 1943 when he had chased her through the corridors of Windsor Castle, wearing a huge set of clattering false teeth that made her scream with laughter.

"I once or twice spent Christmas at Windsor, because I'd nowhere particular to go," Philip admitted many years later. "I suppose if I'd just been a casual acquaintance, it would all have been frightfully significant. But if you're related I mean, I knew half the people there, they were all relations it isn't so extraordinary to be on kind of family relationship terms with somebody. You don't necessarily have to think about marriage." At the time, Elizabeth had delighted in her cousin's* juvenile antics and practical jokes, especially when he offered her nuts from a can and a toy snake popped out or when he handed her dinner rolls and made what he called "rude intestinal noises." She had laughed so hard at the time, she couldn't continue eating. Drawn to Philip's broad slapstick humor and his handsome good looks, she could hardly wait to see him again. She began asking her governess about love and marriage.

"What, Crawfie," she asked, "makes a person fall in love?"

"I would try to explain to her the deep common interests that cannot only first draw a man and a woman together immediately, but hold them together for life," said the governess. "The Princess listened attentively." "I guess it really started in earnest at Balmoral [in 1946]," Philip said, recalling the pretty twenty-year-old Princess, who still laughed at his jokes.

"I still recall the occasions when Prince Philip was an honored

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*Philip and Elizabeth were second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark, third cousins through Queen Victoria, and fourth cousins once removed through King George III.

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guest of Princess Lilibet-as we all called her-at those after-the-theater parties when he was on leave from the navy," recalled Rene' Roussin, the former royal chef. "Then I would be asked-as a special request from the Pnncess-to send up some lobster patties, of which Prince Philip was especially fond."

After Philip had spent several days with the royal family at their Scottish castle, the King felt he had overstayed his welcome. "The boy must go south," he told his favorite equerry, RAF Wing Commander Peter Townsend. So Philip left. He later invited Elizabeth to visit him at the Kensington Palace apartment of his aunt the Marchioness of Milford Haven and the Chester Street home of the Mountbattens. He also took Elizabeth to visit Mountbatten's older daughter, Patricia, and her new husband, John Brabourne, at their modest cottage in Kent.

"It was an absolutely foreign way of life for her," recalled Brabourne. "She had never lived that sort of existence, and she was enchanted, though her maid could not believe it when she saw where we lived."

Philip also took Elizabeth to Coppins, the home of the Duchess of Kent, in Buckinghamshire, where he had spent many of his shore leaves. The Greek Duchess, known as Marina, who had been imported to marry the homosexual Duke of Kent, was one of Philip's favorite relatives. After several visits to Coppins, Elizabeth trusted her enough to confide, "Daddy doesn't want me to see too much of Philip or anyone, so please don't tell him." The Duchess never did.

Philip's cousin Alexandra, who knew about the couple's secret visits to Coppins, remembered his passion for Cobina Wright Jr. and wondered if he was simply toying with Elizabeth.

"I only hope Philip isn't just flirting with her," she told Marina. "He's so casual that he flirts without realizing it."

"I think his flirting days are over," replied the Duchess. "He would be the one to be hurt now if it was all just a flirtation or if it is not to be. One thing I'm sure about, those two would never do anything to hurt each other."

Reflecting on their courtship many years later, Philip said: "I suppose one thing led to another. I suppose I began to think about it seriously . . . oh, let me think now, when I got back in 1946 and went to Balmoral. It was probably then that we, that it became, you know, that we began to think about it seriously, and even talk about it. . .

After spending time at Balmoral in August 1946, Philip proposed and Elizabeth accepted secretly. This was the first time she had acted on her own without first consulting her parents. She then caused the first real argument she ever had with them by insisting she wanted to marry the penniless Greek Prince. She knew that the Royal Marriages Act of 1772 specified that descendants of King George II had to get the permission of the monarch to marry and that permission had to be "declared in council" before the marriage could take place. Elizabeth wanted her father's permission, but he did not want to give it. He confided his discomfort to his equerry, who shared the King's opinion of the brash young man and agreed that the King should delay making any decision.

Elizabeth's only ally within the royal family was her grandmother Queen Mary, whose arranged marriage to King George V had grown into a loving union that had produced five children. So when Prince Philip was ridiculed in her presence, she was not receptive. She frowned when he was derided as a product of "a crank school with theories of complete social equality where the boys were taught to mix with all and sundry." Queen Mary said nothing and stared straight ahead.

"What sort of background would this be for a son-in-law to the King?" she was asked.

"Useful," she said curtly.

The cautious King consulted his courtiers about the possibility of his daughter's marrying Philip of Greece, and the courtiers reported back the results of a Sunday Pictorial magazine poll, showing that 40 percent of Britain's class-conscious readers did not favor the marriage because Philip was "a foreigner."

A century earlier, when Prince Albert came to England as Queen Victoria's husband, the courtiers called him "that German." They called his aides "German spies." Now, more than one hundred years later, the courtiers exhibited a similar xenophobia. They called Philip "Phil the Greek."

