Jane Dismore

“Her life as Queen began with cruel suddenness on 6 February 1952 when her father died. At 25, she was the same age as Elizabeth I had been when she came to the throne but, unlike the Virgin Queen, she was enjoying the fifth year of married life. With two young children…”

“Importantly, since childhood, she had seen the example set by her parents and both sets of grandparents: for her grandmother, Queen Mary, in particular, stoicism and self-control were paramount.” … “Queen Mary had outlived her husband and now a third son…”

I needed a pick for a challenge about Britain (https://www.lovelybooks.de/thema/2019-2020-Gro%C3%9Fbritannien-das-vereinigte-Koenigreich-und-Irland-die-Challenge-geht-weiter-1757139023/1757139131) to fit the category “royal family”; and with “THE Queen”, I am impressed by her sense of duty and respect. I am not going for any "glamour in royalty" as I doubt anyone could honestly wish to have a life so much under the looking glass, with such little privacy, so much threat, and days pre-planned without end (I have never been impressed by many others within the British royals, maybe the Queen Mom, Prince Philip and his remarks, and somewhat Prince Charles – not much glamour, as I had said).

I had expected to read a little more about upbringing, principles applied there, education, etc., but this is not quite what you get. A lot of this book is on what happened BEFORE the little princess was even born. If it had referred to how her parents met (in short), I might have been okay, but it is lots of stuff way off. Like, was she delivered via caesarian and did the Queen Mum get pregnant via artificial insemination - which is what the book hints at - might offer insight about the lifes of her parents (the hopes, the expectations, the fears,...), but not for Queen Elizabeth herself, I should think (other than that she was really wanted and that her parents had means, which should be expected).

Also, the text did discuss in length about some male cousin to the Queen Mom (Queen Elizabeth’ mother) who apparently fathered an illegitimate daughter, and married her mother shortly after. Certainly a topic at that time, but what does it have to do with the topical Queen; especially given that the book says even her mother only learned about this much later? This gets to be almost disturbing when the author rants about whether Queen Elizabeth’s mother the Queen Mom was indeed her own parents’ biological child, or rather the cook’s daughter, some Marguerite Rodier, just like her younger brother David , raised by them as their own (given the Throne comes through QEII’s father and not her mother, and that you really wonder what the…; though obviously, it seems to actually HAVE been a somewhat common practice for the well-off where theses days Madonna or the like would adopt or have host mothers – it just was not talked about, but I had it mentioned in several other books, but still, what…).

On the "looking-glass" issue - some of the remaining text is pretty much that. The toddler princess was taken out to play. She was inside to play. She was out again......Her parents went this part and that … A sack of rice falls over in China.
The parts with the school schedule was what I found more interesting or the different nannies and their principles of education or remarks about character traits or her parents’ approach to non-fuss, no spoiling (so Elizabeth is bred to have manners and discipline, while her younger sister Margaret is rather, well, a spoiled brat). Could have been 30 pages instead of 120 for the beginning, so far.

And I needed lots of Wikipedia (I suggest to first look at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_II.#Vorfahren
and browse through the different relatives up to maybe Queen Victoria) to handle the masses of names and relations, especially as there are often the same names for different persons (because the newborns receive the names from various godparents and relatives, the official names might differ from names used in private, and one person might inherit titles or marry into new families). Example? The Queen Mom:
she was born Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon
her father Claude Bowes-Lyon was Lord Glamis then, he later became the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne - which made her a Lady, when she married the second son of then King George and Queen Mary, she became Duchess of York by marriage to the Duke of York, when her husband's older brother abdicated, she became queen (or rather, queen consort, as she was not queen in her own right)
oh, and her husband who to the family was Albert "Bertie", chose to be George VI as king. ... this shows how the depictions for one and the same person might vary throughout the text, some due to titles, some due to custom.

The Queen in a speech in Australia, 1954: “Philip once met an Australian man who said: ‘My wife is a doctor of philosophy and much more important than I am.’ Philip said: ‘Ah yes, we have that trouble in our family too.’
She fell in love with him when she was 13, and he was 19, a handsome cadet in Britain’s Royal Navy.

The book will a little more interesting when it comes to the topic of the marriage. Quite a lot relates to how interlinking their lives had been from the start, though it does not mention that one can safely assume this to be the case with other members of Europe’s royal families, too. After all, most of them were related with generations of intermarriage, and contact was encouraged for generations to come, literally.
„Shortly before meeting their new granddaughter [later Elizabeth II], the Kind and Queen [George V + Mary] had lunched at Windsor Castle with three guests, one of whom was Princess Alice of Greece. Her husband was Prince Andrea, son of Danish-born King George I of Greece who was assassinated in 1913. Prince Andrea was also a first cousin of George V. … their youngest child and only son was 5-year-old Prince Philip.”
…
“Princess Alice [of Greece, Philip’s mother] was no stranger to Windsor Castle; she was a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and was born there in 1885. With her at the luncheon were her sister Louise, who by marriage was Crown Princess of Sweden; and their widowed mother, Victoria, a granddaughter of Quen Victoria. Princess Victoria had married the German Prince Louis of Battenberg, Britain’s First Sea Lord, but sensitivities during the Great War led to their name being changed to Mountbatten.” …
“Alice’s brothers, George and Louis Mountbatten, would come to play an important part in her son’s upbringing.”

And here, rather, me of all sorts – I recommend you better get a Netflix subscription (or do the trial month for free or buy the DVD) and watch “The Crown” with maybe a little of the Wikipedia mentioned above. Much better, less of the chitchat.  

3 stars because if was easy to read after all and seemingly factually correct. Also got me to research into the family connections (a table would have been great) and, yes, to renew my Netflix for "The Crown".