So this here is Mary of Teck (1867-1953). Where is Teck, you ask? Good question, but not really that important (Teck was an area in SW Deutschland, the home of a bunch of minor German royals and a burnt down castle). The point about Mary of Teck is that she also happened to be married to the King of England. How nice.
Mary’s German father had married into the British Royal family, and Mary was born and raised in England. Her parents were a rather mismatched couple, who were also spectacularly in debt most of the time, and Mary spent a good portion of her childhood in exile in Europe while her family tried to avoid their English creditors.
Their one saving grace was Mary – good old Queen Vic had taken a shine to the comely lass and arranged an engagement between her and Prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson and heir to the British throne, which meant an end to the Teck’s financial misfortunes. Huzzah! Everything went swimmingly…for the first 6 weeks, and then the Prince inconveniently died of the flu.
But canny Queen Vic had a back-up plan. “Mary” she said, “Mary, do not fear for I happen to have another grandson who needs a wife, and to be honest you’ll hardly notice the difference between them, they all look the same to me” *. Huzzah! So Mary married Prince George instead and found herself Queen of England in no time.
By all accounts, Mary was rather a formidable mother and Queen, with a very strong sense of duty and she supported her husband George V during WWI as he tried to hide any German familial connections with the British royal family (a bit of a challenge when the Kaiser is your cousin, but his plan of getting everyone in the family to change their names, and stick their fingers in their ears and say “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU MEIN FREUND” seemed to work pretty well).
The coolest thing about Queen Mary though was that she had mad accessorising skillz. She had access to the best collection of jewellery in the Empire and she just piled it on, layer upon layer upon layer, like a Sara Lee pastry. She was particularly fond of multi-layered diamond chokers teamed with strands of long necklaces which reached down to her waist, a very Edwardian look which emphasised the length of her neck (and looks weirdly African to me). She was also a big fan of the stomacher – pieces of jewellery which covered the front of the bodice, and which were basically just another excuse to wear more bling. Mary wore them all the time and endlessly modified pieces in her collection so she could wear them on her stomach. I love the idea of stomachers, it’s an area much under-utilised for adornment these days, but she was the last monarch to embrace them as the look died out in the 1920s when waistlines disappeared. *le sigh.
I think it’s time for a stomacher revival.
*conversation may not have actually happened outside of my head.