Philip labeled himself as Scandinavian, "particularly Danish," he told an interviewer. "We spoke English at home . . . but then the conversation would go into French. Then it went into German on occasion because we had German cousins. If you couldn't think of a word in one language, you tended to go off in another."

The daughter of the Duchess of Marlborough remembered her brothers mocking Philip behind his back for not being an aristocrat. "He did not know the country life," she said. "He came from the other side of the tracks, which attracted Elizabeth. That and the fact that he was dead glamorous, absolutely drop dead glamorous. Although he was never quite digested into the British establish~ ment, he decided in time to become just as pretentious, dull, and stuffy as the rest of us, while pushing his own personality uphill."

Elizabeth stood fast against her father's disapproval. She argued that she hadn't asked to be born and that if she, as an accident of birth, had to spend her life doing her duty as Queen, the least he could do was let her marry the man she loved. "After all, you married Mummy," she said. "And she wasn't even royalty. Philip is." The King sighed and said he felt Elizabeth was too young to get married. The Princess invoked Queen Victoria. "She was only twenty years old when she married Prince Albert, and look how happy that marriage was."

The King was not persuaded. As a father, he fretted about Philip's commitment to fidelity. He had been apprised of some of the young lieutenant's shore leaves with his navy buddy Michael Parker and their visits to brothels in Alexandria; he did not like the sound of Philip's continuing relationship with his childhood friend Helene Foufounis Cordet, and he heartily disapproved of Philip's midnight crawls through London's West End with his cousin David Milford Haven. But the King was growing anxious over his daughter s increasing willfulness and determination to marry Philip. She knew that because she was heir presumptive, her marriage required her father's approval as well as that of the government and the Commonwealth. Yet she alarmed her father when she intimated that if he did not give her permission to marry Philip, she would follow the footsteps of her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated to marry the person he loved.

The Princess's apparent willingness to put love before duty was noted even by the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Lewis Douglas, a close friend of the royal family. He informed the State Department in a 1947 memo:

it was learned that Princess Elizabeth had deter- mined to marry [Prince Philip] and declared that if objections were raised she would not hesitate to follow the example of her uncle, King Edward VIII, and abdicate. She has a firm character.

More than forty years later, one of the King's former aides quaked at the mention of the 1936 abdication by the Duke of Windsor, which is still considered a sacrilege within royal circles. "The princess did not threaten to do that . . . exactly," the aide said in an effort to "clarify" the record. "She only indicated that she could understand the romance behind her uncle's rationale. That's a far cry from declaring her intention to abdicate."

In public, Elizabeth could no longer hide her feelings. Her adoration of Philip was so obvious that rumors began circulating, prompting the foreign press to report that the couple were "informally engaged." The British press did not dare to make such a conjecture. Still, nervous about world opinion, the King told the Palace to officially deny the report. Five such denials were issued in the fall of 1945.

After Philip proposed to Elizabeth, he applied for naturalization as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN. First he took his uncle's advice, then his name. Years later Philip discounted his uncle's influence. "I wasn't madly in favour [of the name]," he told a biographer in 1971, "but in the end I was persuaded, and anyway I couldn't think of a better alternative. . . . Contrary to public impression, Uncle Dickie didn't have that much to do with the course of my life."

Having given up his royal title, Philip next renounced the Greek Orthodox Church to join the Church of England. On December 16, 1946, The New York Times reported on the front page that "only politics, which has blighted so many royal romances, is delaying the announcement of the engagement of Princess Elizabeth, heiress to the British throne, and Prince Philip of Greece." Again the Palace issued a denial.

The King was beside himself. Becoming increasingly irritable and bad tempered, he drank heavily from the whiskey decanter that he insisted be placed next to his plate at every dinner. His war- weary country, though, was still scraping by on rations for food and fuel. Besides these shortages, Britain was beset by another problem: with millions of military being demobilized, the ranks of the unemployed swelled. And with Winston Churchill banished in defeat, the King was forced to deal with a new Prime Minister in Clement Attlee and a Labor government that the conservative monarch considered "far too socialist." (When someone told Churchill that Attlee was a modest man, Churchill agreed: "He has every reason to be modest.")

The King wrote gloomily in 1946, "Food, clothes and fuel are the main topics of conversation with us all." He grew impatient with everyone, especially his cousin Dickie Mountbatten, who strutted like a peacock after the new Labor government appointed him Viceroy of India, where he was to oversee that nation's progress to independence. The Queen complained that Dickie was "showing off his medals again" and getting more coverage on Movietone News* than the King. Years later she would ridicule Mountbatten's two-column entry in Who's Who as overblown and characteristically pompous. She became especially annoyed when he insisted on having his own honors list so he could bestow knighthoods in India just as the King did in England. She expressed

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*Movietone News was a newsreel shown in movie houses before the advent of television. By buying tickets to a cinema, people could see the news before or after the featured film. Newsreels, created in 1909, were especially popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

The British writer Nigel Nicolson recalls watching a newsreel in London in 1947 with his friend Sibyl Colfax. They had come to see the Mountbattens' departure from India at the end of his term as Viceroy.

