Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes; 26 May 1867 – 24 March 1953) was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V.
Although technically a princess of Teck, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, she was born and brought up in the United Kingdom. Her parents were Francis, Duke of Teck, who was of German extraction, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a member of the British Royal Family. To her family, she was informally known as "May", after her birth month. At the age of 24 she was betrothed to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, but six weeks after the announcement of the engagement he died unexpectedly of pneumonia. The following year she became engaged to Albert Victor's next surviving brother, George, who subsequently became king. Before her husband's accession she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall and Princess of Wales. As his queen consort from 1910, she supported her husband through the First World War, his ill-health and major political changes arising from the aftermath of the war and the rise of socialism and nationalism. After George's death in 1936, her eldest son Edward became King-Emperor, but to her dismay he abdicated the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, Albert, who succeeded to the throne as George VI, until his death in 1952. She died the following year, at the beginning of the reign of her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Briefly, there were three queens in the country: Mary; her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; and Elizabeth II.
Read more about Mary Of Teck: Early Life, Engagements, Duchess of York, Princess of Wales, Queen Consort, Queen Mother, Legacy, Issue, Ancestry
Famous quotes containing the word mary:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)