01x01 - Adapt or Die

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This year, the Royal House of Windsor celebrates 100 years on the British throne.

They are now the most famous Royal family in the world, and have prospered while other great dynasties have fallen.

They've seen their relatives overthrown, m*rder*d and exiled, overcome family feuds, fire and betrayal.

And they have always followed one crucial rule -- survive, whatever it takes, whatever the cost.

The Windsors learned the dark art of survival in the days of w*r a century ago.

They've never forgotten it.

Now, Channel 4 can uncover their secrets, with the help of family insiders, Royal experts and some of the most closely guarded papers in the world.

We've combed through letters, diaries, government memos, confidential Royal reports, and, for the first time, cameras have been allowed into the Queen's personal family archives at Windsor.

What we found rips aside the mask of royal pomp to reveal the human frailties and the secrets of the family that built Britain's most powerful dynasty.

On the morning of the 13th of June 1917, 14 bombers took off from a base in German occupied Belgium.

Their destination, London.

By mid-morning, they were over the East End.

The children of upper North Street School in Poplar were just starting a maths class.

"I was on my fifth sum and this plane was coming over, so the teacher saw everybody's eyes lit up and said, 'That's one of ours.' I'm still thinking this as I finish my sum." Somehow I managed to climb out, and as I went out the classroom door, I stepped over a little boy. He was dead."

18 small children were k*lled.

Across London, 162 people d*ed.

This was something totally new. It was horrific. It k*lled children.

It was plastered all over the newspapers, and the bombers that did it had the same name as the Royal family --

Gotha bombers, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

And suddenly the Royal house discovers that it has the wrong branding.

Time to change.

At the start of the First World w*r, in August 1914, the monarch was 49-year-old King George V.

George V had none of the qualities you'd expect in or want in a w*r leader.

He was a very cautious, conservative character, blinkered, very much of his class.

His official biographer complained that for 20 years of his life before he became king, he seemed to do nothing except sh**t pheasant and stick stamps into his stamp album.

Dull, plodding, unimaginative --

George was not a man to inspire sacrifice.

The writer HG Wells famously described George's court as "alien and uninspiring".

King George V reacted to that.

He said, "I may be uninspiring, but I'm dammed if I'm alien."

The problem for the King was that he was alien.

People forget that the Windsors were originally a German family.

Queen Victoria was as German as German could be, spoke German as well as she spoke English and married, of course, Albert of Coburg, another German, so that meant that Edward VII was also completely German.

His son, George V, who's the first Windsor, was half German and half Danish, because his mum was Danish.

So there's not a jot of English blood, technically, in them.

Eight of Victoria and Albert's nine children had married into other European royal families.

Before the First World w*r, you have this massive sort of dynastic network, this monarch's trade union.

All Queen Victoria's grandchildren, great-grandchildren, all sitting on most of the thrones of Europe, marrying each other, cousins marrying each other, this huge family network.

George was first cousin to both the Russian Tsar, Nicholas, and the German Kaiser, Wilhelm.

George's wife, Queen Mary, was also German and spoke English with a German accent.

King George V, all his relations were spread across the thrones of Europe, and I think he probably began the First World w*r thinking that those family relations would be able, in some way, to bring a quick solution, and the aspiration was that it would only last a few months.

The King still saw himself as part of an international brotherhood of monarchs, but he had misjudged the public mood.

The outbreak of w*r sparked anti-German rioting.

My grandfather came from Wirtemberg, which is in south-west Germany.

He managed to open a shop in South Shields.

His name was Seitz, which is demonstrably not English, and so that was up above the shop.

It was very, very prominent, and so it became a target.

There were so many people gathered in the market square throwing bricks and what have you, my grandmother was there and my 14-year-old aunt, and the younger children, down to my mother, who was three.

And so, when the bricks started coming through the window...

Terrified.

The King didn't realise it, but it became manifestly clear that everything German, even dachshunds walking along the street were being kicked by people.

Anything that had a link to the dreaded and hated Germany was anathema.

The most obvious link to Germany was the Royal family itself.

As casualties mounted, the government introduced conscription.

A few months later, in the summer of 1916, British forces were decimated at the Battle of the Somme.

The mood is changing.

The public are just fed up with this w*r, and the number of people dying, and the privations and the agony.

People are not going to put up with this any longer.

The old order, the great institutional monarchies of Europe are themselves buckling.

In March 1917, King George received terrible news.

His first cousin, the Tsar of Russia, had been overthrown.

It was a first blow to the international club of monarchs, and for George, deeply personal.

As children, King and Tsar had holidayed together and had always been close.