"They were seen off at the airport by [Prime Ministerj Jawaharlal Nehru," said Nicolson. "As the plane took ofI, Sibyl said to me, `But wbat they didn't show was that Edwina at the last moment kissed Nehru full on the lips, which deeply shocked Indian feelings, undoing all the good that Dickie had done.' The woman sitting immediately in front of us turned and said, `Hullo, Sibyl.' It was Edwina Mountbatten, and sitting beside her was her husband. They had come incognito to the cinema to watch themselves. There was little doubt that they had heard what Sibyl said. I whispered to her, `Would you like to leave?' `I think we'd better,' she replied. We left."

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her objection to Prime Minister Attlee, who agreed with her. "No one in a century has had such powers," Attlee said, "but he insisted as a precondition to accepting the job." As irritated as the King was, he felt that his biggest problem was not Mountbatten but his nephew Philip and the problems he posed as consort to the future Queen of England.

His beloved daughter was balking at having to leave her secret fiance' at home to accompany her family on a ten-week tour of South Africa, which would include her twenty-first birthday. But the King insisted. The trip had been planned for four months to thank the South Africans for throwing out their Prime Minister and supporting Great Britain during the war. The King believed that the wounds splitting South Africa could be healed by the balm of royalty. As the first monarch to travel with his family, he wanted Elizabeth by his side as he opened the Union Parliament in Cape Town. Expecting a royal reception from the Africans, he decreed a ration-busting wardrobe for himself and his family, consisting of pearls and diamonds, cloths of gold, and endless yards of silk and satin, which required weeks of fittings and interminable work by dozens of seamstresses. The ordinary Briton received an annual clothing ration of 48 to 66 coupons. But the royal family received 160 extra coupons a year. For their South Africa wardrobe, they were issued 4,329 coupons. The New York Times described the result as "the most sumptuous wardrobe ever worn by British royalty."

On her twenty-first birthday Elizabeth was to make a coming- of-age speech in which she, as the future monarch, dedicated herself to her countrymen. The speech was broadcast around the world. Dutifully she rehearsed it, but each time, she said, the solemn words made her cry:

I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial Commonwealth to which we all belong.* But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do; I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God bless all of you who are willing to share it.

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*The next year, 1948, the Labor government passed the British Nationality Act, making Commonwealth citizenship equivalent to British citizenship, thus giving every citizen of the Commonwealth a legal right to reside in the United Kingdom. When the Commonwealth was established, members agreed that the British monarch should be the "symbol of the free association of (Commonwealth) nations and as such Head of the Commonwealth," regardless of whether a member country retained the British monarch as its head of state. By 1997, the Commonwealth had 53 member states with a combined population of 1.4 billion.

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Finally, against his better judgment, the King relented. He agreed to allow his daughter to marry Philip, provided Philip, who changed his name, his nationality, and his religion, was deemed acceptable by the British establishment. His uncle quickly introduced him to Britain's most powerful press lords, who agreed that his relationship to Queen Victoria (he, like Elizabeth, was a great- great-grandchild) and his service in the Royal Navy qualified him as suitable. Still, the King declined to announce the engagement. He ordered absolute secrecy about any future plans until after the tour of South Africa, hoping against hope that Elizabeth might change her mind. He instructed the Palace to keep denying the rumors swarming around the couple, and he demanded total discretion from Philip. He forbade him to be seen with Elizabeth in public until after the royal family returned in 1947. He had told Philip that he could not see the family off at Waterloo Station, and he could not go aboard their ship at Portsmouth to say good-bye. The King would not allow his future son-in-law to attend the bon voyage luncheon at Buckingham Palace with the royal household staff or to be at the pier to welcome the royal family home ten weeks later. He did say Philip could write his fiancee during the trip, and he allowed him to attend his engagement party with the royal family and Lord and Lady Mountbatten at their London home on Chester Street two nights before departure. There the two families secretly celebrated the announcement, which would not be made official for several months. That night the King drank heavily.

Aboard ship, the Queen took comfort in the kindness of Surgeon Rear Admiral Henry "Chippy" White, who accompanied the royal family to South Africa, where he retired the following year.

"Chippy White, whose son was my uncle, was knighted for his service to the King," said Hugh Bygott-Webb, "but I don't think that KCVO [Knight Commander of the Victorian Order] included his affair with the King's wife. Now, I have no absolute proof of this love affair with the Queen, who later became the Queen Mother, but their romance, accompanied by love letters, has been assumed within the family for years and years. The letters remain in the family and always will."

