He was the reluctant king – she was his decidedly reluctant bride.
Yet together they led the nation through World War II and enjoyed a fulfilled and happy married life which lasted nearly 30 years.
King George VI, known as Bertie, had been given the title Duke of York before his marriage to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923. It was said he traded in his affair with Sheila, Lady Loughborough, in return for a home and income of his own.
He had to get away from his overbearing father, King George V.
A striking portrait of Lady Elizabeth Bowes_Lyon in her teens
Lady Elizabeth later became the Queen Consort as wife to George VI – and grandmother to King Charles III
On her social rounds in 1921, Lady Elizabeth bumped into James Stuart (above), a Scottish aristocrat and equerry to Bertie, and fell immediately in love
Queen Mary, mother of George VI, above – and a woman who enjoyed meddling in royal liaisons – engineered Stuart’s removal to a job in the Oklahoma oilfields. By the time he got back in 1923, the future king, known to his family as Bertie, had got his girl
Lady Elizabeth was a startlingly pretty girl from a family which had lived in the same castle for five hundred years. But despite the fact Bertie was the spare to the heir, she was very much in two minds about being sucked into the royal machine.
Or maybe, at the time, she just didn’t fancy the stuttering and often bad-tempered Bertie – he was no great looker.
Certainly the future king wanted her more than she wanted him – he proposed marriage after they first met at a Knightsbridge wedding in 1921, and she turned him down.
Not short of admirers, Elizabeth was in no hurry to settle down – even though at 21 she was getting a little long in the tooth to be a spinster. Aristocrats and royalty like to get future alliances tied up early on.
‘She was frankly doubtful, uncertain of her feelings,’ wrote royal confidante the Countess of Airlie, while Bertie was, she observed, ‘deeply in love but so humble’.
Whatever Elizabeth’s feelings towards her 25-year old suitor, they will inevitably have been coloured by her father – Claud, the 14th Earl of Strathmore.
‘Lord Strathmore disapproved of royalty,’ writes the celebrated biographer Hugo Vickers in his vivid portrait of Elizabeth’s life.
‘He thought Edward VII was too stout – and declared, «If there is one thing I have determined for my children, it’s that they shall never have any post about the Court».’
Elizabeth’s life was castles and balls and high society, while Bertie preferred shooting grouse. On her social rounds in 1921 she bumped into James Stuart, a Scottish aristocrat and equerry to Bertie, and fell immediately in love.
‘He was the love of her life,’ said one intimate. ‘He was an absolute heart-throb and they fell for each other in a big way. They were madly in love.’
Queen Mary, consort of George V and a woman who enjoyed meddling in royal liaisons, engineered Stuart’s removal to a job in the Oklahoma oilfields. By the time he got back in 1923, Bertie had got his girl.
‘That bitch Queen Mary, that cow, she ruined my life!’ Stuart later exclaimed.
But capturing the hand of Lady Elizabeth was still an uphill struggle. Bertie proposed marriage again in 1922 – and yet again she turned him down. Some thought by now she her eye on David, the Prince of Wales.
But stammering Bertie soldiered on, determinedly proposing for the third time in 1923 when, worn down by his passion, Elizabeth accepted.
And so there were no great hopes that this marriage would be a lasting love-match – more a dutiful arrangement which would produce children who’d add to the stable of royals increasingly called upon by the British public to attend their events up and down the country.
The couple married on this day [26 April], 1923. Up to the last moment, according to biographer Hugo Vickers, Elizabeth ‘veered between feeling happy and daunted’. Indeed, as she left for Westminster Abbey from her parents’ London home, Elizabeth felt the need to hide her hands under her dress because she had nervously forgotten her gloves.
But as a bride she was radiant, wearing flowers in her hair and attended by bridesmaids wearing gowns of ivory-lined chiffon. It was the perfect day.
And she had made the perfect choice for a husband. Lady Strathmore had predicted of Bertie, a couple of years before, that ‘He is a man who will be made or marred by his wife.’
Bertie York, the spare not the heir, was made by Elizabeth – being transformed just in time to save the nation at the time of its deepest pre-war crisis, the Abdication.
He didn’t want the throne – but Elizabeth did. Steely, tough, ambitious and ready to grab the royal family by the scruff of its neck, she set to work to restore its damaged reputation.
Her favourite photographer Cecil Beaton called her ‘a marshmallow made on a welding machine.’
After meeting her, the socialite Stephen Tennant said, ‘She looked everything that she was not – gentle, gullible, tenderness mingled with dispassionate serenity, cool, well-bred, remote. Behind this veil, she schemed and vacillated, hard as nails.’
The new king had had a desperately unhappy childhood – unloved by his mother, bullied by his father. Now Elizabeth was able to provide a home life which would allow him to gather strength for the war years ahead. She helped him conquer his stammer and profound fear of public speaking.
And she could always be relied on to find the right words when he could not. When Buckingham Palace took several hits during the height of the bombing, she declared, ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.’
Elizabeth, future Queen Consort of King George VI, whom she married in 1923 when he was still Duke of York
Lady Elizabeth was so nervous she kept her hands hidden when she departed the house so that no one could see her hands shaking
The official wedding day pictures of the Duke and Duchess of York taken on this day in 1923
King George and Queen Elizabeth survey the bomb damage in 1940 following a raid which destroyed the Buckingham Palace chapel. She said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face’
The Queen Mother’s reward for giving up her first love was the undying love and devotion of a nation which celebrated every year of her long life until she died, aged 101, in 2002
The people loved her for it.
She gave comfort to her husband, and guided him firmly through his kingship. She gave him two daughters who were the apple of his eye – sons would never have done, he didn’t have the right temperament to handle boys – and he saw his elder daughter grow in majesty so that she was ready, and more than able, to take his place when the time came.
Bertie sacrificed little in marrying the woman of his dreams. Elizabeth. we now know, sacrificed the love of her life.
Her reward, though, was the undying love and devotion of a nation which celebrated every year of her long life until she died, aged 101, in 2002.
