They got married without suspecting the surprise that the future held for them, which played in their favor. Today, a few days before the coronation of Carlos III, marks a century of a marriage that would become decisive for British royalty. Albert, Duke of York, the second son of the kings of England, and Elisabeth Bowes-Lyon said yes in Westminster Abbey on April 26, 1923, a wedding considered modern in its time and that marked a before and an after in some traditions of British royalty. In addition to becoming, without knowing it, the link of the future kings of the country.
Thirteen years later, the monarch’s grandparents and Elizabeth II’s parents would be crowned after the unpredictable abdication of Edward VIII to marry a double divorcee, the American Wallis Simpson. But that day in April a hundred years ago, no one could have imagined what would end up happening and the wedding was celebrated with certain licenses that were difficult to conceive of in a link starring the crown prince. To begin with, the very origin of the bride.
For the first time, a prince of British royalty was not marrying a princess, although the future queen mother, young daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathearn, could boast of an aristocratic family, descended from the Scottish royal house. But it was an unequal marriage that was interpreted as a gesture of political modernization. As happened much later with Diana Spencer, the young woman dazzled her subjects and the press when the engagement was announced. A crowd of citizens took to the streets to follow the wedding procession, which included representatives of other European royal houses in a long list of almost 1,800 guests, such as King Alfonso XIII of Spain or Haakon VII of Norway.
Elisabeth, who needed three proposals to get engaged, as she feared losing her freedom of action and thought if she was part of the royal family, did not wear a tiara as was customary for royal brides and opted for a plant-based diadem to hold the veil. This was one of the many modern gestures made by the future queen consort, the last one before Camila’s arrival. Another detail: she wore short flapper-style hair, very popular among the girls of the roaring twenties.
The future queen mother imposed her style on the strict protocol of the royal house. The best proof of this was the medieval-inspired wedding dress with gold embroidery and pearls, now a jewel of haute couture. The work of Seymour-Handley of Bond Street, Queen Mary’s dressmaker, it also responded to the prevailing popular fashion and to the concept of freedom that Coco Chanel and the future queen herself proclaimed.
Thus, for the first time, a royal bride wore a low-waisted, loose-fitting, straight dress with two trains, although discreet. One of them started from her shoulder and the other from her hip. In addition, she wore a silver leaf belt that incorporated a green tulle, a color that was linked to her bad omen. They also say that it is bad luck to know the bride’s dress before the wedding, and that is what happened. All the details of the design were given before the celebration of the ceremony, which, by the way, could have marked another point of modernity if the church had agreed to broadcast it live on the radio, as requested by the newly created BBC. But the Archbishop of Canterbury feared that this sacred sacrament could be followed from the bar and denied the request.
Would this wedding have changed much if it had featured the heir to the throne instead of the spare, that substitute that Prince Henry has made so popular with the publication of his memoirs? The answer belongs to the speculative genre, although there is no doubt that sometimes the second ends up being the first. George VI, the stuttering king, is an example of this, like his father George V. And many others throughout history who one day, against all odds, got the biggest surprise.
