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Back The Summer Queen
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. The Summer Queen
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Family Tree of King George III
  5. Family Tree of Queen Victoria
  6. PART ONE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. PART THREE
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. PART FOUR
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Select Bibliography
  53. The Summer Queen
  54. By Margaret Pemberton

‘The Roman Catholic thing?’ May wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘Is Julie a Roman Catholic as well as a commoner?’

‘Yes, but I don’t see why it matters. Julie wouldn’t expect me to become a Roman Catholic, and I don’t mind her being one, so where is the problem?’

May drew in a deep, unsteady breath. ‘The problem, Georgie,’ she said slowly, hardly able to believe he didn’t know about the Act of Settlement, ‘is that you are third in the line of succession, and ever since 1702 no one who becomes a Roman Catholic – or who marries a Roman Catholic – can succeed to the British throne.’

He stared at her in stunned disbelief. ‘So, even if a miracle happened and I was given permission to marry a commoner, I still couldn’t marry my darling Julie?’

‘No, Georgie. I’m afraid not.’

She stepped towards him, sliding her hand through his arm and giving it a comforting hug. ‘Being royal can be beastly, can’t it?’

‘It’s more than beastly; it’s a bugger.’ With eyes full of tears, he turned away from her and Irène and stomped off down the path, his hunched shoulders shaking with sobs that he could no longer hold at bay.

Chapter Thirteen

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JANUARY 1889, NEUES PALAIS, POTSDAM

In the Neues Palais, Willy was cock-a-hoop. As Kaiser Wilhelm II, he was Germany’s Emperor, the ‘All-Highest’, master of all he surveyed. And how he loved being so! Seven months ago, the very second his cancer-ridden papa had passed away, he had started out as he meant to go on – and that was as a powerful, autocratic ruler, answerable to no one but God. Like the Tsar of Russia, he was his own man. He appointed his own ministers and, if they proved tiresome, he replaced them with the same spur-of-the-moment speed.

Wearing a white, gold-braided and bemedalled uniform – he never wore anything other than one of his score of military uniforms, unless he was visiting his grandmother at Balmoral, when he wore full Highland rig in Royal Stewart tartan – he was awaiting the arrival of Mr Henry Thaddeus Jones. It was May Teck who had brought Mr Jones to his attention. In one of her letters she had written: