Queen Mary with Her Six Children

Queen Mary - known as "May" to her family members - is pictured here with her six children.  They are, in order of birth:

• Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, known as "David" (who later became Edward VIII)

• Albert Frederick Arthur George, known as "Bertie" (who later became George VI)

• Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary (who later became The Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood)

• Henry William Frederick Albert (who later became Duke of Gloucester)

• George Edward Alexander Edmund (who later became Duke of Kent)

• John Charles Francis (who died at 13, during an epileptic seizure, and was later known as "The Lost Prince")

After the death of their beloved grandfather, King Edward VII, these children lost a key figure in their young lives.  Their world changed in other ways as well, after their father's accession to the throne:

Now that their father was king, the Princes' status was enhanced.  Prince Edward (David) became heir apparent and was created prince of Wales in 1911. 

Price Albert, only eighteen months younger, had always felt unequal to his more obviously gifted brother and now he seemed more overshadowed than ever.  One of their tutors wrote of him, "One could wish that he had more of Prince Edward's keenness and application."

Comparisons between the two were all the more likely because their next sibling was a girl - the tomboyish Princess Mary, who became a passionate horsewoman - and five years separated Prince Albert from his next brother.

Prince Henry, a cheerful boy destined for a military career, and Prince George, the most debonair and self-assured of the brothers, were the first monarch's sons to be sent away to preparatory school. 

The youngest in the family, Prince John, born in 1905, suffered increasingly from epilepsy and died in 1919.  (The Queen Mother: The Official Biography, by William Shawcross, page 107.)