George constantly writes in his diary, "I am devoted to Nicky".

Several occasions. He felt Nicky was a real sort of soul mate, somebody who he could talk to.

The King wrote a telegram to the Tsar.

"Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you, and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I have been in the past."

But the fall of the Tsar presented the King with a dilemma.

Here are Nick and George, Emperor and Tsar, who looked like twins here.

Olga Romanoff is the Tsar's great-niece.

They're wearing each other's uniform.

Some tourist asked me if it was swapsies, and I said, "No, not swapsies."

Nicholas, here, is wearing the uniform of the Scots Greys, who he was Colonel-in-Chief too.

Princess Olga lives in Kent.

A century on, she still finds it difficult to speak about the events of 1917.

I don't think the Tsar had much inkling of stuff, because he was so wrapped in his sick child and his wife, who he absolutely adored.

My grandfather had been one of Nicholas' advisors.

I think if he'd taken my grandfather's advice, it's possible disaster would have, you know...

Not happened.

Sorry.

The new Russian government was democratic, but there were fears of a communist takeover.

This would leave the lives of the Tsar and his family hanging by a thread.

The Russian government asked the British ambassador if the Romanovs could be given asylum in Britain.

The British ambassador goes back to the British government, of whom Lloyd George is the leader at this point and says, "What should we do, what shall I say? I feel that we ought to say yes."

And Lloyd George initially says, "Yes, I don't think we can refuse."

At this point, an extraordinary sequence of events unfolded, events that would remain secret for more than 50 years.

At their heart stood King George's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham.

Lord Stamfordham was my great, great uncle.

He was a very wily character, and I think he was probably one of the first courtiers to be PR savvy.

He was a monarchist through and through.

He was dedicated to them.

He was there, he saw it, to protect them from anything that went on in the world.

It was Stamfordham's role to advise the King, and he feared the mood in the country.

The fall of the Tsar may have horrified the Royal family, but it delighted Britain's w*r weary people, who saw the Tsar as a tyrant.

Mass rallies were held, where socialists and republicans offered passionate support for the Russian Revolution.

Stamfordham compiled a file that he gave the title Unrest in the Country.

It contained newspaper clippings and letters he'd received from a network of informants.

Stamfordham's top-secret file is now kept at Windsor Castle.

Tens of thousands of records going back hundreds of years are kept here, and our cameras have been granted access to the Queen's own private archive.

The Unrest in the Country file includes this letter from a Salvation Army colonel in Essex, which was typical of the type of information Stamfordham was receiving.

"I have noticed since the news came to hand of the Russian revolution, a change has come over a certain sector of the people in respect to their attitude towards the King and the Royal family. A friend of mine saw written in a second-class railway carriage, 'To hell with the King, down with all royalties'."

It is a panic that's going on, certainly a panic in the palace, which is beginning with Stamfordham and I'm sure that he communicated that panic to the King.

The King instructed Stamfordham to write to the government.

His letters about the Tsar lay buried for half a century, but are now available at the Parliamentary Archives.

For decades, people thought that the key decisions were taken by Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, and these documents reveal that this was not in fact the case.

This is a letter from Windsor Castle, dated the 6th of April, 1917, to ask Arthur Balfour, who was the Foreign Secretary.

"Every day the King is becoming more concerned about the question of the Emperor and Empress of Russia coming to this country. His Majesty receives letters from people in all classes of life, known or unknown to him, saying how much the matter is being discussed."

This is the second letter on the same day from Stamfordham to Balfour and it shows the degree of agitation that's going on.

"The residence in this country of the ex-Emperor and Empress would be strongly resented by the public. The opposition to the Emperor and Empress coming here is so strong that we must be allowed to withdraw from the consent previously given to the Russian government's proposal."

It's very significant, I think, the language that is used.

King George V was a constitutional monarch, who was supposed to take the advice of his ministers.

Here's he's using words like "must" and "ought", in other words he is attempting to instruct the government in the policy that it should pursue.

Balfour capitulates.

As a result of this, he writes to Lord George and suggests that they probably ought to withdraw the offer of asylum.

In Russia, the Tsar was oblivious to his cousin's decision not to provide him with refuge.

"Sorted my belongings and books and the things I want to take with me, if I go to England..."

But for the Tsar and his family, there could now be no escape.

In March 1917, the Russian Czar was overthrown.

An initial offer of asylum was secretly withdrawn by King George V, anxious about anti-royalist feelings in Britain.

Six months later, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia.

The Czar and his family were moved to this house in Yekaterinburg in the Russian Urals.

Shortly after arriving, they were taken down to the cellar in the middle of the night and brutally m*rder*d.

