Why Did the British Royal Family Erase Him From History? (Documentary)

0:00 On August 25th, 1942,

0:03 a Royal Air Force flying boat disappeared into the thick Scottish fog.

0:09 30 minutes after takeoff, it slammed into a remote hillside,

0:14 erupting into a massive fireball that scattered wreckage across the heather.

0:19 Of the 15 men aboard, 14 died instantly.

0:23 Among the bodies pulled from the burning debris was a prince.

0:27 His identity bracelet told the grim story.

0:30 His royal highness, the Duke of Kent.

0:33 The news sent shock waves through Britain.

0:36 Prince George was the younger brother of the king,

0:39 the uncle of the future Queen Elizabeth.

0:42 And now, at just 39 years old,

0:45 he had become the first member of the British royal

0:48 family to die in active military service in over 450 years.

0:54 Yet here is where the story takes a strange turn.

0:58 In the decades that followed, something peculiar happened.

1:02 Or rather, something didn't happen.

1:05 No statues were erected in George's honor.

1:08 No hospitals bore his name.

1:11 No grand memorials marked his sacrifice.

1:14 The royal family, usually so eager to commemorate their fallen,

1:18 seemed content to let Prince George fade into obscurity.

1:22 There was no official biography, no documentary for decades, just silence.

1:28 Why would they want to forget a prince who gave his life for his country?

1:33 The answer lies in what George did while he was alive.

1:37 Because behind the polished image of the dashing duke was a man

1:40 who lived one of the most scandalous lives in royal history.

1:45 A man whose secrets made his brother Edward's

1:47 affair with Wallace Simpson look almost tame by comparison.

1:52 While Edward's romance dominated headlines and nearly destroyed the monarchy,

1:56 George's indiscretions were far more dangerous.

2:00 They were hidden, covered up, buried.

2:03 He broke every rule the royal family held sacred.

2:07 And when he died, they tried to erase him from history.

2:10 And the story of the forgotten prince refuses to stay buried.

2:15 To understand how George became the most

2:17 whispered about royal of his generation, we have to go back to the beginning.

2:22 Prince George, Edward Alexander Edmund,

2:26 came into the world at 7:35 in the evening on December 20th, 1902.

2:32 The location was York Cottage,

2:34 a modest house on the Sandringham estate in Norolk

2:38 that his parents inexplicably loved despite

2:41 its cramped rooms and dark corridors.

2:43 His father was [music] the Prince of Wales, the future King George V.

2:49 His mother was Princess Mary of Tech,

2:51 a woman known for her rigid posture and even more rigid sense of duty.

2:57 George arrived as the fourth son.

2:59 Ahead of him in the line of succession [music] stood his father,

3:03 then his brother Edward, then Albert, then Henry.

3:07 He was fifth in line to the throne,

3:09 which in practical terms meant he was nowhere near it at all.

3:13 The crown would have to pass through four lives before reaching him.

3:17 It was, by royal standards, a position of comfortable irrelevance,

3:22 [music] and that irrelevance would shape everything.

3:26 The household George was born into, was not a warm one.

3:30 His father, the future king, believed in discipline above all else.

3:35 He had been raised in the stern traditions of the Victorian Navy

3:39 and saw no reason why his sons should be spared the same treatment.

3:44 Meals were formal.

3:45 Affection was rationed.

3:47 The children addressed their parents with deference bordering on fear.

3:52 George's mother, though devoted to her husband and her duty,

3:56 was not given to displays of tenderness.

3:59 She collected miniatures and antiques with more

4:02 visible passion than she showed her children.

4:05 George had five siblings in all.

4:07 Edward, the eldest, was being groomed for kingship.

4:11 Albert, the second son,

4:13 struggled with a debilitating stammer [music] and lived in his brother's shadow.

4:18 Henry, II, was solid and dependable, but unremarkable.

4:23 Mary, the only daughter, occupied her own separate world of expectations.

4:29 And then there was John.

4:31 Prince John was born in 1905, 3 years after George.

4:36 From an early age, it became clear that something was different about him.

4:41 He suffered from epilepsy and what doctors

4:43 of the time vaguely described as developmental delays.

4:48 As John's condition [music] worsened,

4:50 the royal family made a decision that would seem cruel by modern standards,

4:54 but was considered merciful then.

4:57 They sent him away.

4:59 John was moved to Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate,

5:02 hidden from public view, raised by a governness far from his siblings.

5:07 He died in January 1919, [music] just 13 years old, after a severe seizure.

5:13 The family grieved privately.

5:16 The public barely knew he had existed.

5:19 George, watching all of this, [music]

5:21 understood something fundamental about royal life.

5:24 You could be erased.

5:26 If you became inconvenient, embarrassing, or simply too difficult to explain,

5:32 you could be quietly removed from the story.

5:35 It was a lesson he would have done well to remember.

5:39 As a young boy, George stood out from his brothers.

5:43 Where Edward was restless and Henry was stolid, George was curious.

5:47 He had a quick mind and a natural charm that drew people to him.

5:52 He loved music, art, and languages.

5:54 His tutors noted his intelligence.

5:57 His mother's ladies in waiting adored his wit.

6:01 In a family that valued tradition over creativity and duty over pleasure.

6:06 George was something of an anomaly.

6:08 He asked questions.

6:10 He wanted to know why things were done a certain way.

6:13 He had opinions.

6:15 None of this impressed his father.

6:18 At 13, like his brothers before him, George was sent to the Royal Naval College.

