Your Ten Most Disliked Royals and why Pt II

[grandduchessella]

As the other was way past 20 pages, here's a new thread.

[Tdora1]

And this is to help it up to the top of the list again!

[TampaBay]

I nominate Carol II of Romania as the all time worst royal.  He spat on his country and  his mother!

Tampabay

[Eric_Lowe]

I think he is a bit sick in the mind...Not only was he nasty to his mother, but siblings as well. 

[Tdora1]

Wasn't on my list but I think the first Duke of Teck (QM's father) was rather insufferable. Much of QM's details written about her childhood and pre-nuptial life mention PMA as being an awkward mother and the primary source of May's difficulties - in society at least - for her sensitive and shy daughter (infact I'd argue that the boldest and most strident of teenagers would have had anguish there) but the domestic atmosphere striven for by PMA then being increasingly darkened by the Duke's moods and attitudes would have been excrutiating IMO. There must have been little comfort coming home from the charitable busy-busy with Ma or a weekend away among the cousins...and although I accept the Duke probably had some form of dementia in his closing years, it seems to have only exacerbated these aspects of his personality. He alas made the stereotype of the minor German princeling getting in a snit about rank, money and all that a regular domestic occurance which the press knew about all too well - indeed poor Henry of Battenberg took a lot of subsequent stick as a result of such assumptions . I guess PMA didn't help much with her extravagance and well-meaning royale oblige public pantomines either. Poor poor May. Me, I'd have worn my shoes through with the toe-curlings.

[Eddie_uk]

Interesting points Tdora! It has to be said though that May did appear to get on very well with her mother and was very fond of her. Of course she found her exasperating at times but I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't! Poor Mary Adelaide, she did indeed mean well! She was such a character!!

I think your spot on with minor German princeling stereotype!

[Eric_Lowe]

Mary of Cambridge liked him well enough. 

[Tdora1]

And I'd still love to know why The DoT's sisters (TSH PSS Amelie and Claudine of Teck) are so relentlessly obscure. Barely a line a May's biog other than she apparently met them on one of her continental visits. I got an idea from somewhere there may have been a touch of eccentricity about them? Or was it more a 'keep-in-the-background-you-insignificant-morganatic-problems-you'? I've asked already - no-one seems to know a dicky-bird. Sorry my tab key has been sproinged into uselessness by the Cat and there's no paras.   And meanwhile here's another contender who didn't make the final 10 - and this is the only one I have any personal experience of: step forward Ma'am Darling Herself, its HRH Princess Margaret, Queen of All The Drama if not the Realm. IMO and slight experience a thoroughly unpleasant bag of snob and the most breathtakingly atrocious manners.

[dmitri]

Perhaps that is a touch unfair in summation. I wonder how any of us would have coped in Princess Margaret's situation? She was the younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. Her position was never to be that of her elder sister. She was spoilt by her father. There were basically no eligible Protestant Princes for her to marry. Not surprisingly given her sheltered background she became interested in Group Captain Peter Townsend in spite of his status. Not allowed to marry him she opted for the man who was create Earl of Snowdon. That marriage was stormy and ended in divorce. Her position became less and less important with the passing years and the birth of children and grandchildren to her elder sister The Queen. Britain's position in the world also diminished. She was never offered the role of Governor-General of any of her sister's Realms. She did smoke and drink far too much. It is this that caused her ill health in later years and her death after repeated strokes. She did look for male company after her marriage was over. Sadly she never found it successfully. She lived in a gilded cage and was a product of her upbringing and expectations of her family. I think in her final decades her life even with all its perks was rather sad. I wonder how many of us would wish to live such a life? Certainly from the outside it seems glamorous but what indeed was the reality? 

[Grace]

I have to side with Tdora1 here.  I've simply never understood the 'poor Margaret' train of thought that so often surrounds this princess.  She was a girl who had everything and she was not the only person in the world not to be able to marry her first love.  I can't accept that her indulgent family would have held her back had she wanted to do more in her life as she was said to be highly intelligent though as has been said she could be snobbish and unpleasant when is suited her. 

Sadly, she's remembered now more for her excesses than anything else, including a steady decline in the last few years of her life due to her heavy smoking and drinking. 

