Mary of Teck

Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes; 26 May 1867 – 24 March 1953) was the queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India, as the wife of King-Emperor George V.

Although technically a princess of Teck, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, she was born and brought up in the United Kingdom. Her parents were Francis, Duke of Teck, who was of German extraction, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a member of the British Royal Family. To her family, she was informally known as "May", after her birth month. At the age of 24 she was betrothed to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, but six weeks after the announcement of the engagement he died unexpectedly of pneumonia. The following year she became engaged to Albert Victor's next surviving brother, George, who subsequently became king. Before her husband's accession she was successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall and Princess of Wales. As his queen consort from 1910, she supported her husband through the First World War, his ill-health and major political changes arising from the aftermath of the war and the rise of socialism and nationalism. After George's death in 1936, her eldest son Edward became King-Emperor, but to her dismay he abdicated the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, Albert, who succeeded to the throne as George VI, until his death in 1952. She died the following year, at the beginning of the reign of her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Briefly, there were three queens in the country: Mary; her daughter-in-law, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; and Elizabeth II.