The Windsor Monarchy

What Is Monarchy?
The Family
The Power
The Crown
The Partiality
The Glory
The Wealth
The Crown Estate
The Cost
Religion & Race
Our Civil Rights
The Excuses
The Future


Print Friendly and PDF

The Monarchy

A Brief Guide: Who Are They?

"The royal family, the Queen herself excepted, has entertained but hardly inspired its loyal subjects with antics fit for soap operas and C-grade movies. Most of the family members are intellectually vacuous and profoundly snobbish. The ditzy Prince Charles, the future king it you can believe it, looks bemusedly lost in whatever circumstances he finds himself. His estranged wife, Diana, died in the car of her umpteenth lover during a tryst in Paris, her death the occasion for secular canonisation by populations weaned on television sitcoms and People magazine."
Jeffrey Simpson, Toronto Globe & Mail

The monarchs' family is known as the House of Windsor, a name chosen for its supremely southern English and royal associations. In fact the House of Windsor was created in 1917 to give an English colour to the family. Since 1714 the monarch had been German. The first member of this line to speak English without a German accent was George 5, who became king in 1915. He gave British aristocratic titles to many of his relatives so that they would not seem German.

Image of queen Windsor

"One of her greatest achievements is that she has never said anything of any interest in public".
The Economist magazine on queen Windsor, 2019

The current queen is Liz Windsor. She was born in 1926, the daughter of George 6. When he died in 1952 she replaced him as monarch. One indication of the oddness of her life is that until Liz was seventeen she and her sister, 4 years her junior, dressed identically. She has never carried cash. Liz expects friends to call her "Your Majesty" or "Ma'am."

Liz's husband Philip is not a "king." However he may take some comfort in being both a "prince" and a "duke." His family are the Mountbattens, an anglicization of Battenburg. He was born in Greece of a Greek father. The family is descended from the European "royal" House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg-Beck . The queen did not take Philip's name on marriage. She and all descendants who are "royal highnesses," "princes" or "princesses" will be Windsors. The rest are named Mountbatten-Windsor.

"The stern embodiment of tradition, she is reluctant to change anything but her clothes. She has a sense of humour but seldom unbends, certainly not with children. But she strangles pheasants expertly and does show emotion towards horses and dogs; she even shed a tear over the loss of the royal yacht Britannia. The Queen is correct, dutiful, passive, Philistine, dignified, punctual and constant."
Piers Brandon, The Independent, January 2002, reviewing The Queen: Golden Jubilee Edition by Ben Pimlott

While visiting China Mr Windsor told a British student "If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes". He once advised a 13-year-old who wanted to become an astronaut that "You could do with losing a little bit of weight". The royal clown asked a wheelchair user whether "people trip over you?"

The many women he has been linked to include two dancers but a sexual relationship has never been confirmed.

His sisters married German noblemen who were members of the Nazi Party. When his sister Cecile died in a plane crash in 1937 the 16 year old Phil marched in a funeral procession with men wearing Nazi uniforms. Another of Philip's sisters was said to have lunched with Hitler. Historian Jonathan Petropoulos reported in Royals and the Reich that Phil told him that there was jealousy about the success of Jews in his family but he was never "conscious of anybody in the family actually expressing anti-Semitic views".

The family are renown for a dullness and lack of intellectual achievement that would not have served them well if they had had to make their own ways in the world.

Liz's son, Charles, who is in line to be Britain's next head of state, performed poorly at school. String pulling from the highest levels was necessary to win a place for him at the elite Oxford University. Some Christians believe that Charlie is the Antichrist! In The Antichrist and a Cup of Tea American writer Tim Cohen suggests just that, telling of an ancient connection between the British monarchy, the Antichrist and a "New World Order." Others say that his formal name equals 666, "the name of the beast." However one writer on the Antichrist, Ed Hinson, has been quoted in Slate magazine as believing sensibly that "There's no way Prince Charles is the Antichrist. Satan can do much better than that."

The Mother of the Queen

The "Queen Mother" was, of course, the mother of the queen! There would be nothing much worth saying about her had she not been promoted by the news media as the object of intense public affection. The British Broadcasting Corporation had regular rehearsals for her death, which it intended to treat as equivalent to the demise of a public figure of importance. Why she might have deserved this is not clear. Perhaps it was her smile. Perhaps her love of the gee gees. When she died in 2002 the BBC found that the people were not as sad as it had expected.

The reasons for not admiring Mother Windsor are rather clearer. She was the matriarch of a grossly dysfunctional family. She supported South African apartheid. She was reported to be in hock to her bank for £4 million (US$6.5M). That caused even such a staunchly conservative newspaper as the Daily Mail to run a story with the headline "Pampered, privileged and such an affront to decency." Apparently the senior Windsor had expectations of a high style of life. Fifty personal staff, four lavishly furnished homes and a taste for the fanciest of dining out, soon exhaused the £643,000 (US$1M) welfare payment that she received annually from British taxpayers.

More Evidence of Windsor Nazi Link

FBI documents obtained by the Guardian show that queen Windsor's uncle Edward was followed by agents during World War II because intelligence reports indicated that his wife Wallis Simpson was guilty of disclosing allied secrets to a top Nazi official Joachim von Ribbentrop with whom she had had an affair. Ribbentrop later became Germany's foreign minister. The surveillance was ordered by President Roosevelt and took place while the couple were in the USA.

American officials believed that the abdication of Edward as hereditary head of state (know as Edward VIII) in 1936 had resulted from his wife's strong support for the Nazi regime in Germany. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would not tolerate Windsor as king in these circumstances. This is contrary to the official story that he gave up the kingship because otherwise he would not have been able to marry Ms. Simpson because she was divorced.

Simpson, who became know as the Duchess of Windsor when she married Edward, was believe to have given information to the Nazis during the 1940 German invasion of France. Americans believed that the co-operation was even worse.

British state papers that would through more light on this have been kept secret for fear that they embarrass to the Windsor family. Liverpool MP Louise Ellman has stated that she will be asking questions of the Lord Chancellor in Parliament to press for the unsealing of the official records.

Edward has been reported as saying that the United States should not join the war against Nazi Germany as Europe was finished. He told the editor of an American magazine that “it would be a tragic thing if Hitler was overthrown.” Allegations have also been made that Windsor hoped to become king of Britain again if the country was occupied by German forces.

Pointer Next

Return to Top