Title is simple enough. What if King Edward VIII, as the Prince of Wales, was on the Titanic's maiden voyage in 1912?
WI: Edward VIII Was on the Titanic
- Thread starter Calcaterra
- Start date
I'm spitballing, but I would assume one of the most famous people on Earth, the heir to an Empire, would be interested about going on a ship described as the greatest in the world up to that point.
He would be placed on a life boat as soon as word broke that the ship had hit an iceberg.
I would imagine that, yes, but how would this effect his life from there on?
I imagine he sees his live being saved as a sign from god and as such would work to being a better king and prince.
In your opinion, will he suffer any kind of PTSD or shell shock after seeing this occur? I would guess that him being Edward, he would have a lover on board, who herself may not have a 100% chance of survival.
I highly doubt that (I mean, OTL he wasn't remotely religious). He'd probably still go on to be a spoiled Nazi-loving prick.
Now, if for some reason he died on the ship and never became King, the only significant change that might bring would be in the Rhineland crisis. Supposedly he heavily lobbied behind the scenes for Britain not to intervene, so without him maybe they (and France) do?
Now that would be interesting.
I agree with that, but do you think this, combined with Prince John's later death, will effect Prince Bertie in a deeper way, possibly even force him to become more religious?
He might need his father's permission for virtually anything, but back then all the princes got royal tutors. The first British royals to officially attend a university at the traditional age were William and Harold Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Oldensburg-Glücksburg (a.k.a. Windsor).
Nope, he went to Magdalen College , Oxford , famously left without getting a degree. I just checked their website to confirm , http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/libraries-and-archives/archives/online-catalogues/edward-viii-photogaph/
This. If he was put in a Lifeboat the minute they found out that and Iceberg have been hit he would have no idea there was not enough boats I doubt seriously if anybody not closely associated with the ship could tell you how many Lifeboat carried. It might bother him for a slight while but he did nothing wrong like every male passenger in the boats.
If he were on the Titanic, the ship would have done like the Californian and stopped for the night because of the iceberg warnings and it wouldn't have gone down (unless the weight of all those egos - Davd {Prince of Wales' family name}, Astor, etc caused it to sink).
Congratulations, you've saved 1500 lives! You're my hero! (Okay, not the last bit.)
Congratulations, you've saved 1500 lives! You're my hero! (Okay, not the last bit.)
I’d like to think that a traumatic event of seeing or hearing about men and women he had been mingling with have died while he divided. If she is with him in bed at the time of the initial hit, she’d be rushed with him to a lifeboat.
This is his 17 year old boy not the man he was 20 years later.
He would be more prepared as his father would have him training for the throne. Maybe a little more religious but also smoke earlier and more.
He will read the report and want an investigation on why a ship carrying that many people didn’t have enough life boats and why the lower class were treated so appalling. Could this change him to a reformist
I think the ship having the Prince of Wales on board would want to be faster to gather more publicity.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'officially'. Prince Charles graduated from Cambridge in 1970. Prince William of Gloucester graduated graduated from Cambridge in 1963. George VI and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester both went to Cambridge for one year in 1919-20.
Cook
Banned
Edward was an obscenely narcissistic individual; if he had ever contemplated god at all, it would have been much as he viewed the butler - there to do Edward's bidding, not the other way round.
I expect Edward would have spent the rest of his life boring people at cocktail parties with anecdotes of his survival: "Oh yes it was utterly awful you know; we were on that life boat, in the dreadful chill, and no-one had though to bring the brandy! Luckily I'd nabbed a bottle of Dom from the bar..."
One point. Istr that the Titanic sailed with a fire raging in one of it coal bunkers, and that quite a few stokers broke their contracts for that reason rather than sail on her.
If the King wer about tipped off this would he allow the Prince to go, or perhaps insist that the fire be extinguished before Edward's sacred person was allowed on board?
If the King wer about tipped off this would he allow the Prince to go, or perhaps insist that the fire be extinguished before Edward's sacred person was allowed on board?
He visited the Western Front a few times (not the front line, of course), and that hardly seemed to bother him at all.
Perhaps had he been sailing on that fateful night, he might get some biases and will end up drinking Scotch without ice for the rest of his life