George consigned the House of Romanov to history and his cousin, Nicky, to the f*ring squad...

.. in order that the House of Windsor should survive.

I think this decision to refuse asylum is characteristic, certainly, of the British Royal Family, which is pragmatic, realistic but a certain ruthlessness.

When their survival is at stake, they will make the decision that ensures they survive.

King George did eventually allow the Czar's sister, Xenia, to come to England.

She was rescued by a British battleship with her son, Prince Andrei, who was Princess Olga's father.

Only now has Olga become aware of the Stamfordham letters and the role played by King George in the death of the Czar.

My father never, ever said that it was George's fault.

He always thought it was the Prime Minister, but apparently it wasn't the Prime Minister's fault at all it was all George's fault.

I'm very glad my father d*ed before the letter was found...

.. because he would have been really upset.

George, the Czar and my grandmother...

.. were great friends, they played together...

.. they did things together...

.. and eventually George gave refuge to my grandmother and was wonderful to her.

He used to put Queen Mary's nose totally out of joint, was really, really nice to her, and I suspect a lot of that was guilt.

George's ruthless abandonment of his cousin in April 1917 marked the death of the prewar international club of monarchs.

But for the King, a bigger challenge remained -- to forge a connection with his own long-suffering subjects, now entering the fourth terrible year of w*r.

Once more, it was his private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, who took the initiative.

In the spring of 1917, he wrote a historic memo, setting out his strategy for the future of the monarchy.

"We must endeavour to induce the thinking working classes, socialist and others, to regard the Crown not as a mere figurehead, but as a living powerful good, affecting the interests and social wellbeing of all classes."

It was Stamfordham's particular insight, I think, that the British monarchy did not depend on the aristocracy nor on the middle class, the second-class carriages, but on the acceptance and approval and, ultimately, the love of the people.

If the top wanted to survive, it was at the bottom layer that mattered most.

Stamfordham encouraged King George and Queen Mary to do something British monarchs had rarely done before -- to go out and meet the people.

George is the first modern monarch -- the first monarch who is prepared to not just go round in a big car, waving at people, but to get out of the car and visit factories, go into people's homes, go down even coalmines, you know, talk to people, get out there, be seen.

This is a completely different notion of monarchy, it's a total change.

Stamfordham ensured that it was not just the King and Queen who appeared in the news reels, but also the Prince of Wales.

Known in the family as David, the future King Edward VIII was serving as a staff officer and emerging as a major asset in Stamfordham's rebranding of the monarchy.

David was the David Beckham of his day, he was a megastar of his day. He was the most popular bachelor of his day, everybody wanted to be seen with him or dance with him.

One can only use the term -- corny though it is -- charisma to attach to him.

He was like Princess Di.

He glowed, he glittered.

The Prince was angry because he was kept away from the front line, but he played a key role in boosting morale.

The King's second son, Bertie, was also doing his bit in the Navy, but Bertie, the father of the present Queen, was a completely different personality.

He had knock knees, he had his legs in splints, he had a terrible stammer, which inhibited him, and he was not helped by the fact that his father was utterly unsympathetic towards this, and when Bertie was trying to say something, with great difficulty, he would say, "Get it out! Get it out!"

It's not just a question of stuttering, it's a question of these awful panic att*cks sort of completely gripping him and making it really difficult for him to appear in public.

Suffering from a chronic but undiagnosed stomach ulcer, Bertie would spend much of the w*r convalescing with his parents.

Fortunately, his big brother generated enough attention for both of them.

But as the Prince of Wales and his parents worked to forge a new bond with the British people, a major obstacle remained...

.. the family's German name.

Who is the King? Who is this man I'm fighting for in the cold, in the misery, in the fear of every day of the Western front?

Well, he is King George V, and he is your sovereign.

Hang on, but he's called Saxe-Coburg-Gotha!

Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was the name given to the Royal Family by Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert.

The King knew what had happened to other Germans in Britain.

It must have been an intensely worrying time for the family.

Is this going to happen to me?

It's happened to those German immigrants out there in our country.

After all we've done, after all the length of time that we've been here, do they still see us as German?

Will they chuck us out, perhaps?

In the wake of the Russian Revolution, Lord Stamfordham was finally instructed to come up with a British name for the British Royal Family.

Papers at the Royal Archives reveal him rummaging through the history books, feeding possible names to the King and the Prime Minister.

"The King bars Plantagenet and does not care about Tudor. Tudor Stuart has been suggested. Mr Asquith advised against Tudor, with its recollections of Henry VIII and Bloody Mary. Mr Asquith was equally adverse to Stuart, one of whom was beheaded and the last driven from the throne. He does not like Fitzroy and hinted at Guelph, though that is too foreign and is not at all liked by Their Majesties, who also do not approve of Fitzroy and its bastard significance."