In photographs taken during the South African tour, the Queen beamed while her daughter Elizabeth looked bored and distracted, except during the celebration of her twenty-first birthday on April 21,1947, in Cape Town. Feted with salutes all day and a grand ball and fireworks in the evening, Elizabeth spent the morning opening birthday presents of extravagant proportions: a platinum brooch in the shape of a flame lily set with three hundred diamonds and paid for with one week's pocket money collected from forty-two thousand Rhodesian schoolchildren; a pair of diamond flower-petal earrings from the members of the royal households, who barely made £1,000 ($2,000) a year; a diamond-studded badge of the Grenadier Guards, her favorite regiment, of which she was the Colonel; and from her parents a twin pair of Cartier ivy-leaf brooches covered with two thousand pave' diamonds surrounded by two five-carat diamonds in the center. The state gifts from South Africa, worth more than $1 million at the time, were equally lavish: the King received a gold box full of diamonds to put on his Garter star, and the Queen was given an engraved twenty-two-karat gold tea service. Princess Margaret received a necklace of seventeen graduated diamonds, and Elizabeth was given a silver chest containing twenty~one graduated brilliant-cut diamonds, some weighing ten carats, interspersed with baguettes.

Laden with jewels, the royal family returned to England in May 1947. But the King still wouldn't announce his daughter's engagement. He excluded Philip's name from the Royal Ascot house party at Windsor Castle, but on July 8 Philip, who was teaching at the Royal Navy Petty Officers School at Kingsmoor, phoned the King. He asked permission to go to Buckingham Palace that evening to give Elizabeth a three-carat diamond engagement ring that had belonged to his mother.* The King consented and graciously invited his future son-in-law for dinner. Philip drove his sporty MG ninety-eight miles from Wiltshire to London. Two days later the engagement was announced by the same Palace spokesman who had been denying it for two years.

"We got engaged," said Elizabeth's dresser, Margaret "BoB0"MacDonald, on the day the betrothal was announced. So close was she to Elizabeth that she frequently talked of herself and her future sovereign as a single person. The Scotswoman, who had been with Elizabeth since she was born, would accompany her on her honeymoon and serve her morning coffee every day until BoBo died.

The wedding was set for November 20, 1947, but again over the King's objections. Citing the coal shortage and the country's economic collapse, he suggested a quiet ceremony at St. George's Chapel in Windsor to minimize the expense of pomp and ceremony. But Elizabeth and her mother insisted on a big wedding. The King tried to stall the inevitable by suggesting June of the next year, when, he said, the weather would be warmer. Elizabeth said she didn't care if it snowed: she was getting married in November.

The British press reported the engagement as the love match of the century. "This is no arranged marriage," said the Daily Mail. "The couple is well and truly in love," said the Daiy Telegraph. Skeptical Americans did not try to dispute the matter. "The world, seeing this pretty girl and young navy officer together, will like to think of this as a love match rather than as any union dictated by politics," declared an editorial in The New Thrk Times.

Arranged marriages were not foreign to Philip. Until 1923 such marriages had been the rule for royalty, not the exception. Love was seldom an option, as he knew from the marriages of his parents, his two Mountbatten uncles, and all of his cousins, including Marina, the impoverished Greek Princess who had been imported to England to straighten out the homosexual Duke of Kent. Ever pragmatic, Philip, too, was marrying for a reason.

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*The official engagement photograph shows Philip, handsome in his uniform, beside Elizabeth, her hands folded to display her platinum ring. A friend recalled how thrilled she was with the ring, which symbolized the end of her drab years and the beginning of a happy future. Elizabeth said, "It's like turning a page in a book."

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"Why do you think I'm getting married?" he asked Cobina Wright. "I'll tell you: It's because I've never really had a home. From the time I was eight, I've always been away at school or in the navy.

Almost a quarter century later, Philip admitted publicly that his marriage to Elizabeth had been arranged. "There was their excursion to South Africa, and then it was sort of fixed up when they came back," he told his biographer, Basil Boothroyd, in 1971. "That's what really happened." By then he had been married to Elizabeth for twenty-four years, provided a male heir to the throne, and become resigned to his role as Prince Consort. Beyond that, he had learned to be discreet about the life he led with other women.

"This is not to say that he wasn't fond of Elizabeth when he married her," said his friend Larry Adler, the American harmonica player who moved to England after being blacklisted as a suspected communist* in America. He belonged to Philip's male luncheon group known as the Thursday Club. "Was he in love with Elizabeth? No, but he had a great deal of respect for her."

So much so that when someone suggested Philip was marrying the ugly duckling and that Princess Margaret was far prettier than her sister, he flared. "You wouldn't say that if you knew them. Elizabeth is sweet and kind," he said, "just like her mother."

