King George V and Queen Mary with their granddaughter Princess Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth II) at Craigweil House in Bognor Regis, 1929.

King George V and Queen Mary visit the war graves at Terlincthun cemetery in France on 13 May 1922. The King and Queen travelled to France and Belgium in May 1922 during what was known as the ‘King’s Pilgrimage’, visiting the cemeteries and memorials for those who were killed during the First World War. Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.

23 January 1936 | King George V’s funeral cortege passes through London on its way to Westminster Abbey. During the procession, part of the Imperial State Crown, which sat atop the King’s coffin, fell off. Some footage of the funeral procession shows the crown without the Maltese cross and orb.

As [the coffin] passed through streets packed to capacity with silent crowds, the Maltese cross - set with a sapphire said to have belonged to Edward the Confessor, eight medium-sized diamonds and 192 smaller diamonds - inexplicably fell from its place at the very top of the [Imperial State] Crown. Having caught a ‘flash of light dancing along pavement’, the new King’s [Edward VIII] instinct was to pick it up until, as he wrote, ‘a sense of dignity restrained me.’ 

‘Fortunately,’ he went on, ‘the Company Sergeant-Major bringing up the rear of the two files of Grenadiers... had also seen the accident. Quick as a flash, with scarcely a missed step, he... scooped up the cross with his hand, and dropped it into his pocket. It seemed’, said the King, ‘a strange thing to happen; and, although not superstitious, I wondered whether it was a bad omen.’ 

George V’s eldest son, King Edward VIII, abdicated on 11 December 1936, less than a year after inheriting the throne on 20th January, in order to marry his long-term mistress Mrs. Wallis Simpson, in an ordeal dubbed the ‘abdication crisis’. Wallis was, by then, a twice-divorced woman and as monarch Edward was the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which disapproved of the remarriage of a divorced person if the former spouse was still alive. Rather than remain King without Wallis by his side, or marry her against the wishes of his ministers and cause a constitutional crisis, Edward chose to abdicate and was succeeded by his brother, King George VI - father of the current Queen Elizabeth II. Before his death, King George V is quoted to have said that David, as Edward was known by family and friends, would ‘ruin himself within a year’.

King George V and Queen Mary, when the Duke and Duchess of York, with their eldest child Prince Edward, later King Edward VIII. Photographed outside Sandringham House c. 1894-95. © The Royal Collection.

Prince George of York (future King George V) with Princess Mary on board HMS Crescent in August 1898. © The Royal Collection.

The Duke of York and his son, Prince Edward of York, September, 1898. Both future Kings George V and Edward VIII. © The Royal Collection.