Royal history was proving a minefield.

Stamfordham was that his wits' end.

"It is disastrous. The King is all for a prompt settlement."

It was at this moment, on the 13th of June, 1917, that London was raided by the Gotha bombers.

It was a cataclysmic moment.

Just imagine bombs falling from the air.

We're used to it, as an expression of warfare.

This was something totally new, it was horrific.

Now it went beyond de-Germanising, went beyond cutting off from the club of monarchs, it was a question about the very identity and name of the dynasty, it could not be Gotha any longer.

That same day, Stamfordham finally struck inspiration.

The answer, he realised, lay in the very place he was working.

"I hope we have now discovered a name which may appeal to you, and that is that Queen Victoria shall be regarded as having founded the House of Windsor."

Windsor is a brilliant idea, a fantastic piece of branding.

It symbolises safeness, cosiness, those lovely, luscious green rolling landscapes, tea, cakes.

It at once says exactly what George wants the British Royal Family to be.

At Windsor Castle, the Royal Archives contain a letter from the same Salvation Army colonel who'd written earlier, warning of anti-royalist feelings.

Now he praised the King and Queen.

"Their strong efforts to remove in every possible way the German influence and power from the court will have its fruit in the abiding and affectionate loyalty of their devoted subjects."

This is the beginning of the idea of the monarchy, the Windsor family, as being quintessentially British, which allows it to identify with British nationalism, to become the visible figurehead, embodiment, of the British nation.

Stamfordham received a letter of congratulation from the former Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery.

"Do you realise that you have christened a dynasty? There are few people in the world who have done this. None, I think. It is really something to be historically proud of. I admire and envy you."

On the 11th of November, 1918, huge crowds celebrated the end of the w*r.

Britain and its empire had lost close to a million men.

Across Europe, no less than nine monarchs had lost their thrones, including King George's cousins in Germany and Russia.

But in London, the King and Queen were cheered to the echo.

The House of Windsor was forged in w*r, but it grew out of a national crisis...

.. threatening national survival, when the nation was saved by the people.

A new monarchy had emerged, adapted to the democratic age, one in which King George's dullness had become a virtue.

In his ordinariness, there was a humility.

He wasn't a leader.

He was, in many senses, a follower, and so this essential humility that George V had proved to be the reason why his monarchy emerged from the w*r intact and the grand, imperial monarchies of Russia and Germany and Austria fell by the wayside.

For dull, plodding George V, humility came naturally.

But would it come so easily to his sons?

In the years following the First World w*r, the rebranded Windsor dynasty was hugely popular.

The King and Queen continued their punishing schedule of public appearances.

Their second son Bertie was starting to carve a modest niche for himself, although his stutter made public appearances a torment.

And fair...

.. that we are all...

.. happy to feel...

.. that the generosity of His Majesty...

.. has set an example to all...

.. and which has been widely followed throughout the country.

But it was the older brother, David, Prince of Wales, who continued to attract all the attention, embarking on a series of headline-grabbing world tours.

He is a kind of rock star prince.

He's fabulously successful and, you know, crowds are sort of completely captivated.

He became famous the world over.

Here he was with his boyish, blonde good looks and he became known in the press as Prince Charming, the adored Apollo.

Everyone fell in love with him.

On one tour, the Prince shook so many hands, he was ordered by his doctor to rest his right hand and use his left.

But beneath the surface, there were tensions.

King George had been a distant, cold father.

In a word, he was a rotten father.

And he was conscientious, he cared, but he did not know how to handle children.

And he was sort of gruff and aloof and bullying and intimidated them and enraged them.

The relationship did not warm as his children grew older.

To his children, he was austere.

George V, for instance, took against his children when they started to press their trousers fore and aft.

Because he always pressed them from side to side.

And he thought it was caddish.

And also when they started wearing turn-ups.

George V set these kind of standards and he used to pick out these things and whatever they did, he'd point out what they hadn't done right.

His relationship with his oldest son was particularly difficult.

By this time, David, the Prince of Wales, had begun an affair with a married woman, Freda Dudley Ward, the wife of a Liberal MP.

His letters to her reveal that for all his success, the Prince hated the life that fate had given him.

"Each day, I long more and more to chuck this job and be out of it. The more I think of it all, the more certain I am that, really, the day for kings and princes is passed. Monarchies are out of date. Now I know it's a rotten thing for me to say and sounds Bolshevik."

