An extract from Richard Hough’s Louis and Victoria within the Observer Magazine of 8 September 1974 (‘The Prince and the plotters’) recollects the joke in Blackadder Goes Forth when Captain Darling patriotically says he’s as British as Queen Victoria, to which Blackadder replies: ‘So, your father’s German, you’re half-German and also you married a German?’
Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, a German prince associated to the British royal household (he married his cousin Victoria, the favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria), rose to change into head of the British navy. Winston Churchill and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith ‘wanted Louis as First Sea Lord in warfare much more than they wanted him in peace,’ wrote Hough.
Victoria talked loads and never all the time tactfully. ‘She knew a lot as a result of she was sister-in-law to Prince Henry,’ Hough quoted somebody who knew her nicely. ‘She would get a lot details about the German military from him. And since she additionally informed all people who would hearken to her, folks questioned what she could be saying concerning the British navy when she went to Germany.’
‘It's nearly inconceivable right now to know the depths of jingoistic nationalism and xenophobia aroused within the early weeks of the First World Conflict,’ wrote Hough, ‘when dachshund canine have been reviled and stoned, retailers with German names had their home windows smashed and folks with even faintly international names publicly insulted. It was a really disagreeable hysteria, infected by the favored newspapers and magazines.’ Not too dissimilar to, say, a international nation knocking England out of the World Cup or Euros.
Such an environment reached new heights in the summertime of 1917, and ‘not even the editor of Burke’s Peerage may say what the royal household’s title was’. Churchill and Asquith bowed to public stress and Louis was requested to resign.
‘The brand new household title’ was modified to Mountbatten and Louis grew to become Marquess of Milford Haven, and the Home of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha grew to become the Home of Windsor for a similar shameful purpose.
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