Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (37 page)

The visit of the then Princess of Wales to India was an innovation of which many an experienced official was admittedly afraid … The presence of a woman where a woman had never been before, in a land where the status of women is so different … might easily have spoilt the issues most desired from the tour;… The ardent interest in the life of the people which the Princess showed won at once an eager response from them, and completed in a manner which India had never known its sense of gratitude to Royal favour … the Princess added a womanly sympathy which as a regal quality only existed for India as a tradition of the Great Queen [Victoria].
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The Prince and Princess of Wales were awestruck by India’s majestic beauty, as well as by the incredible welcome they received from the people. At the opening ceremony of their visit, George made a moving speech about the deep impact the country had made on himself and his wife: “Here we are truly in a new world, and, from the moment when we arrived in your State to this hour, one charming impression has been quickly followed by another.”
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Along with Calcutta, the royal couple made visits to Bombay, Peshawar, Rangoon, Mandalay, Mysore, Benares, and Chaman. India made a deep and lasting impact on May, who later said, “when I die India will be written on my heart.”
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The voyage home was in itself another international tour. The first stop was Egypt, complete with a visit to the Pyramids. “I did not ascend the Pyramid, it was too much of a climb,” May wrote to Aunt Augusta, “but I did ride a camel and rather really liked it.”
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From Egypt, the royal party moved on to Greece, where it truly turned into a family affair. George’s uncle was King George I of Greece. Known in the family as “Uncle Willy,” this brother of Queen Alexandra and Marie Feodorovna of Russia was chosen to be king of the Hellenes in 1863 at the age of eighteen. Thanks to the ambitious matchmaking of their father, King Christian IX of Denmark, the Danish royal family had a monopoly on Europe. They were directly connected with the royal families of Britain, Russia, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Serbia, and Germany. Edward VII once remarked that at the Danish royal family’s famed reunions at Fredensborg, one could hear seven different languages being spoken at any given time. George’s aunt Queen Olga of Greece—like so many of Europe’s other royal consorts—was a Romanov grand duchess and cousin to Alexander III. She was very fond of May and had been one of the voices encouraging George to propose to her. It was in Athens that George and May also met up with his parents and his sister Toria. Princess May, true to her academic nature, could not help but take advantage of the opportunity to see some of Greece’s historic monuments. In the company of her husband’s Greek cousins, she spent a day touring the Parthenon, the Propylaea, and the Nike Temple. George preferred to visit one of his favorite spots in the country, the Tatoi Palace, located three miles north of Athens, which he said reminded him of Scotland.

Of all the exotic places Princess May visited on this tour abroad, it was her visit to Spain in May 1906 before returning to England that had the greatest significance politically, dynastically, and historically. While still in India, the Prince and Princess of Wales learned of the engagement of George’s cousin Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (“Ena”) to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. As a young girl, Ena had been a bridesmaid at May and George’s wedding. Now it was young Ena’s turn. The only daughter of Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Beatrice, Ena was marrying the spindly, twenty-year-old king of Spain. However dazzling a dynastic marriage it may have been, it was still littered with obstacles. There had not been a union between the royal houses of England and Spain in more than four hundred years, not since Henry VIII’s daughter Queen Mary wed Philip II of Spain. Although it was undoubtedly an illustrious union between two powerful reigning houses, the greatest question to be overcome was that of religion. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the royal houses of Europe had divided themselves more or less into chiefly Protestant and Catholic camps. With few exceptions, the Catholic courts of Portugal, Austria, Spain, and Italy only married among themselves. The same was true for the predominantly northern Protestant nations like England, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian courts, and Germany. An Anglican English princess marrying the Catholic king of Spain was controversial enough to begin with, but when Ena—a favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria—converted to the Catholic faith, a public relations nightmare ensued. Anti-Catholic sentiments in England were so strong that, after Ena and Alfonso became engaged, George wrote to May, “Beatrice is advised on her return to England to keep Ena quiet somewhere, at Osborne, and not to bring her to London as the feeling is so strong.”
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Religion was not the only challenge facing Ena. Like Princess May, Ena of Battenberg had morganatic blood on her father’s side. Grand Duchess Augusta thought little of May’s Battenberg relatives, prompting her to write, “So Ena is to become Spanish Queen! A Battenberg, good gracious!”
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Ena also shared similarities with another of her reigning cousins—Alexandra of Russia. Like the tsarina, Ena’s life in Spain would be stained by tragedy. She too was a carrier of hemophilia and would pass it on to two of her sons, albeit with far less calamitous consequences for the Spanish royal family.