His letter to Freda from York Cottage, his parents' home on the Sandringham estate, at Christmas 1919, left no doubt how much he hated the place.

And how much he missed her.

"I love you, love you, darling, and you know it, how you mean absolutely all and everything to me in life. Nothing else seems to matter now, not even my bloody job, of which I'm so, so sick."

David's letters to Freda Dudley Ward are extraordinary in the way he expresses his hatred of the life that he's leading.

I think basically his problem was that he liked the pluses of being a royal and not the minuses.

He didn't like the duty aspect of it.

He didn't like all the flummery, all the ceremonies that he had to go through, all of the sort of formalities, which he found odious and tedious, all the sorts of things that royalty do, he hated all of that.

What the Prince of Wales did like was parties.

Like many young men returning from the w*r, he was captivated by the new Jazz age.

His parents disapproved, particularly since he appeared to be leading younger brother Bertie, the present Queen's father, astray.

Bertie in his early 20s spends a lot of time with David and does become involved with this very attractive Australian married woman, Sheila Loughborough. Apparently, the original Sheila.

Who's part of this very kind of irreverent social set.

Sheila happened to be Freda's best friend.

She was brought in to match up with Bertie so that the two brothers could go together and not seem to be a duo with two married women.

Like Freda, Sheila was a glamorous society beauty and like Freda, she was trapped in an unhappy marriage.

She and Bertie soon began an affair, and the four were inseparable, as David commented crudely in a letter to Freda.

"What marvellous fun we four do have, don't we, Angel? And f*ck the rest of the world."

In the summer of 1919, David and Bertie spent a golfing weekend with Sheila and her alcoholic husband, Lord Loughborough.

David wrote about it to Freda.

"After tea, I managed to lure Loughie away on the pretext of wanting to play a few more holes of golf on the local course, so as to give Sheilie a chance of being alone with Bertie. They said they were tired and we left them. It's all so sordid, though. I'm sure Loughie doesn't suspect Bertie at all."

The King did not approve, and demanded Bertie end his affair with Sheila.

But he also dangled a carrot, as Bertie confessed to his brother, David.

"He's going to make me Duke of York on his birthday, provided that he hears nothing more about Sheila and me."

And of course, George V had been made Duke of York by Queen Victoria, so it was a very special thing for Prince Albert, as he then was, to be made Duke of York by his father.

David was furious, as he wrote to Freda.

"Christ, how I loathe and despise my bloody family. As Bertie has written me three long, sad letters in which he tells me he's getting it in the neck about his friendship with poor little Sheilie."

But Bertie caved in.

In the spring of 1920, he ended his relationship with Sheila.

Bertie was very different to his brother.

He was a shy young man, but he always would put duty above love and he acquiesced to his father's demands to be the Duke of York, provided he never speak of the Australian again.

The King wrote to his second son to thank him.

The letter, in the King's own hand, is in the Royal archives and has never before shown on television.

"I know that you have behaved very well in a difficult situation for a young man and that you have done what I asked you to do. I feel that this splendid old title will be safe in your hands and that you will never do anything which could in any way tarnish it."

The King's oldest son was determined he would not be dictated to in the same way, as he wrote to Freda.

"If HM thinks he's going to alter me by insulting you, he's making just about the biggest mistake of his silly, useless life. All he's done is to infuriate me and make me despise him and put me completely against him and I'll never forgive him. God damn him!"

David and Freda would continue with their scandalous affair for more than a decade.

Bertie, by contrast, was about to start pursuing a girl who perfectly fulfilled all of his father's expectations.

In the spring of 1920, the King's second son, Bertie, broke off his relationship with the married Australian Sheila Loughborough, because his father had told him to.

He was rewarded by being made Duke of York.

Bertie now began to spend time at Glamis Castle in Scotland, where he had developed a new romantic interest, the 19-year-old Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was the ninth child of the Earl of Strathmore.

The Strathmores went back into the Dark Ages, practically.

They were a very grand family, with royal connections. They came from Glamis Castle, which was one up on the ordinary castle, which might have a ghost. It was haunted by a monster.

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon is an incredibly attractive, kind of, magnetic young woman. And she has so many admirers.

And you get this sense of her as being the sun and all these people revolving around her.

Everybody was in love with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Bertie is immediately captivated.

The convention that princes could only marry royalty had been removed at the same time the family name was changed to Windsor, in 1917.

For the first time, David and Bertie no longer had to fish in the tiny pond of Protestant, normally German, princesses. Women like their mother.

You had a huge new pool of what one might call talent available for the Royals. Elizabeth was perfect.

She was delightful to look at. She appealed terrifically to the Royals.

