A Day of What If

Tweet

Today is a day of reflection in much of the world. Americans, and indeed much of the world, are remembering the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At the same time Britons, and indeed much of the world, are remembering the late Queen. We humans love to speculate. The game of “what if” is popular. We say it all the time, even if just rhetorically. The other day I’d mentioned Patsy Cline dying so young. What if she had lived to a ripe old age? What if James Dean hadn’t died so young? And, yes, what if someone had been able to stop the attacks of 21 years ago. Here’s something that you might not think about in the “what if” department: what if her majesty the Queen had never been queen? I’ll tell you this: the world would probably be VERY different. For my friends in the UK and the Commonwealth, you can sleep through this because you probably know it. This is for the US audience. You see, when she was born in 1926, she was NOT heir to the throne. Her father, Albert Frederick Arthur George, was Duke of York, not Prince of Wales. But there was a problem: Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, was just a tad bit of a playboy. There’s a quote from King George V that he said to his prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, “After I am dead the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.” King George was quite the prophet. In fact, it took just eleven months. Edward was in love with an American woman, Wallis Simpson; and, as 1936 progressed, he made it apparent that he was going to marry her. But there was a little problem: Simpson was a divorcée; worse, she was ALSO still married at the time (although going through divorce procedures). As “Defender of the Faith,” one of the titles the monarch holds, that didn’t set too well with the Church of England. (A quick aside: one of my all-time favorite movies is A Man For All Seasons, which is about Henry VIII butting heads with Sir Thomas More over the subject of divorce. It was Henry, wanting a divorce, who declared himself head of the church in England after the Catholic Church refused to grant him another annulment. In that light, it seems interesting that the notion of a monarch marrying a divorced woman would be controversial by the Church of England.) Long year short: King Edward’s desire to marry Simpson created a constitutional crisis in England, and he was basically told to poop or get off the throne. So he got off the throne. On December 10, 1936 he abdicated, which elevated Prince Albert (who was not in a can ) to the throne as King George VI. In his abdication, Edward surrendered any and all rights to the throne for himself and his heirs. This put George VI on the throne, and Princess Elizabeth as heir apparent. Now, a few thousand paragraphs ago (sorry to be so long winded), I said “what if.” You see, Edward had an ugly secret: he was kinda fond of the policies of that guy in Germany with the mustache. In fact, Herr Hitler said that if Edward had remained king things would have been much, much different for Germany. That’s a scary notion. While publicly, once the atrocities of the Nazi regime became known, Edward dismissed Hitler, privately he was quoted as saying, “I never thought Hitler was that bad a chap.” “What if,” indeed. PHOTO: a double rainbow at my house tonight. Not as beautiful as the one over Buckingham Palace, though. If you’re interested (and haven’t fallen asleep by now ), there’s a documentary on YouTube called The Traitor King. A book on the subject was published earlier this year. This is over an hour and a half long, so you have to be really interested.