58 Facts About George V

George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

From 1877 to 1892, George V served in the Royal Navy, until the unexpected death of his elder brother in early 1892 put him directly in line for the throne.

George V married his brother's fiancee, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, the following year, and they had six children.

George V became king-emperor on his father's death in 1910.

George V's reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement, all of which radically changed the political landscape of the British Empire, which itself reached its territorial peak by the beginning of the 1920s.

In 1917, George V became the first monarch of the House of Windsor, which he renamed from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as a result of anti-German public sentiment.

George V appointed the first Labour ministry in 1924, and the 1931 Statute of Westminster recognised the Empire's dominions as separate, independent states within the British Commonwealth of Nations.

George V suffered from smoking-related health problems throughout much of his later reign.

George V was born on 3 June 1865, in Marlborough House, London.

George V was the second son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and Alexandra, Princess of Wales.

George V's father was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and his mother was the eldest daughter of King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark.

George V was baptised at Windsor Castle on 7 July 1865 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley.

George V was third in line to the throne, after his father, and elder brother, Prince Albert Victor.

In 1881 on a visit to Japan, George V had a local artist tattoo a blue and red dragon on his arm, and was received in an audience by the Emperor Meiji; George V and his brother presented Empress Haruko with two wallabies from Australia.

George V travelled the world, visiting many areas of the British Empire.

George V married Ferdinand, the future king of Romania, in 1893.

George V had only just recovered from a serious illness himself, having been confined to bed for six weeks with typhoid fever, the disease that was thought to have killed his grandfather Prince Albert.

George V was, on his own admission, unable to express his feelings easily in speech, but they often exchanged loving letters and notes of endearment.

George V was created Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killarney by Queen Victoria on 24 May 1892, and received lessons in constitutional history from JR Tanner.

George V preferred a simple, almost quiet, life, in marked contrast to the lively social life pursued by his father.

At the request of his father, "out of respect for poor dear Uncle Sasha's memory", George V joined his parents in Saint Petersburg for the funeral.

George V inherited the title of Duke of Cornwall, and for much of the rest of that year, he was known as the Duke of Cornwall and York.

George V presented thousands of specially designed South African War medals to colonial troops.

On 9 November 1901, George V was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester.

In contrast to Edward himself, whom Queen Victoria had deliberately excluded from state affairs, George V was given wide access to state documents by his father.

George V in turn allowed his wife access to his papers, as he valued her counsel and she often helped write her husband's speeches.

George V had never liked his wife's habit of signing official documents and letters as "Victoria Mary" and insisted she drop one of those names.

Later that year, a radical propagandist, Edward Mylius, published a lie that George V had secretly married in Malta as a young man, and that consequently his marriage to Queen Mary was bigamous.

The lie had first surfaced in print in 1893, but George V had shrugged it off as a joke.

George V objected to the anti-Catholic wording of the Accession Declaration that he would be required to make at the opening of his first parliament.

George V made it known that he would refuse to open parliament unless it was changed.

George V wore the newly created Imperial Crown of India at the ceremony, and declared the shifting of the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi.

George V was the only Emperor of India to be present at his own Delhi Durbar.

Knollys advised George V to accept the Cabinet's demands, while Stamfordham advised George V to accept the resignation.

George V later came to feel that Knollys had withheld information from him about the willingness of the opposition to form a government if the Liberals had resigned.

Desperate to avoid the prospect of civil war in Ireland between Unionists and Nationalists, George V called a meeting of all parties at Buckingham Palace in July 1914 in an attempt to negotiate a settlement.

George V had brothers-in-law and cousins who were British subjects but who bore German titles such as Duke and Duchess of Teck, Prince and Princess of Battenberg, and Prince and Princess of Schleswig-Holstein.

On 17 July 1917, George V appeased British nationalist feelings by issuing a royal proclamation that changed the name of the British royal house from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor.

George V compensated his male relatives by giving them British peerages.

Under pressure from his mother, George V removed the Garter flags of his German relations from St George V's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

In May 1922, George V toured Belgium and northern France, visiting the First World War cemeteries and memorials being constructed by the Imperial War Graves Commission.

The tour, and one short visit to Italy in 1923, were the only times George V agreed to leave the United Kingdom on official business after the end of the war.

George V cultivated friendly relations with moderate Labour Party politicians and trade union officials.

In 1924, George V appointed the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, in the absence of a clear majority for any one of the three major parties.

In 1926, George V hosted an Imperial Conference in London at which the Balfour Declaration accepted the growth of the British Dominions into self-governing "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another".

George V was concerned by the rise to power in Germany of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

In 1934, George V bluntly told the German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch that Germany was now the peril of the world, and that there was bound to be a war within ten years if Germany went on at the present rate; he warned the British ambassador in Berlin, Eric Phipps, to be suspicious of the Nazis.

In 1932, George V agreed to deliver a Royal Christmas speech on the radio, an event that became annual thereafter.

George V was not in favour of the innovation originally but was persuaded by the argument that it was what his people wanted.

George V was disappointed in Edward's failure to settle down in life and appalled by his many affairs with married women.

George V became gradually weaker, drifting in and out of consciousness.

At the procession to George V's lying in state in Westminster Hall, the cross surmounting the Imperial State Crown atop George V's coffin fell off and landed in the gutter as the cortege turned into New Palace Yard.

George V's eldest son and successor, Edward VIII, saw it fall and wondered whether it was a bad omen for his new reign.

George V was interred at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 28 January 1936.

George V disliked sitting for portraits and despised modern art; he was so displeased by one portrait by Charles Sims that he ordered it to be burned.

George V did admire sculptor Bertram Mackennal, who created statues of George for display in Madras and Delhi, and William Reid Dick, whose statue of George V stands outside Westminster Abbey, London.

George V established a standard of conduct for British royalty that reflected the values and virtues of the upper middle-class rather than upper-class lifestyles or vices.

George V was by temperament a traditionalist who never fully appreciated or approved the revolutionary changes under way in British society.