6:23 First to Osbborne on the aisle of White, then to Dartmouth.

6:27 It was the family tradition.

6:29 Every prince served in the Navy.

6:31 Every prince learned discipline, obedience, and the value of hierarchy.

6:37 The fact that George had no interest in any of it was irrelevant.

6:41 He hated it from the start.

6:44 the rigid schedules, the endless drills, the suffocating sameness of naval life.

6:51 George applied himself at first,

6:52 as he always did, and his marks were respectable.

6:56 He excelled at languages and was

6:58 eventually assigned duties as a French interpreter.

7:02 But the boredom gnored at him.

7:04 The structure felt like a cage.

7:06 He began writing letters to his father, pleading to be allowed to leave.

7:11 I'm not cut out for the Navy, he wrote.

7:14 I've tried to make him see, but it's no use.

7:17 King George V refused.

7:20 His reasoning was simple and absolute.

7:23 It had never been done before.

7:25 No prince had ever left naval service to pursue something else.

7:29 Tradition demanded obedience, and obedience demanded silence.

7:34 George would serve whether he liked it or not.

7:37 A friend of the family, Mabel, Countess of Eely,

7:41 recalled George confiding in her during royal ascot.

7:44 He told her he was desperately unhappy.

7:47 He wanted to join the civil service or the foreign office,

7:51 somewhere he could use his mind, somewhere he could make a difference.

7:56 But his father wouldn't hear of it.

7:58 His only reason for refusing is that it had never been done before.

8:03 George told her bitterly.

8:05 "What can I do?" The countis advised patients.

8:09 Work hard, she said.

8:10 Complete your service, pass the civil service examinations on your own,

8:15 then present your father with results he cannot ignore.

8:18 It took years, but eventually the strategy worked.

8:22 George's health, never robust, began to fail.

8:26 Severe digestive problems plagued him throughout his naval career.

8:30 Finally, mercifully, he was discharged,

8:33 and in a break with centuries of royal tradition,

8:37 Prince George became the first member of the British

8:39 royal family to work as a civil servant.

8:42 He had escaped one cage.

8:45 But freedom, as George would soon discover, came with dangers of its own.

8:50 Because in London, far from the watchful eyes

8:53 of Sandringham and the rigid discipline of naval life,

8:56 a whole new world was waiting.

8:59 a world of jazz clubs and cocktails,

9:01 of forbidden pleasures and dangerous friends.

9:05 And George was about to dive in head first.

9:08 When George finally escaped the Navy in 1929,

9:12 he did what any young prince with money,

9:15 charm, and no responsibilities would do.

9:18 He moved in with his favorite brother.

9:20 Edward, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne,

9:24 kept a residence at York House in London.

9:27 It was supposed to be a respectable establishment befitting the future king.

9:32 In reality, it was a bachelor's paradise.

9:35 Edward filled it with parties, jazz music,

9:39 and a rotating cast of glamorous women.

9:42 He drank, he danced until dawn.

9:44 He flouted every expectation his father had for him.

9:48 And now, George was living under the same roof.

9:52 The two brothers had always been close, despite the 8-year gap between them.

9:57 Edward later wrote in his memoirs

9:59 that George possessed qualities akin to his own.

10:03 "We became more than brothers," he recalled.

10:05 "We became close friends.

10:08 They shared the same sense of humor,

10:10 the same restless energy, the same impatience with royal protocol.

10:15 They also shared a taste for danger.

10:18 London in the late 1920s was a city transformed.

10:22 The war had shattered the old certainties.

10:25 Young people who had watched their friends die

10:27 in the trenches had little patience for Victorian morality.

10:32 Jazz clubs sprouted [music] across the West End.

10:35 Cocktails flowed in speak easys hidden behind unmarked doors.

10:39 And beneath the glittering surface, a secret world thrived.

10:44 a world where men loved men and women loved women

10:48 despite laws that could send them to prison for it.

10:51 George discovered [music] this world and he embraced it completely.

10:56 It started with the nightclubs.

10:59 George became a regular at London's most fashionable establishments,

11:03 often in the company of actresses, socialites,

11:07 and aristocrats who shared his appetite for excitement.

11:11 He was seen with banking ays Poppy Bearing,

11:15 a vivacious young woman his parents deemed entirely unsuitable for a prince.

11:20 He reportedly had affairs with Hollywood stars and cabaret singers,

11:25 the actress Tula Bankhead, the legendary Florence Mills, Gloria Swanson.

11:31 His conquest became the stuff of whispered legend,

11:35 but women were only half the story.

11:38 In 1921, George met a man who would change his life.

11:42 His name was Noel Coward.

11:45 Coward was everything the royal family distrusted.

11:48 A playright, an actor, a wit whose sharp tongue spared no one.

11:53 He was flamboyant, [music] theatrical,

11:55 and openly moved in circles where homosexuality was an open secret.

12:00 He was also irresistibly charming.

12:03 George fell hard.

12:05 What began as friendship quickly became something more.

12:09 According to multiple accounts, George and Coward carried on a relationship

12:13 that [music] would last nearly two decades.

12:16 They wrote letters to each other, intimate letters,

12:19 the kind of letters that could destroy a prince if they ever became public.

12:24 And George was not careful.

12:26 British security services [music] kept files on members of the royal family,

12:30 monitoring their movements and associations.

12:33 The reports on George made for alarming reading.

12:38 According to one account, agents observed George and Coward walking through

12:42 the streets of London dressed as women.