As soon as the engagement was announced, Uncle Dickie, writing from India, bombarded his nephew with advice about how to arrange the wedding and how the new household should be run. He offered Broadlands, his home in Hampshire, for the honeymoon, suggesting Philip and Elizabeth use Edwina's suite. It featured Salvador Dalf paintings and a magnificent four-poster Tudor bed with an ivory satin headboard and "those lurid pink satin sheets." Philip accepted his uncle's hospitality, but for only a few days. He said his bride wanted to spend most of the honeymoon at Birkall, the small royal house on the twenty-four thousand acres of Balmoral

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*"Philip, who has great humor, joked about my being blacklisted," recalled Larry Adler. "When we were served White Baits at luncheon one day, he said, `In Larry's honor, the fish should be called Red Baits.' Philip also suggested that I be listed as `a distant country subversive member.' He later talked to me about the blacklist and asked how I coped with it. He seemed to he very much against such a thing as a blacklist."

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in Scotland. Then he cautioned his mentor: "I am not being rude but it is apparent you like the idea of being the General Manager of this little show, and I am rather afraid that she might not take to the idea quite so docilely as I do. It is true that I know what is good for me, but don't forget that she has not had you as Uncle loco farentis, counsellor and friend as long as I have."

Unperturbed, Mountbatten wrote to Winston Churchill and asked him to take Philip to lunch to impress upon him "how serious it was, marrying the heir to the throne." Churchill, who was out of office then, agreed to tutor the young man for the sake of the monarchy.

Already Philip had been shut out of the wedding plans. He was permitted to choose his cousin David Milford Haven as best man, but of the 2,500 invitations, Philip was allotted only 2. These he gave to his navy shipmate Michael Parker and to Helene Cordet's mother. Cobina Wright Sr., the mother of his first lover, appeared on the official guest list as the society columnist for the Hearst newspapers. Beyond that, Philip was not allowed to participate in the wedding planning. This was not simply a marriage ceremony, but an affair of state that would focus world attention on the British monarchy. Consequently the King and Queen told him that his sisters and their German husbands, some of whom had supported Hitler's Third Reich, could not possibly be included. So they remained in Germany and listened to the service on the radio in Marienburg Castle, south of Hanover. Princess Margarita of Hohenloe~Langenbourg, Princess Theodora, the Margravine of Baden, and Princess Sophie of Hanover telephoned their brother to congratulate him. "We sent him jointly as a present a gold fountain pen with our names engraved upon it," said Princess Sophie.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who had visited Hitler in Germany, were also excluded from the invitation list. Although the exiled Duke was Elizabeth's favorite uncle, he had embarrassed the royal family earlier in the year by selling his memoirs and publishing A King's Story. The Queen suggested to the Foreign Office that the Duke and Duchess might consider scheduling a trip to America during November, which would preclude their attending the wedding. The Foreign Office delivered the suggestion, but the Duke replied that he and the Duchess did not want to be away at that time. The Palace insisted. Further, it instructed him that, if asked, he was to deny that he and the Duchess had not been invited to the royal wedding. In the end they went to America, where they pointedly did not listen to the ceremony.

After the Queen vetted the invitation list, she addressed the issue of Philip's mother, whom she considered "pleasant but odd...definitely odd." The plump, winsome Queen with her baby blue feather boas and rippling giggles contrasted sharply with the gaunt, somber Greek Princess in her stark religious garb. The two women never had established a rapport, although they shared similar traits of courage and conviction. During the war, both demonstrated bravery: the Queen by accompanying her husband from Windsor Castle to Buckingham Palace every day to risk being bombed like her subjects, and Princess Andrew by hiding a Jewish family in her Athens home during the German occupation of Greece. Years after her death, the Princess was cited for valor by the state of Israel. But the Queen, unaware of Princess Andrew's heroism in 1947, viewed her as eccentric and overly religious.

Concerned about appearances at the royal wedding, the Queen sweetly asked Philip if he thought his mother would be wearing her nun's habit. As mother of the bride, the Queen said she herself would be wearing a dress of apricot-and-golden brocade, gracefully draped and trailing. Philip understood immediately that his mother's dour gray robe, white wimple, cord, and rosary beads would have to be closeted for the occasion. So on the wedding day Princess Andrew sat with the royal family in Westminster Abbey, wearing a hat and a simple silk dress, which the Queen later pronounced "very pretty and most appropriate."

On the morning of his wedding, Philip expressed his apprehension about marrying a woman who was destined to become an institution. "We had breakfast together," recalled a relative, "and he said, `I don't know whether I'm being very brave or very foolish.'

King George VI and his Queen had turned their own wedding into a spectacle, so they knew better than anyone the importance of producing a grand ceremony for their subjects. They understood how to rouse the people with a fanfare of silver trumpets and golden coaches. They recognized that such a ritual of imperial monarchy would distract people from the misery of their humdrum lives and unite the Commonwealth in celebration. Everyone would feel joyously invested in the royal family, which, in turn, would strengthen the monarchy's emotional hold on its subjects.

The power of such pageantry was not lost on Winston Churchill, who described the impending nuptials in 1947 as "a flash of colour on the hard road that we travel." The New York Times noted the need for "a welcome occasion for gaiety in grim England, beset in peace with troubles almost as burdensome as those of war." The next day a little girl in Brooklyn broke her piggy bank to send the Princess a turkey as a wedding present "because she lives in England and they have nothing to eat in England."