For this significant wedding, George and May were representing the British royal family. Ordinarily, an event of this magnitude would have required the presence of the king and queen, but their presence at such a controversial event was unfathomable. The death of the queen’s father, the king of Denmark, in January 1906 gave the monarchs a get-out-of-jail-free card to send the Prince and Princess of Wales instead. When they arrived in Spain, it became clear that the country’s reputation as the most rigidly formal court in Europe was well earned. Their apartments at the Royal Palace in Madrid—which contained more than 250 suites for visiting dignitaries alone—were guarded by halberdiers standing at each of the marble pillars stretching down the wide hallways in every direction. Every time the Wales’ left their rooms, the guards would sound a clap and shout to one another, “
Arriba Princesa! Arriba Principe!!
”
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The morning of the wedding, May 31, 1906, was pristine with a sunny, cloudless blue sky. Thousands of people congested the streets of Madrid. In the courtyard of the Royal Palace, bejeweled state carriages ferried their royal passengers to the Church of San Jeronimo, near the famous Prado Museum. As heirs to the British throne and cousins of the bride, George and May were seated in the front row of the long, narrow church. The ceremony was a strict but haunting Catholic service, followed immediately by a nuptial mass performed by Cardinal Sancha, the archbishop of Toledo. After the three-hour ceremony, as the bridal carriage made its way through the crowded streets, tragedy struck when a madman, perched on the fourth-floor balcony of an overlooking house, threw a bomb at the king and his new queen. Ena and Alfonso were unharmed, but dozens were wounded, and a number of people were killed. By the time Alfonso and Ena arrived at the palace, the queen was hysterical. “I saw a man without any legs! I saw a man without any legs!” she kept muttering.
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The reception that followed was eerily silent, despite the presence of five thousand guests. Ena’s aunt Princess Marie of Erbach-Schönberg recalled how “every attempt at cheerfulness failed miserably.” The one person who shone out was the Princess of Wales. She “was superb and remained calm, giving Ena the support that she badly needed.” According to Princess Frederica of Hanover, May “was the only one to show proper feeling.”
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After lunch, the guests retired to their rooms to inform their relatives they were safe. May wrote the following to her aunt Augusta:

Well we have been thro’ a most unpleasant experience & we can only thank God that the anarchist did not get into the church in which case we must all have been blown up! Nothing could have been braver than the young people were, but what a beginning for her [Ena].… I saw the coach one day, still with blood on the wheels & behind where the footmen were standing—apart from the horror of this awful attempt the visit to Madrid was most interesting but oh! the heat was nearly as bad as India & made one feel quite exhausted.… I liked seeing the fine pictures, palace, Escurial, Armoury etc.
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It was three days before Ena and Alfonso’s would-be assassin, Matteo Morral, was apprehended. When cornered by police, Morral shot and killed a police officer before committing suicide. For those three days while Morral was still on the loose, tension among the visiting royals remained high. Princess May was one of the few guests who ventured out in public, unafraid that Morral would make another attempt on the lives of the king, his new queen, or their guests. Even Prince George refused to be seen in public, but his wife’s courage made a profound impact on everyone around her. “She was magnificent, as brave as a lion,” remarked Ena’s brother Alexander of Battenberg. “She was frightened of nothing.”
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May’s experiences in Spain were once-in-a-lifetime preparations for her future as queen and empress. Her actions under these circumstances, demonstrated in the presence of some of the highest-ranking royals in the world, established her reputation for bravery, dignity, and levelheadedness.

Only a matter of days after the Wales returned to England from Spain, they were off again. This time, they were aboard the royal yacht
Victoria and Albert
bound for Norway, where George’s sister Maud and her husband, Haakon
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, were being crowned the first queen and king of Norway, which had recently declared its independence from Sweden after nearly a century. “A letter this time from the far North! we do love to travel about to be sure,” May wrote to Aunt Augusta. “We had lovely weather at first but then it turned cold & we had much wind & rain which was unpleasant for landing from the yacht in evening dress when the boat jumps up & down!”
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In the months leading up to the ceremony, May and Maud were in close contact. As early as March 1906, a full three months before the coronation, Maud confided to May her fears about the very public ritual. “It all haunts me like an
awful
nightmare this Coronation and that it is
just
to be ours of all people,” Maud wrote. “Think of me
alone
on my throne, having a crown to be shoved on my head which is very small and heavy by the aged Bishop, and a Minister and also has to be put on by them before the
whole
crowd!! and oil to put on my head, hands and
bosom
!! Gracious, it will be awful!”
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The coronation was performed at Trondheim, the site of Norway’s medieval coronations. The local fjordic scenery lent itself well to creating a festive atmosphere in Trondheim, which was only a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. The ceremony on June 22, 1906, tested the easily rattled nerves of May’s demure sister-in-law. The new queen consort of Norway shared May’s dislike of public attention, but unlike the Princess of Wales, Maud had much more difficulty acquitting herself with ease in the spotlight. One witness thought Queen Maud looked quite pale “as she walked up the long choir, returning the salutations on each side of her.” Not surprisingly, Aunt Augusta did not approve of May’s attending the coronation. After separating from Sweden in 1905, Norway had voted to elect Maud’s husband as king, but such a notion proved too much for the grandiose Augusta. She bluntly told May, “A
revolutionary
Coronation! such a
farce
, I don’t like your being there for it, it looks like
sanctioning
all that nasty Revolution.… How can a future K. & Q. of E. go to witness a Coronation ‘
par la grace du Peuple et de la Révolution!!!
’ makes me sick and I should say,
you too
.” May did not feel as strongly as her aunt, though, and wrote back that “the whole thing seems curious, but we live in
very
modern days.”
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