12:44 Full makeup, women's clothing, two of the most recognizable men in England,

12:50 parading through the West End in drag.

12:53 On at least one occasion, they were allegedly arrested.

12:57 The charge was suspected prostitution.

13:00 When police realized they had the king's son in custody,

13:03 George was quietly released.

13:06 No charges were filed.

13:07 No record was kept.

13:09 The incident was buried.

13:11 But it wasn't the only one.

13:13 George's indiscretions piled up like unpaid debts.

13:17 He reportedly had affairs with the writer Cecil Roberts,

13:21 a man who also claimed to have been involved with the actor Lawrence Olivier.

13:27 There were rumors about Prince Louis Ferdinan of Prussia, George's own cousin.

13:32 And then there was Anthony Blunt.

13:35 Blunt was an art historian, a Cambridge intellectual,

13:39 and a man who moved easily through the highest circles of British society.

13:44 He and George allegedly became close during this period.

13:48 Blunt would later become surveyor of the king's pictures,

13:51 responsible for the Royal Art Collection.

13:54 He would also be exposed decades later as a Soviet spy,

13:59 one of the infamous Cambridge 5 who

14:02 passed secrets to Moscow throughout the Cold War.

14:05 The Queen's own art curator, a traitor,

14:08 and possibly once upon a time the lover of her uncle.

14:13 George's father knew something was wrong.

14:16 King George V was not a sophisticated man, but he was not blind.

14:21 He saw the late nights.

14:23 He heard the whispers.

14:24 He understood on some level what his son was.

14:28 According to one account, the king made a dark joke about George's situation.

14:34 He suggested that his son should be assigned a ballerina

14:37 as his aid to camp so that nothing scandalous could happen.

14:42 It was cruel humor, the kind that acknowledges

14:44 a truth while pretending to dismiss it.

14:47 The nickname Georgie had once been affectionate.

14:51 Now it carried a different weight.

14:53 In certain circles it became a knowing reference,

14:57 a wink, an acknowledgment of the prince's open secret.

15:02 But George seemed almost to enjoy the danger.

15:05 Where other men in his position might have hidden,

15:08 he flaunted, he dressed impeccably,

15:10 favoring elegant suits that became so associated with him

15:14 that the style was simply called the Kent.

15:17 He attended the opera, the ballet, the theater.

15:21 He surrounded himself with artists and intellectuals,

15:25 people his family would never have approved of.

15:28 He lived as though the rules did not apply to him.

15:31 And for a while, they didn't.

15:34 George was protected by his birth.

15:37 The press in those days operated under an unspoken agreement.

15:41 Royal scandals were not reported.

15:43 Police looked the other way.

15:45 Embarrassing incidents were quietly handled.

15:48 The machinery of the establishment existed in part to protect

15:53 men like George from the consequences of their own behavior.

15:57 But protection has limits.

15:59 And George was about to meet someone who would push him past all of them.

16:04 She was American.

16:05 She was beautiful.

16:07 She was connected to some of the wealthiest families in the world.

16:11 and she carried a nickname that told you everything

16:14 you needed to know about the danger she represented.

16:18 They called her the girl with the silver syringe.

16:21 Her name was Kiki Preston, and she was about to introduce Prince George

16:26 to a darkness from which he might never fully escape.

16:30 Kiki Preston was not like the other women in George's life.

16:34 She was wilder, more reckless, [music] and far more dangerous.

16:39 Born Alice Gwyn in 1898, she came from American aristocracy.

16:45 Her family [music] was connected to the Vanderbilts,

16:47 one of the wealthiest dynasties in the United States.

16:51 She had money, beauty, and absolutely no interest in respectability.

16:55 [music] Her first marriage to a man named Horus Allen ended quickly.

17:01 Her second to banker Jerome Preston in 1925

17:06 gave her the name she would carry into infamy.

17:09 But it was her third association that defined her.

17:13 She became part of the Happy Valley set.

17:16 [music] Happy Valley was a community of wealthy British

17:19 expatriots who had settled in the highlands of Kenya.

17:23 They were aristocrats, adventurers,

17:26 and outcasts who had fled the constraints of English society

17:30 for a place where they could indulge every appetite without consequence.

17:35 The parties were legendary.

17:37 The affairs were constant, and the drugs flowed freely.

17:42 Kiki fit right in.

17:44 She earned her nickname through her preferred method of administration.

17:48 While others smoked or snorted, Kiki injected.

17:53 Heroin was her drug of choice,

17:55 delivered through a syringe she allegedly kept polished to a shine.

17:59 [music] The girl with the silver syringe.

18:02 It was meant as dark humor.

18:04 It was also a warning.

18:07 George met her in the mid 1920s and the attraction was immediate.

18:12 Kiki was everything he craved.

18:15 Glamorous, uninhibited, completely indifferent to the judgment of others.

18:20 She had reportedly counted among her lovers

18:23 the legendary silent film star Rudolph Valentino.

18:27 She collected conquest the way other women collected jewelry.

18:31 And [music] now she had a prince in her sights.

18:34 What happened next nearly destroyed him.

18:37 Kiki introduced George to drugs.

18:40 Not the casual experimentation of a bored aristocrat, but the real thing.

18:45 Morphine first, then cocaine, then heroin.

18:49 The prince, who had spent his life searching for stimulation,

18:53 had finally found something that delivered it directly into his bloodstream.

18:57 He was hooked almost immediately.

19:00 The affair [music] spiraled into something darker than mere romance.