With only four months in which to stage a wedding extravaganza, the King and Queen concentrated on the costumes~the heralds in medieval scaHet~and~gold livery, the cavalry in shining helmets topped with plumes, the glistening swords, the sparkling medals, the crimson sashes, the gleaming breastplates. All were removed from prewar storage bins, where they had been sitting since 1939. Once again, clothes dominated the royal family's discussions as ration coupons were collected from cabinet members to insure that Princess Elizabeth had a proper trousseau and a stunning wedding gown. She told her couturier, Norman Hartnell, that she wanted to walk down the aisle in something unique and magnificent. She swore him to secrecy and threatened to go to another couturier if descriptions of her bridal gown were leaked to the public before the wedding. The royal designer insisted his workers sign secrecy oaths and whitewash the workroom windows, which were curtained with thick white muslin so no one could look in. Hartnell, who said he was inspired by Botticelli's "Primavera," envisioned Elizabeth in acres of ivory satin and tulle embroidered with ten thousand seed pearls and small crystals, which required two months of work by ten embroiderers and twenty-five needlewomen.

During the wedding, two sewing women were to be stationed in the Abbey in case the dress needed stitching. The bride's tulle veil was fifteen yards long and contained one hundred miles of thread. So Elizabeth was given an additional clothing allotment of one hundred coupons, plus twenty-three extra coupons for each of her eight bridesmaids. She also received from various well-wishers three hundred eighty-six pairs of nylon stockings a most precious commodity for young women living through England's postwar reconstruction.

Expense was not considered when Elizabeth selected her trousseau. For her wedding night she chose a nightgown and robe set from Joske's department store in San Antonio, Texas, that cost $300, twice as much as most Americans earned in a month. The pale ivory Georgette gown had forty yards of silk with satin roses embroidered across the bodice; the brocade robe was patterned with tiny lords and ladies bowing in minuet, all hand stitched. The head of the store's gift-wrap department scrubbed up like a surgeon before she touched the precious parcel.

At the wedding, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared that the ceremony for Princess Elizabeth was "exactly the same as it would be for any cottager who might be married this afternoon in some small country church in a remote village in the Dales: the same prayers are offered; the same blessings are given." The differences: the twelve wedding cakes at the royal reception, including one nine feet high that Philip cut with his sword, each slice containing a week's sugar rations for the average family; 2,666 wedding presents, including a Thoroughbred horse, a mink coat, a twenty- two-karat gold coffee service, a television set, a fifty-four-carat pink diamond said to be the only one of its kind in the world, and a plantation and hunting lodge in Kenya.

Led by a procession of eighteen horse-drawn carriages, the royal guests included six kings, six queens, seven princesses, one princess regent, one prince regent, one Indian rajah, one crown prince, one crown princess, seven counts, six countesses, eleven viscounts, fourteen dukes, and eleven duchesses, who accounted for most of the sixty-seven diamond tiaras worn.

"The jewelry at that wedding was staggering," recalled the Danish Ambassador's daughter, who attended with her father. "I was breathless and gaping at the stupendous display. It was prewar dimension. Everyone had gone to the bank to get their jewels out of the vault. Diamond tiaras looked like beanies, and the former Duchess of Rutland had her entire head wrapped in diamonds. She said it was her grandmother'5 belt. A woman wearing a turban made of pearls the size of cherries passed another lady weighted down with bunches of cabochon emeralds cascading down her shoulders like grapes on a vine. The Indians wore breastplates of rubies and diamonds and wrapped their arms from wrist to shoulder in sapphires."

Overnight, the impecunious bridegroom, who was earning eight guineas a week as a navy lieutenant, became a nobleman with rank, title, and position, entitling him to layers of shining gold epaulets. He acquired a valet, a social secretary, and an equerry, plus a royal residence at Clarence House with £~0,000 (about $100,000) for refurbishments, and a castle (Sunninghill Park) for country weekends. Before the couple could move into the castle, the Crown property on the edge of Windsor Great Park went up in flames~the first of many unexplained fires to haunt the House of Windsor.

"Oh, Crawfie, how could it have happened?" Elizabeth wrote to her former governess. "Do you really think someone did it on purpose? I can't believe it. People are always so kind to us

The morning before the wedding, Philip knelt before the King, who unsheathed his sword and, tapping each shoulder, knighted his future son-in-law with the Order of the Garter. Within the British honors system, the cornflower blue sash and eight-pointed star of the Garter is recognized as the highest accolade* a monarch can bestow. In a letter to his mother, the King said he had given the honor to Elizabeth eight days earlier so that she would have precedence over her husband.

Previously Philip had been reduced to the status of a commoner when he was forced to renounce his Greek name, title, nationality, and religion. Now he was rewarded with three exalted

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*In 1945 Winston Churchill declined the Garter. "I could not accept the Order of the Garter from my sovereign when I had received the order of the boot from his people," he said. Later Princess Elizabeth approached him. "If you are Prime Minister when I become Queen, I would like you to be my first Garter Knight." She kept her promise and made him a knight on April 24,1953, and installed him June 14,1954.