The only problem was that, initially, she wasn't interested in the shy, stuttering Bertie.

Her letters to friends at this time are still held in the Glamis archive.

"P.S. Prince Albert is coming to stay here on Saturday. Ghastly."

But photos that are kept at Glamis reveal a slowly-warming relationship.

Bertie was enchanted by a home atmosphere entirely different from his own.

Glamis is a, sort of, paradise of party games, hide and seek, in this huge, haunted castle.

Lots of loud gramophone music, lots of dancing, lots of singing, lots of boisterous games.

Totally different from his own experience at Sandringham or Balmoral.

Elizabeth's attitude to the Prince was also changing, as her letters reveal.

"Prince Albert was very nice and very much improved, in every way."

But Elizabeth remained wary of entering the royal clan.

She saw it as a, kind of, gilded cage, which, of course, it was, and she wasn't sure, really, whether she could cope with Bertie with all his difficulties.

The photos at Glamis suggest there may have been another reason for her reluctance -- the presence of a man called James Stuart.

There are these constant references and photographs of them being together and statements from different people who were close to her, that they were in a romantic relationship.

James Stuart was the youngest son of a neighbouring aristocrat and also equerry, or gentleman in waiting, to Prince Albert.

He'd joined the army when he was 17. He'd got two m*llitary Crosses.

He was clearly brave, he was clearly very attractive to women.

Very handsome.

In 1921, out of the blue, Stuart was suddenly offered a lucrative job in the oilfields of America.

He was offered this job through an eminent courtier of King George V's court.

It is pretty clear that there was some way in which he was spirited away, that there was a conspiracy between his mother, the Countess of Murray, her mother, the Countess of Strathmore, and Prince Albert's mother, Queen Mary. So, you have the whole weight of the Crown and the Royal family behind this.

I would suspect that my great grandmother, his mother, who was apparently a wise woman, would have wanted to protect him and would have seen that he was better out of the way.

Stuart took the job, hoping to make his fortune and return to marry the girl he loved.

Prince Albert now moved in on Elizabeth.

But she remained torn and uncertain.

At times of emotional stress, the future Queen Mother hid her feelings by writing backwards in her diary.

"I am most perplexed. I am thinking too much. I wish I knew."

Twice, the Prince proposed. Twice, he was rejected.

Only on the third occasion did Elizabeth finally accept him, as she wrote to a friend.

"I must tell you, I am going to marry Prince Bertie! I do hope you like him. I feel terrified, now I've done it. In fact, no-one is more surprised than me."

James Stuart was devastated.

He was alone. Suddenly, he reads in the papers that she's engaged to his old boss, Prince Albert.

Clearly, my grandfather started as a favourite and a front-runner and ended up as a, kind of, also-ran and then felt very bitter.

You know, it's like he was the casualty, in a way, in this.

Bertie and Elizabeth were married at Westminster Abbey on 26 April, 1923.

If you look at their letters, it's very plain that they are in love with each other.

I think that what she particularly liked about him was not just that he was rather informal, easy-going, but also that he was vulnerable and his vulnerability, I think, was probably something she found attractive and felt that she could help him. And she most certainly did help him.

The couple quickly had two daughters and Elizabeth would prove the perfect partner for the prince.

It transformed his life.

In his eyes, she was the most wonderful woman in the world and his home life became his anchor.

Bertie had settled down and finally won his father's approval.

"You have always been so sensible and easy to work with and you have always been so ready to listen to any advice and to agree with my opinions about people and things, but I feel we have always got on very well together. Very different to dear David."

Dear David, the Prince of Wales, continued to be bored and frustrated with royal life.

"I am so heartily sick of being cheered and yelled and shrieked at. It almost hurts sometimes. I suppose the fact of the matter is that I'm quite the wrong person to be Prince of Wales."

David was rebellious.

He felt constrained by being an heir to the throne, didn't particularly like it.

And was determined to go his own way.

In 1934, the Prince turned 40, still unmarried.

The clock was now ticking and the elderly king was in despair, as he confided to his Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin.

"After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months."

The following year, huge crowds turned out to cheer the king on his Silver Jubilee.

In his Christmas broadcast that year, George chose to focus on the bond he shared with his people.

The year that is passing has been, to me, most memorable.

It called forth a spontaneous offering of loyalty and, I may say, of love.

It is this personal link between me and my people which I value more than I can say.

It binds us together in all our common joys and sorrows.

Just four weeks later, he was dead.

King George had created a new style of monarchy -- one based on sacrifice and duty.

Now, the crown passed to a very different personality.

His 41-year-old son, who would reign as King Edward VIII.

