Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Mary of Teck

1867 – 1953 · Generation XXXV · Queen consort

Portrait of Mary of Teck

Queen Mary was born on 26 May 1867 at Kensington Palace, in the same room where Queen Victoria had been born, and her first names were Victoria Mary, though her family called her May, for the month in which she was born. Her father, Francis, Duke of Teck, was the son of a morganatic marriage and had no fortune of his own, and her mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, was a granddaughter of George III who gave lavishly to charity. She had three younger brothers and grew up as minor royalty. In 1883 the debt-ridden family went abroad to economise, and a long stay in Florence gave her a lifelong love of galleries, churches and museums.

Queen Victoria thought well of her, and in December 1891 she became engaged to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, second in line to the throne. Six weeks later he died during a pandemic. His brother George, who took his place in the succession, grew close to her in their shared mourning and proposed in May 1893. They married on 6 July 1893 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace and spent much of their early married life at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate. The marriage was a devoted one, and they had six children: Edward, Albert, Mary, Henry, George and John. As Princess of Wales she went abroad with her husband, including an eight-month tour of India that began in October 1905.

George became king on 6 May 1910, and she chose to be known simply as Queen Mary. The couple were crowned at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911 and travelled to India that winter, where George appeared as King-Emperor. During the First World War she imposed rationing on the royal household and visited the wounded in hospital. Two months after the armistice her youngest son, John, who had epilepsy and lived apart from the family in the care of his nurse, died at thirteen. In 1928 George fell gravely ill, and one of his doctors afterwards gave the queen the credit for his survival.

George V died on 20 January 1936. Within the year their eldest son, Edward VIII, gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American whom Mary thought wholly unsuitable as a king’s wife, and she afterwards refused to meet her. She supported her second son, George VI, through the new reign. When war came she reluctantly left London for Badminton House in Gloucestershire, the home of her niece, arriving with seventy pieces of luggage and a household of fifty-five. From Badminton she went out to see troops and war factories, ran drives to collect scrap, and was known to stop her car for soldiers walking the roads. Her fourth son, George, Duke of Kent, died on active service in 1942 when his aircraft crashed.

She was a serious and sometimes relentless collector. She tracked down pieces that had once belonged to her own family, then objects of every kind with a royal history, and researched them and catalogued them with care. The Royal Collection Trust credits her with refurbishing interiors at Holyroodhouse, Buckingham Palace and Frogmore, and by combing old inventories she traced pieces that earlier generations had lent out, then wrote to ask for them back. In 1924 she received Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and first shown at the British Empire Exhibition. Having outlived her husband and three of her sons, she died at Marlborough House on 24 March 1953, ten weeks before the coronation of her granddaughter Elizabeth II, which she had asked should not be postponed on her account. She is buried beside George V in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Place in the family

  • Mary of Teck was a grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II.
  • The archive records 37 of her descendants, across 5 generations.

Images

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

  • Married King George V (1865 – 1936) in 1893 — 6 children together

Children

Life

  • 1867 — Born
  • 1893 — Married George V
  • 1953 — Died

Sources

  1. Mary of Teck · Wikipedia
  2. Queen Mary of the United Kingdom (1867–1953) · Royal Collection Trust
  3. George V (r. 1910–1936) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  4. Mary of Teck · Encyclopaedia Britannica

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