George V

Biography

George V was born in 1865, the second son of the future Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, during the reign of his grandmother Queen Victoria. Not expected to become king, he joined the cadet ship HMS Britannia at the age of twelve and served in the Royal Navy from 1877 to 1892. The sudden death of his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, in January 1892 made him second in line to the throne; he was created Duke of York and in 1893 married his brother's former fiancée, Princess Mary of Teck. He became Prince of Wales when his father succeeded in 1901, and king on his father's death in May 1910.

His reign opened with a constitutional crisis over the House of Lords: he reluctantly agreed to create enough Liberal peers if needed, and the Parliament Act 1911 then curbed the Lords' power. Later that year he and Queen Mary attended the Delhi Durbar as emperor and empress of India. During the First World War, amid anti-German feeling, he renamed the royal house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor in July 1917.

After the war he appointed the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and was closely involved in the political crisis of 1931. The Statute of Westminster 1931 recognised the dominions as independent states within the Commonwealth. Weakened by smoking-related illness, he died in January 1936 and was succeeded by his son Edward VIII.