19:05 There were parties that lasted for days,

19:07 binges that left George unable to function.

19:10 [music] According to some accounts,

19:13 the relationship expanded beyond the two of them.

19:16 Rumors circulated about a manager involving George Kiki and Horge Ferrara,

19:23 the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to London.

19:27 Whether true or exaggerated,

19:29 the stories painted a picture of a prince completely out of control.

19:34 George's family watched in horror.

19:36 His father, King George V, [music] had tolerated the nightclubs and overlooked

19:41 the whispers about his son's sexuality.

19:44 But drug addiction was different.

19:46 This was visible.

19:48 This was dangerous.

19:50 This could not be hidden forever.

19:53 It was Edward who finally intervened.

19:55 The Prince of Wales had always been closest to George.

19:58 They had lived together, partied together, [music] covered for each other.

20:03 But Edward recognized that his brother had crossed a line.

20:06 According to multiple accounts, [music] Edward confronted Kiki Preston directly.

20:11 The details vary depending on the source.

20:14 Some say Kiki had suffered a miscarriage, possibly carrying George's child.

20:19 Others say [music] Edward simply demanded she

20:22 leave England and never contact his brother again.

20:26 Whatever the exact circumstances,

20:28 [music] Kiki departed, but George's addiction remained.

20:33 Edward took charge of his brother's rehabilitation personally.

20:37 He arranged for George to be moved to a country estate far from London,

20:41 far from his usual haunts, far from anyone who might supply him with drugs.

20:46 A qualified nursing staff was brought in to supervise the withdrawal.

20:50 George was essentially imprisoned for his own good.

20:54 Edward wrote about the experience to [music]

20:56 his mistress at the time, Freda Dudley Ward.

20:59 His words revealed both his frustration and his love for his brother.

21:04 The cure has reached a rather tricky stage, he confided.

21:08 I'm carrying out the work of doctor, jailer, and detective combined.

21:13 He added with evident exasperation.

21:16 The old saying, boys will be boys,

21:19 is all right until [music] you get too old and should know the form better.

21:23 He seems to lack all sense of knowing

21:26 what is so obviously the wrong thing to do.

21:29 The withdrawal was brutal.

21:31 Heroin and morphine do not release their grip easily.

21:35 George suffered through the sweats, the [music] shakes,

21:38 the cravings that must have felt like they would never end.

21:41 But Edward refused to give up.

21:43 Day after day, he stayed with his brother.

21:47 Day after day, he watched over him.

21:50 And eventually, mercifully, George emerged on the other side.

21:54 He was clean, or at least clean [music] enough to function.

21:58 clean enough to resume his public duties, clean enough to be presentable again.

22:04 Kiki Preston's story did not end as well.

22:08 She drifted through the following years,

22:10 her addiction consuming more and more of her life.

22:14 In 1946, 4 years after George's death,

22:18 she checked into the Stan Hope Hotel in New York City.

22:21 She never checked out.

22:23 According to official reports, she jumped from a [music] window.

22:27 The girl with the silver syringe was gone,

22:30 but she left behind one final mystery.

22:33 Rumors persisted for decades that George had fathered

22:37 a child with Kiki [music] during their affair.

22:40 The alleged son was Michael Temple Canfield,

22:44 born in 1926 and adopted by American publisher Cass Canfield.

22:50 Michael grew up wealthy and wellconed.

22:53 He eventually married Lee Radzil, the younger sister of Jqueline Kennedy.

22:58 If the rumors were true, that meant a possible son of Prince George [music]

23:03 had married into the family of an American president.

23:06 The royal family never acknowledged any of it.

23:10 They never would.

23:12 George had survived the drugs.

23:14 He had survived the scandal, but his reputation within the family was shattered.

23:20 His father looked at him with disappointment.

23:22 His mother maintained her usual distance.

23:25 The establishment that had protected him now viewed him as a liability.

23:31 Something had to change.

23:33 And as it happened, they had already found the perfect candidate.

23:37 George had a problem that no amount of rehab could fix.

23:41 He had left evidence everywhere.

23:43 Throughout his years of reckless living,

23:46 the prince had been remarkably indiscreet.

23:49 He wrote letters, passionate,

23:51 intimate letters to his lovers, both male and female.

23:55 He gave gifts with personal inscriptions.

23:58 [music] He posed for photographs that no member

24:00 of the royal family should ever have allowed to exist.

24:04 And [music] now, scattered across London and Paris and God knows where else,

24:09 that evidence waited like a ticking bomb.

24:14 The blackmail attempts began in the early 1930s.

24:17 One of the most serious involved a French

24:20 architect with whom George had been romantically involved.

24:24 The man possessed compromising materials and made it

24:27 clear he expected to be compensated for his silence.

24:30 The price of discretion was high.

24:33 The price of exposure was unthinkable.

24:35 Buckingham Palace mobilized.

24:38 Two emissaries were dispatched to Paris acting on direct orders from the king.

24:43 Their mission was simple.

24:45 retrieved the evidence by [music] any means necessary.

24:48 What followed was something closer to a spy thriller than royal protocol.

24:54 The men broke into the architect's apartment.

24:57 They located a gold box with a personal inscription

25:00 on the lid along with several incriminating letters in George's handwriting.

25:05 They took everything and vanished [music] back to London.

25:09 The incident was never reported.

25:12 The architect was presumably paid off or threatened into silence.

25:16 The evidence was destroyed and George carried on as if nothing had happened.