Overwhelmed, the new king wept uncontrollably on his mother's shoulder when told of his father's death.

As he was proclaimed King, Edward broke with tradition, by watching from the windows of St James' Palace.

God save the King.

At his side, a mysterious woman.

Her name, Wallis Simpson.

Wallis Simpson was an American divorcee who had married an Englishman and was, sort of, a social climber in London in the 1930s. She'd had a rather rackety youth.

Her first husband was a drunk and violent.

And she had chosen her new husband, who was called Ernest Simpson, because, really, she had come to the end of her resources.

Edward had begun his relationship with Wallis in 1934.

He'd jettisoned Frida Dudley Ward and appeared to come completely under the spell of his new American lover.

I think the delight of Mrs Simpson for King Edward VIII was that she was totally lacking in respect.

She had no deference, whatsoever, and she'd speak to him like dirt.

And he loved to be treated like dirt.

I'm sure there was a strong sexual element in it.

Mrs Simpson was the dominatrix to b*at all dominatrixes.

She was a tough cookie and you could see her wielding the whip without any trouble at all and, on one occasion, he asked for a light for his cigarette and she made him beg for it like a dog.

The new King's private secretary, Alec Harding, was horrified by the relationship.

As was his wife.

My grandmother detested Mrs Simpson.

Just didn't like her, at all.

She thought she was vulgar and pushy.

And this sounds snobbish and, in fact, it was snobbish, but I think Mrs Simpson got on better with men than with women and there was a certain kind of upper-class Englishwoman who she was always going to rub up the wrong way.

The new private secretary and others were also concerned about the couple's politics.

I don't think Edward VIII was a fascist, but he was attracted to fascism because it was fashionable.

It was known at the time as "Savile Row fascism".

h*tler seemed to have solved the main problem of the age, as people saw it, namely, the unemployment problem.

That he had reinvigorated Germany and he had done this by sacrificing German rights, no doubt, and the business about the Jews was no doubt very unpleasant, but still he was showing what a strong autocracy could achieve.

Two decades on from when his father had cut the Royal family's German links, Edward appeared to want to restore them.

Some of the guests he and Wallis invited to their home at Fort Belvedere near Windsor were the despair of the King's private secretary and his wife.

My grandmother certainly implied to me that they thought that some of the people visiting Fort Belvedere were potentially security risks, essentially.

She told me that state papers that went to the King came back with the stains from the bottoms of wine glasses on them.

And that Edward VIII's guests might just have seen them.

In August 1936, seven months into his reign, the King and his mistress set off on a cruise of the Mediterranean.

Wallis was about to divorce her second husband.

But as head of the Church of England, Edward could not marry a divorcee.

Pictures of Edward and Wallis were now being printed in papers and magazines around the world. Everywhere apart from Britain.

At home, the King remained hugely popular.

When, finally, the Simpson story broke at the start of December, the public were stunned.

You know, people were just shocked.

It's hard to get across today just how shocked they were.

It was almost disbelief.

At first, there was widespread support for the King.

Elizabeth, the wife of the King's younger brother Bertie, wrote in desperation to Queen Mary.

"Every day, I pray to God that he will see reason and not abandon his people."

And it must have dawned on Bertie, with the most inexorable sense of horror, that the buck was going to stop with him.

And he couldn't persuade his elder brother to stay on and do the duty, which after all, his generation had ALL been expected to do in the First World w*r, for King and country.

They'd laid aside everything. And here was the King choosing to follow his own romantic instincts over duty.

Determined to marry the woman he loved, on 10 December, 1936, Edward became the first monarch in British history to voluntarily abdicate.

Shy, stuttering Bertie instantly became King.

His reaction was identical to that of his brother 11 months before.

He finally gets to Marlborough House where his mother is and breaks down.

He weeps on her shoulder for an hour, beyond a mother's consolation.

At that moment, you know, the future King of Great Britain, Emperor of India, head of the Church of England, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, appeared a broken man.

God Save the King!

On the 12th of May 1937, Edward VIII's younger brother, Bertie, was crowned King.

He took the name George VI, in honour of his father.

The new Queen, Elizabeth, could not forgive Edward and Wallis Simpson for the burden they had placed on the shoulders of her vulnerable husband.

She realised that now, it would be duty all the way.

And she was uneasy about her husband's capacity for fulfilling the role.

She was very unforgiving.

She was steely to b*at the band.

Cecil Beaton described her as a marshmallow made on a welding machine.

She was really tough.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they now became, were married in France in June 1937.

At Queen Elizabeth's insistence, Wallis was denied the HRH title or any of the trappings of royalty.