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British titles Baron Greenwich, Earl of Merioneth, and Duke of £dinburgh. The title of Prince of the Realm was withheld and would not be conferred until l957. But before his wedding day philip was granted the distinction of being addressed as His Royal Highness. This rankled some of the nobility, who still point out that Britain's dukes not born of royal blood are to be addressed as His Grace, not as His Royal Highness. But the King was determined to ennoble his twenty-six-year-old son-in-law so that his daughter would have the status of a peer's wife. The King also wanted to make sure that his grandchildren would be born of noble blood. "It is a great deal to give a man all at once," he said, "but I know Philip understands his new responsibilities."

On the day of the wedding, the bridegroom, suffering from a cold, swore off cigarettes at the request of the bride and promised never to smoke again. He arrived at the church early with his best man, who later wrote that both of them were so hung over from the previous night's bachelor party that they had had to steady their nerves with a gin and tonic.

The jokes had been rough and the drinking serious that evening, particularly after Vasco Lazzolo, a portrait painter, who was convinced that Philip was marrying Princess Elizabeth to advance himself, rose unsteadily from his chair to propose a toast. He lifted his brandy glass and glared at the guest of honor. "For what you are doing, I think you are an absolute shit," he said. He threw his glass into the fireplace and lurched from the room.

"That was quite a party, ` recalled Larry Adler many years later, "and Philip certainly didn't enjoy it as much as the rest of us. He was just too scared. I remember him looking white as a ghost and shaky the whole evening. He was damned frightened. The King had laid down the law to him abou~t a lot of things, from fast cars to other women.

"Philip had had a minor automobile accident shortly after the engagement announcement which made the papers. He was driving fast, skidded, hit a hedge, and banged himself up a bit. This caused excessive press comment at the time and made him look like a reckless, pub-crawling playboy. Naturally, the King was annoyed. Then there was the Helene Cordet affair, which surfaced right before the wedding, when she was described in the French press as the `mystery blond divorcee whom Philip had visited in Paris the year before. Since then, Helene is always the first name mentioned as one of Philip's mistresses and the mother of his illegitimate children. Of course, he and Helene claim that they're merely childhood friends who grew up together in Paris. He gave her away when she married the first time in 1938, and he's godfather to both her children, so who knows?"

Adler smiles and shrugs when talking about his old friend's relationship with Helene Cordet, who worked in a Paris dress shop before moving to London to open a nightclub and become a cabaret singer. Her parents, staunch Greek royalists, had helped support Philip's parents during their exile in France when Philip was growing up. "Mercifully, he spared us the personal details of his relationship with Helene," said Adler in 1992. "But we made certain assumptions at the time, and whether we were right or wrong, we understood why the King was agitated about his daughter falling in love with a bounder like our old pal. As I told Philip then, be glad your zipper can't talk." Despite his friends' insinuations, Philip stayed married to Elizabeth, but he conducted discreet affairs with many other women, most of whom were aristocrats or actresses. One mistress reportedly bore his child as a single woman and never divulged the name of the child's father. Her refusal to name the man whipped up more rumors. By 1989 the stories of Philip's alleged illegitimate children forced Helene Cordet's son, Max, to make a public statement.

``I have heard these rumors all my life, but they are ridiculous,'' he said. "My father~my real father~[Frenchman Marcel Boisot] lives in Paris and it is silly to say otherwise. This all goes back to my mother's childhood with Philip. Nothing more to it than that."

His mother admitted that Philip paid for her son's tuition at Gordonstoun,but she said it was because she was destitute, not because Philip was her son's father. By then, though, the rumors, repeated for so many years, carried their own currency.

"I don't care what Max Boisot says now," said his classmate James Bellini in 1994. "I went to Cambridge with him and we all thought then that he was one of Philip's bastards. We talked about it all the time. Before Cambridge, Max attended Gordonstoun, the same school in Scotland that Philip attended and to which he sent his sons, Charles, Andrew, and Edward. And don't forget, Philip was also godfather to Max, which traditionally is the way royalty stands up for its illegitimate children. This is their way of giving their bastard offspring a tenuous tie to royal circles. Take a close look at the royal godparents of the aristocracy and you'll see the bastard sons and daughters of the monarchy."

While Philip had been intimate with many women before his marriage, his relationship with Helene Cordet was never the passionate love affair that was alleged. She publicly denied having a romance with Philip, but her coy denials seemed calculated toward publicity to launch her career as a London cabaret singer. She later cashed in on her relationship with Philip by writing a book entitled Born Bewildered. She intimated that she had not been invited to the royal wedding because she was the "mystery blonde" he had been romancing in Paris. Helene was not invited because she was divorced, and at that time, divorced persons were not allowed in royal circles.

