While the world is still reeling from the revelations in Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, it’s important to remember that there have always been secrets in the royal family. Yep, long before most of us could remember, the royals have always been a little bit dramatic. Including Queen Elizabeth’s mom, Queen Mary of Teck, who lived one heck of a life.
TikTok creator @factinate had all the dirty details and shared them all in a recent video.
“Mary of Teck was downright scandalous,” the TikToker explained in the footage. “For one, she came from a semi-illegitimate branch of the royal family. On top of that, people considered her ‘very German-looking,’ which was disastrous at the time.”
Because of her German looks, it was believed that Mary wasn’t going to marry well, but she proved them all wrong when she became engaged to Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor — sort of.
“It went terribly,” @factinate explained in the footage. “Not only did people who knew Albert call him ‘densely stupid,’ there was a later (false) rumor that he was Jack the Ripper.” He then died six weeks into their engagement. But don’t worry Queen Mary was single for long. She later got engaged to Prince Albert Victor’s brother — “the future King George V.”
That wasn’t the end of Queen Mary’s scandalous adventures, so make sure you watch the whole video.
The video has since been watched almost 700,000 times and people had some strong feelings. “People forget the British royal family is German. Windsor was a made up name. Their real name is Saxe-Coburg. They changed in WWI to sound less German,” one person pointed out. “Despite the scandal when her son abdicated, her OTHER son became King. She didn’t face too much Karma. She was still mother of the king,” someone else chimed in. “My goodness…this should be a soap opera,” a third person chimed in.
Sounds like a whole lot of drama to us.