25:22 But it kept happening.

25:23 The letters George had written to Noel

25:25 Coward presented [music] an ongoing vulnerability.

25:29 For nearly two decades, the prince had poured his heart onto paper,

25:33 sending intimate correspondence to the playwright he loved.

25:37 Coward [music] kept them all.

25:38 They were precious to him.

25:40 momentos of a relationship that had defined much of his emotional life.

25:45 [music] But their existence terrified the palace.

25:48 In 1942, someone decided the risk was too great.

25:53 Lord Beaverbrook, the powerful newspaper baron and minister of supply,

25:57 allegedly arranged for the letters to be stolen from Coward's home in Belgravia.

26:02 The theft was carried out discreetly.

26:04 [music] Coward was devastated by the loss,

26:07 but powerless to do anything about it.

26:11 Years later, Beaverbrook's daughter admitted she had

26:14 once seen the letters in her father's safe.

26:17 After his death in 1964, they were never found.

26:21 [music] There were other incidents, other payoffs,

26:24 other desperate missions to retrieve evidence from former lovers.

26:29 A male prostitute in Paris reportedly blackmailed George over additional

26:33 letters which had [music] to be bought back at considerable expense.

26:37 The royal machine worked constantly to [music]

26:40 clean up the messes the prince left behind.

26:43 By the early 1930s, the family had reached a conclusion.

26:48 George needed to be controlled.

26:50 [music] He needed stability.

26:52 He needed above all a wife.

26:55 The search for a suitable bride was not left to chance.

26:59 George had already been romantically linked

27:01 to several women the palace considered inappropriate.

27:05 Poppy Bearing, the banking,

27:07 was dismissed despite George's genuine affection for her.

27:11 She simply wasn't royal enough.

27:14 What George needed was a princess.

27:17 Someone with the right bloodline, the right connections,

27:20 and ideally the right temperament to manage

27:23 a man who seemed incapable of managing himself.

27:27 They found her in Princess Marina of Greece.

27:30 Marina was born in December 1906 in Athens,

27:35 the youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece

27:38 and Grand Duchess Elellanena Vladimirna of Russia.

27:41 Her pedigree was impeccable.

27:44 Through her father, she descended from the kings of Denmark and Greece.

27:48 Through her mother, she was a granddaughter of a Russian

27:51 Grand Duke and great granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II.

27:56 She counted half the crowned heads of Europe among her relatives.

28:00 But Merina was more than a collection of titles.

28:04 She was intelligent, stylish,

28:06 and possessed of a sophistication that came from a childhood spent in exile.

28:10 [music] Political upheaval had forced her family

28:14 to flee Greece when she was young.

28:16 They had lived in Switzerland, then Paris,

28:19 moving through the drawing rooms of dispossessed [music] royalty.

28:23 Marina had learned to adapt, to charm, to survive.

28:27 She spoke multiple languages fluently.

28:30 She dressed impeccably.

28:32 She knew how to navigate a world where nothing was certain.

28:37 George and Marina first met at a lunch party

28:39 in 1933 hosted by the society figure Emerald Cunid.

28:45 The attraction was not immediate.

28:47 George reportedly found Marina bossy.

28:50 She found him charming but complicated.

28:53 But something sparked between them and they agreed to meet again.

28:58 When Marina returned to England the following spring,

29:01 George was among the first to call on her.

29:04 They went to the movies together.

29:06 They danced at the embassy club on Bond Street.

29:09 George took her for long drives in his sports car,

29:12 pushing the speedometer while Marina refused to flinch.

29:16 They walked in Green Park, talking for hours.

29:20 Gradually, the relationship deepened into something real.

29:24 George spoke of her with genuine wonder.

29:27 "She is the one woman with whom I could be happy

29:30 to spend the rest [music] of my life," he told friends.

29:34 We laugh at the same sort of thing.

29:36 She beats me at most games and she doesn't give a damn

29:40 how fast I drive when I take her out in the car.

29:44 In August 1934, George flew to Yugoslavia where Marina

29:49 was staying with her sister Olga and brother-in-law Prince Paul.

29:53 He borrowed an aircraft from his brother Edward and piloted it himself.

29:58 The days that followed were [music] idyllic.

30:01 shooting, fishing, long walks through the woods.

30:05 One evening, after a late night back gammon game left everyone else exhausted,

30:10 George and Marina found themselves alone.

30:13 The next morning, they announced their engagement.

30:16 The wedding took place on November 29th, 1934 at Westminster Abbey.

30:23 It was the first royal wedding broadcast on radio and millions across

30:27 the empire listened as the Archbishop of Canterbury united the glamorous couple.

30:33 Marina wore a stunning gown of white

30:36 and silver briade designed by Edward Molyneu.

30:40 George, now created Duke of Kent,

30:43 waited at the altar with his brothers Edward and Albert by his side.

30:48 After the Anglican ceremony,

30:50 they returned to Buckingham Palace for a Greek Orthodox service.

30:54 Then they stepped onto the balcony to wave at the cheering crowds below.

30:59 It was the first time royals had done so after a wedding.

31:03 A new tradition was born.

31:04 Britain fell in love with them.

31:07 George and Marina became the celebrity couple of their age.

31:10 Photographed constantly, admired universally.

31:14 They seemed perfect together.

31:16 But perfection, as George had already learned,

31:19 was just another kind of performance.

31:22 And behind the fairy tale, the old demons never fully disappeared.

31:27 For a brief shining moment, it seemed like marriage had saved George.