Years later, Helene's granddaughter told her to stick to the story of the affair with the Queen's husband. "Don't keep denying that you and Philip had more than a friendship going," said her granddaughter. "I like people thinking I'm royal and Philip is my grandfather."

Elizabeth, a virgin when she married, was the pampered, protected daughter of Puritan parents, whereas Philip, the son of separated parents, was reared by relatives who had been exposed to an atmosphere of decadence and amorality. Elizabeth had grown up with the comforting scent of Palace beeswax and fresh roses, while Philip was accustomed to the itinerant smell of mothballs from borrowed clothes in storage bins and battered suitcases hastily packed and unpacked. The twenty-six-year-old bridegroom, who had traveled through Europe, Australia, and the Middle East, was marrying a twenty-one~year~old woman who had never been outside Great Britain until the royal family tour of South Africa. Poorly educated, she had never attended school and received hourly tutorials only in British history and heraldry. She had studied Walter Bagehot's writings on the monarchy and had mastered the hereditary peerage with all its complex titles of antiquities. She spoke excellent French* but barely understood mathematics and science and knew little about the natural world beyond dogs and horses. She disliked poetry, except for the rhymes of Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Lord Tennyson. The only poem she ever memorized was the childish verses of "They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace" by A. A. Milne.

"I was never able to imbue her with enthusiasm for modern verse," said her governess, Marion Crawford. " `Oh, do stop!' she would say while I was reading from the works of some modern poet. `I don't understand a word of it. What is the man trying to say?'

Outside the Palace, Elizabeth felt self-conscious about the gaps in her education. She once asked if Dante was a horse, because she had never heard of the medieval poet.

"No, no, he isn't a horse," was the reply.

"Is he a jockey, then?" she asked.

She blushed when told that Dante Alighieri was the Italian classicist who wrote The Dii,ine Comedy, a masterpiece of world literature. Horses were what she knew best.

Elizabeth's husband-to-be was neither a prodigy nor a scholar, but he at least had accumulated twelve years of formal schooling, plus several years of naval training, and he never experienced her hesitation in talking to people. With confidence bordering on arrogance, he could walk into a room without introduction, breezily announce himself, and approach the prettiest girl to say, "Well, this is a much more attractive audience than the one I've just left." Philip chatted with anyone about anything, while Elizabeth worried constantly about what to say. "If only I could do it as well as my mother does it," she said.

Receiving lines made her uncomfortable as she tried to manufacture

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*Reports of Elizabeth's faultless French made her former French chef, Rene Roussin, smile."I treasure the memory that I was one of the first Frenchmen to converse with her in my own language," he wrote in Good Housekeeping in September 1955. `Did I say that correctly, Roussin?' she used to say. And if her accent did not seem to me to be quite right, I never said so. For the only time I did criticize, her little face fell, and she looked so downcast I never had the heart to do it again."

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small talk. Faced with a moment of silence, she once said, "Well . . . I can't think of anything more to say about that."

Confiding in a friend, she said, "Believe it or not, I lie in my bath before dinner, and think, Oh, who am I going to sit by and what are they going to talk about? I'm absolutely terrified of sitting next to people in case they talk about things I have never heard of."

A few years later Philip, too, would acknowledge his ignorance. "I regret to say that all my degrees are honorary ones," he told students at the University of Delhi in India. Later he addressed the subject with students at the University of Wales. "My generation, although reasonably well schooled, is probably the worst educated of this age. The war cut short any chance there was of acquiring a higher education. I'm part of this lost generation trying to make up for what it missed between 1939 and 1945."

When he and Elizabeth received honorary doctor of law degrees from London University, she, too, sounded humble. "There is one piece of fortune which we have never known," she said. "We have never known a university from within."

The King, a simple, uneducated man, prized his daughter's lack of sophistication and wrote in his diary how much he would miss the charades, games, and parlor singsongs they had shared at Windsor Castle. At her wedding reception, he rose from his chair, raised his glass, and, pointedly ignoring the bridegroom, saluted his beloved daughter. "To the bride," the King said with tears in his eyes. A few days later he sent her a touching letter:

.I was so proud of you & thrilled at having you so close to me on our long walk in Westminster Abbey, but when I handed your hand to the Archbishop I felt that I had lost something very precious. You were so calm and composed during the Service & said your words with such conviction, that I knew it was all right.

I am so glad you wrote & told Mummy that you think the long wait before your engagement & the long time before the wedding was for the best. I was rather afraid that you had thought I was being hard hearted about it. I was so anxious for you to come to South Africa as you knew.

Our family, us four, the "Royal Family," must remain together with additions of course at suitable moments!! I have watched you grow up all these years with pride under the skilful direction of Mummy, who as you know is the most marvellous person in the world in my eyes, & I can, I know, always count on you, & now Philip, to help us in our work.

Your leaving us has left a great blank in our lives but do remember that your old home is still yours & do come back to it as much as possible. I can see that you are sublimely happy with Philip which is right but don't forget us is the wish of

Your ever loving & devoted

Papa