King George V readily approved the names Elizabeth Alexandra Mary for his new granddaughter when submitted to him by her father. The first, Elizabeth, was the name of her mother the Duchess of York. A favourite pastime of the Duchess as a child had been dressing up in romantic costumes at her family's historic Glamis Castle. On one unforgettable occasion, arrayed as the seventeenth century Princess Elizabeth—the ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia, daughter of King James I—she danced a set with her youngest brother to entertain guests there. Elizabeth had fond associations for her. Alexandra was the name of George V's beloved mother, the beautiful though sad Queen Alexandra, who had died the previous year. Mary was of course for his wife, Queen Mary, the child's paternal grandmother.
Water from the River Jordan was procured for the baptism of the five-week old Princess Elizabeth on 29 May in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace. Dressed in a cream Brussels lace gown, the baby cried throughout the ceremony. She had to be given an old pacifier for babies—a dose of dill water. On her behalf, six godfathers and godmothers made the first of many promises in her life, pledging the small Princess to “obediently keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same” all the days of her life. One godfather represented the oldest generation of the Royal Family. He was Elizabeth's great-great uncle, the Duke of Connaught, who had been Governor-General of Canada from 1911 to 1916.
The new Princess possessed a glorious heritage. The royal line she was born into was that of the legends of King Arthur, Saxon Common Law, Shakespeare's kings and queens and the Crown in Parliament. Yet the range and diversity of her gene pool always surprises people who think of Elizabeth II in a limiting way as “English” or “British”. On her father's side, her family had recently—in 1917—adopted the name Windsor to make their German origin less offensive in wartime. Her paternal grandmother was a Danish Princess. Farther back the roots were more multicultural—even multiracial. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Cuman, Norwegian, Swedish and Flemish, as well as Dutch, Lithuanian, English, Arab, Byzantine Greek, Georgian, Armenian, Serbian and Welsh, were some of those to be found. Her ancestors belonging to those cultures (and others) included kings, queens, princes, princesses, saints, conquerors, warriors, statesmen, diplomats, law-givers, churchmen and patrons of the arts. Her lineage was a pathway through history. Coming partly from the international character of royalty, partly from the multi-ethnic composition of the United Kingdom, it was the right background for someone who would reign over multicultural countries in a multiracial Commonwealth.
As a princess, Elizabeth possessed ancestors in abundance, but the diversity of her roots is not really appreciated. Her forebears in fact were not only international but also interracial. Through her grandmother Queen Mary, for example, one ancestral line leads back to Genghis Khan
There were many religions represented in it too: pagans, Jews, Christians and Muslims. And of course plenty of rogues as well as heroes. Surprisingly, the staid Queen Mary provided her granddaughter Elizabeth with an exotic strain close to hand. The Consort of George V was the granddaughter of a beautiful, tragic Hungarian, Countess Claudine de Rhedey de Kis-Rhede, whose bloodline included—besides Hungarians, Croatians and Khazars—the mighty Genghis Khan himself, a grandson of whom, Kublai Khan, became Emperor of China. Another unexpected ancestral twist was not too remote either. Princess Elizabeth's great-great-great-great grandmother Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III,—the Queen after whom Charlottetown, capital of Prince Edward Island, is named—is thought to have had Black ancestry and has been claimed by the Black community as a link to the Royal Family.
The well-known Scottish heritage of Princess Elizabeth's mother, which was to be a lasting influence on her, has tended to overshadow the important strain of native Irish ancestry—an ironic endowment given the continuing Irish problem—she also inherited on the maternal side. The Duchess's mother was a direct descendant of Red Hugh O'Neill, last native King of Ulster. Not only was this Irish ancestry more recent, it was also visible. The old Minister of Glamis recalled that the Duchess as a young girl had “the traditional Irish blend of dark hair and intensely blue eyes”. Her daughter most certainly inherited the blue eyes.
Princess Elizabeth's great-great-great-great grandmother Queen Charlotte, depicted in this portrait in the New Brunswick Legislature, had Black ancestors.
Whatever ancestral genes predominate in a child, the role of the parents is decisive. Here Princess Elizabeth was exceptionally fortunate. Her father, the Duke of York, was good looking and intelligent, a decent and courageous man. He had a strong though not fully developed character. Unfortunately he also suffered from shyness, a certain lack of self-esteem and an unfortunate upbringing that had left him with a pronounced stammer. Princess Elizabeth's mother, the Duchess, formerly Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, had as the Toronto Daily Star pointed out gained the name “the smiling Duchess”. In barely three years of marriage to the Duke of York she, by her graciousness, reversed Queen Victoria's rigid rule that the Royal Family should always appear looking serious in public so as not to be thought frivolous. And the public applauded the change.
Princess Elizabeth's maternal grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, portrayed here with their ten children in the drawing room of their ancient seat Glamis Castle, were Scottish nobles who might have stepped out of a Scott novel. Public spirited, good landlords, devoutly Episcopalian and steeped in Jacobite tradition, they were hospitable, fun loving, musical and closely knit as a family.
In her person the Duchess of York was beautiful and elegant. Born with a quick intelligence, remarkable self possession and lack of self consciousness, she was also endowed with a rare kindness, common sense and genuine interest in others. These qualities had flourished in the happy environment created by her fond parents and nine brothers and sisters. She and the Duke were moreover very much in love.
Both parents welcomed Princess Elizabeth's birth. “We always wanted a child to make our happiness complete” the Duke wrote to his mother, Queen Mary, a few days after the event. They were determined to create a happy home life for their daughter—the Duchess because she had so much loved her own family, the Duke because he yearned for the satisfactory family life he had not had as a child.
But it was not to be quite yet. Soon after Princess Elizabeth was born she was called on for the first of a lifetime of sacrifices to that insatiable deity—royal duty. She found her parents suddenly snatched from her. The Duke and Duchess of York were told by the King that they must undertake a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand, a tour the Prince of Wales was supposed to have made.
The Duke and Duchess sailed for the Antipodes in January 1927. “It quite broke me up” wrote the Duchess at having to leave her baby. In their absence, care of their nine-month-old daughter was shared between the two sets of grandparents, the Strathmores and King George V and Queen Mary. When their turn came, the elderly Sovereigns who had not had much empathy with their own children were captivated by Princess Elizabeth. They developed an immediate rapport with their granddaughter, doting on her, spoiling her. But the absence of Elizabeth's parents was a long one. When the Duke and Duchess came back from their highly successful tour, the Princess did not recognise them.
The Princess at 2. A portrait photograph by Marcus Adams hand coloured in pastel. The pose suggests a modern version of a Renaissance cherub.
The day of the Yorks' return, 27 June, the Duke and Duchess appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and