She's certainly high on my list of 'Most Disliked'...

[grandduchessella]

And I'd still love to know why The DoT's sisters (TSH PSS Amelie and Claudine of Teck) are so relentlessly obscure. Barely a line a May's biog other than she apparently met them on one of her continental visits. I got an idea from somewhere there may have been a touch of eccentricity about them? Or was it more a 'keep-in-the-background-you-insignificant-morganatic-problems-you'? I've asked already - no-one seems to know a dicky-bird. Sorry my tab key has been sproinged into uselessness by the Cat and there's no paras.   And meanwhile here's another contender who didn't make the final 10 - and this is the only one I have any personal experience of: step forward Ma'am Darling Herself, its HRH Princess Margaret, Queen of All The Drama if not the Realm. IMO and slight experience a thoroughly unpleasant bag of snob and the most breathtakingly atrocious manners.

Because they were very obscure princesses who marrried (or didn't in the case of one sister) even more obscurely. Amalie died in July 1893 (I think both sisters were supposed to attend the wedding but then Claudine couldn't either because of her sister's health or the actual mourning) while Claudine died, unmarried, in 1894.

[Eric_Lowe]

I think Margo is to be pitied than disliked. She was spoiled by her family who tried to make up for her "spare" status in the family. However among friends, she was loyal and considerate and generally natural (if not original.) 

[Grace]

I think Margo is to be pitied than disliked. She was spoiled by her family who tried to make up for her "spare" status in the family. However among friends, she was loyal and considerate and generally natural (if not original.) 

I can think of about a million people I would pity before Princess Margaret.  She even had a reputation on occasion of turning all imperious on her 'friends' too...

[Tdora1]

I could never swallow the 'Tragic Margaret' image wrought out of the Townsend affair. I believe she flirted with him relentlessly, knowing that he could not refuse her summons for company, and idly played with his affections, the disastrous effect upon his marriage (fault was awarded against Mrs Tonwsend only out of a gentlemans agreement to spare HRH whose affari with him was by then known to the Palace), the delicious thrill of being a bit racy and shocking, and when she realised what marriage meant giving up - even if some of the terms were both incorrectly assumed and would almost certainly have been mitigated should the marriage actually take place - regretted only that she'd messed around like so for long enough to either put many prospective suitors off or see them (sometimes suspeciously hastily) marry elsewhere. I think her main sorrow was for herself having had her delicious little game backfire on her.

[Tdora1]

As for my personal experience, during the summer and autumn of 1989 I waitressed for an agency in the City of London - director's dining rooms for lunch and then maybe a lucky banquet for the evening. These affairs were usually at one of the City Guilds livery halls or at the Guildhall itself. Doing silver service there was highly sought after and I soon found out that all you had to do was arrive at your jobs on time and not get drunk and the plum jobs were yours for the taking. Anyway, I cycled as usual in my black-and-white to the Guildhall one evening only to be told that I was doing top table (usually only done by chaps in butler's garb but they were missing one) and that Princess Margaret was guest of honour. From the amuse-bouche through to the savoury and desert she drank only scotch-and-water, lavishly topped up by her personal 'wine waiter' which we hoped would make her more amenable as dinner rprogressed. Alas it didn't. She barely grunted in answer to her neighbours - none of whom seemed to us to be in any way offensive or even bores - flicked the food around with disdain, smoked while others were still eating (between courses if you must but never during! - so my Grandmother says - fancies herself rather grand) and let me stand there with a buring silver flat on my arm while she refused to move over an inch so I wouldn't burn her shoulders (and I still have the burn scars on my wrist to show how long I stood there...) looked generally like someone had slapped her about the face with a large halibut - and worst of all, got up and swept out immediately after the toast to Her Majesty but before the others - like her hosts. I wasn't the only one who wished they'd done something to the soup. We were not surprised by such treatment as mere menials but we winced on behalf of the poor Company and her fellow guests. And I always thought the Royal Family - certainly since QV's time - had a maxim that to be rude, especially to servants - was beyond the pale. Mags was an exception there. Interestingly I did another one with Snowden some time later and he was wonderfully charming and gracious. Though I always thought his 'you look like a Jewish manicurist' jibe at her was beyond the beyonds too.