31:32 He and Marina settled into a beautiful home at three Belgrave Square,

31:37 close to Buckingham Palace.

31:39 George personally designed the interior,

31:42 filling it with art and antiques that reflected his refined taste.

31:47 Their first child, Prince Edward, arrived in October 1935.

31:52 A daughter, Princess Alexandra, followed on Christmas Day 1936.

31:58 George [music] doted on them both,

32:00 proving himself a far warmer father than his own had ever been.

32:04 He played games with his children, told them bedtime stories,

32:08 [music] and made a point of being home for tea whenever his schedule allowed.

32:13 The Duke and Duchess of Kent [music]

32:15 became the golden couple of British society.

32:18 Their parties attracted artists, intellectuals, and aristocrats.

32:23 Their style was copied across the country.

32:26 Marina's fashion choices made headlines.

32:29 George's [music] double- breasted suits became so iconic

32:32 that the style was simply called the Kent.

32:36 They were young, beautiful, and adored, everything the monarchy needed.

32:42 But the world outside their elegant home was growing darker.

32:46 In January 1936, King George V died after years of declining health.

32:53 George's eldest brother ascended to the throne as King Edward VII.

32:57 It should have been a moment of triumph for the family.

33:01 Instead, it became a catastrophe.

33:04 Edward was in love, obsessively,

33:08 recklessly in love with an American divorce named Wallace Simpson.

33:13 She was twice divorced, sharp tonged, and utterly unsuitable as a queen.

33:18 The government refused to accept her.

33:21 The Church of England refused to bless a marriage to a divorced woman.

33:25 Edward was given a choice.

33:27 Give up Wallace or give up the throne.

33:30 He chose Wallace.

33:33 The abdication crisis of December 1936 tore the royal family apart.

33:39 George, who had been closer to Edward

33:41 than any of his other brothers, was devastated.

33:45 He had socialized with Edward and Wallace,

33:47 even hosting them at his country home.

33:50 He had tried to understand his brother's [music] passion.

33:53 But as the crisis deepened, George's sympathy curdled into rage.

33:59 According to several accounts, George declared that he wanted to kill Mrs.

34:03 Simpson.

34:04 The woman had destroyed his brother, humiliated the family,

34:08 [music] and thrown the monarchy into chaos.

34:11 When Edward finally signed the instrument of abdication,

34:15 George was there as a witness,

34:17 watching his favorite brother sign away everything

34:19 [music] for a woman the family despised.

34:23 The second son, Albert, became King George V 6th.

34:27 He was unprepared, stammering,

34:29 [music] terrified of the role that had been thrust upon him.

34:33 For a brief moment, there was even

34:35 talk that Albert might be passed over entirely.

34:38 His health was fragile, his nerves were shattered.

34:42 Some whispered that perhaps George,

34:44 the charming and capable fourth son, should take the throne instead.

34:49 It never happened.

34:52 Albert steadied himself, supported by his wife Elizabeth,

34:56 and began the work of restoring the monarchy's reputation.

35:00 Edward and Wallace were exiled to France, then to the Bahamas during the war.

35:05 George maintained contact with his brother,

35:08 but the closeness they had once shared was gone forever.

35:12 And [music] then there was the question of Germany.

35:16 This is where the story of Prince George becomes genuinely controversial,

35:21 where rumor and evidence blur together

35:23 into something that historians still argue about today.

35:28 Throughout the 1930s,

35:30 a significant faction of the British establishment believed

35:33 that war with Germany could and should be avoided.

35:37 They admired aspects of Hitler's regime.

35:40 They feared communism more than fascism.

35:43 They believed that a negotiated peace would

35:46 serve Britain's interests better than a devastating conflict.

35:51 This group included aristocrats, politicians, businessmen,

35:55 and members of the royal family.

35:58 Edward, before his abdication, had been openly sympathetic to Germany.

36:03 He and Wallace visited Hitler in 1937 and were photographed giving Nazi salutes.

36:10 His views were well doumented and deeply embarrassing.

36:14 George's position was more ambiguous.

36:16 According to some historians,

36:19 George was part of what they call the Anglo-German Peace Group.

36:23 He allegedly met with Rudolph Hess, Hitler's deputy during the 1930s.

36:28 He reportedly held secret talks with Prince Philip of Hessa,

36:33 who served as Hitler's personal art agent and intermediary in early 1939.

36:39 The goal supposedly was to prevent war through back channel diplomacy.

36:44 Then came the night of May 10th, 1941.

36:48 Rudolph Hess climbed into a messes fighter

36:51 plane and flew solo from Germany to Scotland.

36:54 He parachuted onto a farm, was captured by a bewildered plowman,

36:59 [music] and demanded to see the Duke of Hamilton.

37:02 His stated purpose was to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.

37:07 The official story is that Hess acted alone, driven by delusion.

37:13 Churchill dismissed him as a madman.

37:16 He was imprisoned for the rest of the war

37:18 and eventually died in Spandal prison in 1987.

37:23 But conspiracy theorists have long suspected there was more to the story.

37:27 Some claim that Hess expected to be

37:29 received by sympathetic figures in the British establishment,

37:34 that his flight was not madness, but a planned mission gone wrong,

37:38 and that among those who were supposed

37:39 to welcome him was Prince George, Duke of Kent.

37:44 George was reportedly in Scotland when Hess arrived.

37:47 Whether this was coincidence or something

37:50 more has never been conclusively established.

37:53 The authors of Double Standards, a book investigating the Hess affair,

37:58 argue that George was part of a faction working

38:01 with the king himself to negotiate with Hitler behind Churchill's back.

38:06 Other historians reject this entirely.

38:08 A recent biography by Glen Gowens argues that George was actually anti-fascist,

38:14 that he worked with my 6

38:16 on sting operations designed to expose Nazi sympathizers,

38:20 and that the conspiracy theories are nonsense.

38:23 The truth remains buried in classified files [music]

38:26 that the British government has never fully released.

38:29 What we do know is this.

38:31 When war came, George served.

38:34 He was appointed Governor General of Australia in 1939,

38:38 but the position was cancelled when hostilities began.

38:42 Instead, he joined the Royal Air Force, working in welfare and morale.

38:46 [music] He visited bases across Britain, shaking hands,

38:51 boosting spirits, doing the unglamorous work of keeping hope alive.

38:56 He became friends with Franklin D.

38:58 Roosevelt.

38:59 When George's third child, [music] Prince Michael, was born in July 1942,

39:05 the American president agreed to serve as godfather.

39:09 George had ambitions to become a liazison between British and American forces,

39:14 a bridge between allies.

39:16 He had just 21 days to live.

39:19 On the afternoon of August 24th, 1942, Prince George said goodbye to his wife.

39:26 Marina had given birth to their third child,

39:28 Prince Michael, just 7 weeks earlier.

39:31 The baby was healthy.

39:33 Their other children, Edward and Alexandra, were thriving.

39:38 Despite the war raging across Europe,

39:41 life at their country home in Buckinghamshire, held a fragile kind of peace.

39:46 George kissed his wife, held his infant son one last time,

39:50 and left [music] for London to board a train north.

39:53 He was going to Scotland.

39:55 From there, he would fly to Iceland to inspect RAF bases

40:00 and boost the morale of the men stationed in that remote freezing outpost.

40:05 It was the kind of mission George had performed many times during the war,

40:10 routine, unglamorous, important in its own quiet way.

40:15 He had larger ambitions.

40:17 His friendship with President Roosevelt and his connections

40:20 to American military leaders had sparked an idea.

40:24 George wanted to become a formal liaison

40:27 between the British and American air forces,

40:30 a role that would give him real purpose in the war effort.

40:34 The Iceland trip was meant to [music] be a stepping stone.

40:38 General Carl Spartz, commander of the American 8th Air Force,

40:42 had suggested that George visit American bases in Iceland.

40:46 If all went well, Spart would formally

40:49 request George's services as a liaison officer.

40:52 It was exactly the kind of meaningful work George had craved his entire life.

40:58 He arrived at RAF in Gordon on the morning

41:01 of August 25th and was introduced to his flight crew.

41:06 The aircraft was a short Sunderland Mark III,

41:09 a massive flying boat used [music] for long range maritime patrols.

41:13 The crew had been carefully selected.

41:16 Flight left tenant Frank Goyen, an experienced Australian pilot, was in command.

41:21 Wing Commander Thomas Mosley, the commanding officer of 228 Squadron,

41:26 had joined as a courtesy to the Duke.

41:29 The remaining crew included navigators, engineers, and gunners,

41:34 all professionals, all handpicked for the mission.

41:37 George had lunch with group Captain Francis at the base,

41:40 [music] then was fied out to the aircraft by Marine tender.

41:45 The crew spent the next half hour

41:47 conducting pre-flight checks and warming up the engines.

41:51 Around 1:00 in the afternoon, [music] the Duke boarded.

41:54 Minutes later, the Sunderland began to taxi

41:57 across the calm waters of Croati Fur.

42:01 The conditions were not ideal.

42:03 Low clouds and fog hugged the coastline, limiting visibility,

42:08 but the weather was expected to clear

42:10 [music] once they reached the open Atlantic.

42:13 The flight plan called for them to follow the eastern coast of Scotland north,

42:17 then turn northwest toward Iceland.

42:19 A journey of several hours over cold gray water.

42:23 At 1:10 in the afternoon, the Sunderland lifted off.

42:28 What happened next has never been fully explained.

42:31 The aircraft was supposed to fly out over the North Sea, avoiding land entirely.

42:36 Instead, it turned inland.

42:39 For reasons that remain mysterious, the plane veered off its planned course

42:44 and headed directly toward the Scottish Highlands.

42:47 It descended to an altitude of just 700 ft,

42:51 flying blind through thick fog over terrain that rose sharply beneath it.

42:56 At 142, barely 30 minutes after takeoff,

43:00 the Sunderland slammed into a hillside near Dunbeath in Caes.

43:05 Hugh Morrison was searching for sheep with his son

43:08 on the remote Morland when they heard the aircraft overhead.

43:12 The fog was so thick they couldn't see it.

43:15 Then came the sound.

43:17 A massive explosion that shook the ground beneath their feet.

43:21 A wall of flame erupted into the gray sky as 2

43:24 and a half thousand gallons of aviation fuel ignited on impact.

43:29 Morrison sprinted downhill,

43:31 then rode his motorcycle to the nearest village to raise the alarm.

43:35 Search parties set out immediately,

43:38 but the terrain was rough and the crash site remote.

43:41 [music] It took hours to reach the wreckage.

43:44 What they found was devastation.

43:47 The aircraft had struck the rising slope of a hill called Donald's Mount,

43:51 then cartw wheeled across the heather, breaking apart and burning as it went.

43:56 Bodies were scattered across 200 yards of scorched earth.

