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"On 17th July 1917 the Privy Council
proclaimed that henceforth the royal family would be called
the House of Windsor, having divested itself of its previous
surname, as well as 'all other German degrees, styles, titles,
dignatories, honours and appelations'. After a number of alternatives
were considered - including Plantagenet, York, England, Lancaster,
d'Este and Fitzroy - King George V's private secretary Lord
Stamfordham's suggestion of Windsor was adopted, after a minor
title once held by Edward III.
This anti-German gesture, made at a critical
juncture of the First World War, produced one of Kaiser William
II's few jokes, when he remarked with heavy Teutonic humour
that he looked forward to attending a performance of The
Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. A more serious and altogether
grander criticism came from the Bavarian Count Albrecht von
Montgelas, who observed that 'the true royal tradition died
on that day in 1917 when, for a mere war, King George V changed
his name.'
The effect in Britain was instantaneous
and wholly positive. With the whole family swapping Germanic-sounding
for overtly British names - the Teck family became the Cambridges
and took the earldom of Athlone, the Battenbergs were transformed
into the Mountbattens with the marquisate of Milford Haven
- the royal family proclaimed itself thoroughly British, to
national applause. Despite the whispering campaign against
some members of his family that they were pro-German, George
V had always been quintessentially British, finding German
'a rotten language'. When H.G. Wells criticised 'an alien
and uninspiring court', the King retorted, 'I may be uninspiring,
but I'll be damned if I'm an alien!"
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