I think he had visualised himself as coming back to Britain as a, kind of, subsidiary prince and enjoying the kind of life -- all privilege and no responsibility -- that he'd enjoyed as Prince of Wales.

But of course, George VI couldn't countenance this, at all.

He was constantly looking over his shoulder to somebody who was much brighter and smarter and more alluring and had more charisma than he did.

And so, the Duke of Windsor had to live abroad.

King George knew that, if his brother chose to, he could easily become a dangerous alternative focus of loyalty.

And the King's worst fears were about to be realised.

Berlin. A huge crowd greeted the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and they were especially welcomed by Dr Ley, the Reich's organisation manager.

In October 1937, less than a year after the abdication, Edward and Wallis toured n*zi Germany.

'Pathe captures the moment. There he is with Wallis at his side, turning up in Berlin, surrounded by a crush of 2,000 people,' who were all longing to catch a glimpse of the fairy tale.

You know, the man who's given up his throne for love.

He was feted by the n*zi leadership.

There were smiles and handshakes all round, even the occasional n*zi salute.

And of course, what he wanted to do was fashion a role for himself on the international stage and give Wallis a taste of what it would be like being feted like a queen.

He did this, I think, to bring himself back into the limelight.

And I think it bespeaks a sheer, sort of, naivety, ignorance, stupidity on his part that he didn't see what a monster h*tler was.

Within two years, Britain was at w*r with Germany.

King George now feared the rift in the Royal Family might be exploited by the Nazis and could thr*aten the very survival, not just of his dynasty, but of his country.

The records in the Royal archives do shed a real light on the degree to which the King saw his older brother as an increasing liability.

For instance, in his diary, when the w*r breaks out and he has a meeting with the Chief of the General Staff, General Ironside, and General Ironside is asking the King, "Can I trust your brother?"

And the King says no, effectively.

Eight months later, France fell.

Edward and his wife were ordered to return to London.

Instead, they fled to neutral Portugal.

Shortly afterwards, the government in London received an extraordinary document.

A document only recently discovered at the National Archive in Kew.

And shown now for the first time on British television.

So, this is a letter to Alexander Cadogan, who was an under-secretary at the Foreign Office.

And it's British intelligence, actually, from a source in Prague.

The 7th of July 1940, and it says on it, "PM to see."

We know the Prime Minister saw it that day and the King pretty shortly afterwards.

And it says, "Germans expect assistance from Duke and Duchess of Windsor, latter desiring at any price to become Queen. Germans have been negotiating with her since June 27th. Status quo in England, except undertaking to form anti-Russian alliance. Germans propose to form opposition government and the Duke of Windsor, having first changed public opinion by propaganda. Germans think King George will abdicate during the att*ck on London."

You can imagine what this was like for the nervous King, reading this.

The ex-King appeared to be negotiating with the Germans.

Whatever the Duke's actual intentions were will never be known.

He agreed shortly afterwards to become Governor of the Bahamas, where strict instructions were issued that women should not curtsy to the Duchess.

The couple had effectively been banished.

I very much doubt that the British government has it in mind at the present that my official activities should extend beyond the confines of the Bahama islands.

The Duke always denied he had contemplated treachery in that fateful summer of 1940.

But he and Wallis Simpson would remain royal pariahs for the rest of their lives.

In Britain, meanwhile, King George went from strength to strength, touring bombs sites with his wife during the Blitz.

Buckingham Palace itself was bombed and the King's refusal to leave London made him a popular symbol of resistance.

♪ .. Royal Standard waves above for everyone to see.

♪ The King is with his people cos that's where he wants to be... ♪

He proved to be a steady and reliable focus for a nation that had to fight back, on its own in 1940, to make sure that Germany was defeated.

♪ Like Mr Jones and Mr Brown The King is still in London town! ♪

At the end of the w*r, King George stood on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, just as his father had 27 years before.

It was like the quintessential moment of victory and the King had done it.

You know, all the doubts about the monarchy at the time of the abdication were dispelled.

The Windsor dynasty and the new model of popular monarchy had been tested in the fire of w*r, twice, and come through.

It had been threatened by the rise of democracy and the danger of revolution and had come through.

And when threatened by internal division, it had been ruthless in cutting out the weak link.

The Windsors present themselves to the world as an amiable, constitutional monarchy.

But I think their main duty is to ensure their own survival and nothing has got to be allowed to endanger that.

Duty and sacrifice were the foundation of the new Windsor dynasty.

There could be no place for personal passions or desires.

It was a heavy burden to lay on the next generation.

Next time, using unseen footage, a lovesick princess and an ailing King keep up appearances, as a crisis looms at home.