44:00 The impact had been so violent

44:03 that the plane was barely recognizable as an aircraft.

44:07 14 of the 15 men aboard were dead, including Prince George.

44:12 Dr.

44:13 Kennedy, the local physician, was among the first to reach the scene.

44:18 Despite a large gash on the Duke's head,

44:20 George was immediately recognizable in his flying suit.

44:24 But it was the inscription on his identity bracelet that removed all doubt.

44:29 His Royal Highness, the Duke of Kent, the Coppins, Iva Buckingham Sha.

44:36 The sole survivor was Sergeant Andrew Jack, the rear gunner.

44:40 He had been stationed in the tail turret,

44:43 ironically considered the most dangerous position on the aircraft.

44:48 When the plane broke apart on impact,

44:50 the tail section sheared off and Jack was held clear,

44:54 landing in the soft heather while the rest

44:56 of the [music] aircraft exploded around him.

44:59 He was badly injured, but alive.

45:01 Jack would never speak publicly about what happened.

45:04 He was visited in the hospital by senior RAF

45:08 officials and whatever passed between them ensured his silence.

45:12 [music] For the rest of his life,

45:13 he refused to answer questions about the crash.

45:17 But years later, his family revealed what he had told them privately.

45:22 According to Jack's niece,

45:23 the rear gunner had confided that Prince George himself

45:27 was at the controls when the aircraft went down.

45:30 Jack claimed he had dragged the Duke's body from the pilot seat after the crash.

45:35 He also [music] said there was an additional person aboard the aircraft,

45:39 someone whose identity was never revealed

45:42 and never appeared on any official manifest.

45:46 The Court of Inquiry convened 3 days after the crash.

45:50 Its proceedings were held in secret.

45:53 The families of the 14 victims were not allowed to attend.

45:57 The official conclusion blamed pilot error.

46:00 Flight leftenant Goyen,

46:02 the experienced Australian who had flown countless missions without incident.

46:08 responsible for flying off course and at too low an altitude.

46:12 The inquiry documents were sealed.

46:15 Years later, when researchers attempted to access them,

46:19 they discovered that all records related

46:21 to the investigation had mysteriously [music] disappeared.

46:25 The official story was closed, but the questions were only beginning.

46:31 The news reached Balmoral Castle on the evening [music] of August 25th.

46:36 King George V 6th was on holiday with his wife

46:39 Elizabeth and their daughters when the telephone rang.

46:43 His brother [music] was dead.

46:45 The king, who had never wanted the throne,

46:47 who had been thrust into it by one brother's selfishness,

46:51 now had to absorb the loss of another.

46:54 It came as a great shock to me, the king wrote in his diary.

46:58 I had to break it to Elizabeth and Harry and Alice who were staying with us.

47:02 We left Balmoral in the evening for London.

47:06 Queen Mary, George's mother, received the news at Badminton House,

47:10 where she had been evacuated during the war.

47:13 She was 75 years old and had already buried

47:16 her husband and watched one son destroy himself through scandal.

47:21 Now another was gone.

47:23 I could not believe it, she wrote.

47:26 Despite her reputation for coldness, her first thought was for Merina.

47:31 I must go to her tomorrow.

47:33 She found her daughter-in-law in a state of utter devastation.

47:38 Merina alternated between sobbing uncontrollably and staring blankly into space,

47:44 [music] unable to process what had happened.

47:47 7 weeks earlier, she had been celebrating the birth of her third child.

47:52 Now she was a widow at [music] 35 with three children under seven

47:57 and a husband whose body had been

47:59 pulled from burning wreckage on a Scottish hillside.

48:03 The funeral took place on August [music] 29th at St.

48:07 George's Chapel, Windsor.

48:09 Marina, supported on either side by Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary,

48:14 was escorted to her place opposite the high altar.

48:17 She wore black.

48:18 She could barely stand.

48:20 The coffin entered the chapel draped with George's personal standard.

48:25 On top rested his air commodor's cap and a wreath of flowers

48:29 that Marina had cut herself from the garden at Coppins, their country home.

48:35 She had placed them there with her own hands.

48:38 One final gift to the man she had loved.

48:41 King George V 6th, not a man given to public emotion,

48:45 struggled to maintain his composure.

48:48 I have attended very many family funerals in the chapel,

48:52 he wrote afterward, but none have moved me in the same way.

48:57 Among the mourers was Noel Coward,

49:00 [music] the playwright who had loved George for nearly

49:02 two decades sat in the congregation watching the coffin pass.

49:07 He had tried to comfort Marina in the days after the crash,

49:11 but he was himself inconsolable.

49:14 Later he would write about the moment

49:16 the funeral procession moved through the chapel.

49:20 When the coffin passed with flowers from the garden

49:23 at Coppins and Prince George's cap on it,

49:26 he recalled, "I was finished." 3 weeks after the funeral,

49:30 the king drove from Balmoral to the crash site.

49:34 He needed to see it for himself.

49:36 The wreckage had been cleared, but the scars on the land remained.

49:40 The ground for 200 yards long and 100 yards wide

49:44 had been scored and scorched by its trail and by flame.

49:48 He observed [music] it hit one side of the slope,

49:51 turned over in the air, and slid down the other side on its back.

49:56 The impact must have been terrific,

49:58 as the aircraft was unrecognizable when found.

50:02 He stood there for a long time, alone with his thoughts,

50:06 mourning the brother who had been so different from him and yet so deeply loved.