Despite being an icon of Britishness to this very day, she was – by blood – just as German as her Hanoverian predecessors
www.history.co.uk
"The Prince-Elector of Hanover became George I of Great Britain – despite barely being able to speak English. It’s fair to say many in Blighty were less than impressed by the idea of some obscure aristocrat from a continental backwater putting his backside down on the throne. At his coronation, spectators called out 'Down with the German!', and many dismissed him as a country bumpkin, even dubbing him the 'Turnip King'. The runaway xenophobia also led to his carnal appetites being lambasted – as one local gossip put it, the new king 'rejects no woman so long as she is very willing, very fat, and has great breasts'.
George’s heart lay in Hanover – a fact that became literal when he died and was buried in his homeland, the last British monarch laid to rest abroad. His son, George II, at least had the advantage of being able to speak English properly, but it took George III to really make an effort to be less flagrantly German. On becoming king, he famously declared that “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain' – a conscious attempt to reassure everyone that he was over the whole Hanover thing.
A few monarchs later, it was the turn of Queen Victoria. Despite being an icon of Britishness to this very day, she was – by blood – just as German as her Hanoverian predecessors. Her first language was German, and she ended up having a legendarily passionate marriage with her German cousin, Albert."
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On July 17, 1917, during the third year of World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to di...
www.history.com
"On June 19, 1917, during the third year of
World War I, Britain’s King George V orders the British royal family to dispense with the use of German titles and surnames, changing the surname of his own family, the decidedly Germanic Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.
The second son of Prince Edward of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Alexandra of Denmark, and the grandson of
Queen Victoria, George was born in 1865 and embarked on a naval career before becoming heir to the throne in 1892 when his older brother, Edward, died of pneumonia. The following year, George married the German princess Mary of Teck (his cousin, a granddaughter of King
George III), who had previously been intended for Edward. The couple had six children, including the future Edward VIII and George VI (who took the throne in 1936 after his brother abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson). As the new Duke of York, George was made to abandon his career in the navy; he became a member of the House of Lords and received a political education. When his father died in 1910, George ascended to the British throne as King George V.
With the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, strong anti-German feeling within Britain caused sensitivity among the royal family about its German roots.
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, also a grandson of Queen Victoria, was the king’s cousin; the queen herself was German. As a result, on June 19, 1917, the king decreed that the royal surname was thereby changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor."