Another royal romance mooted

The January 7 1925 edition of the Toronto Daily Star contained this photograph of Prince George, the youngest son of King George V of England, and a prospective bride-to-be:

Poppy Baring (1901-1980) was actually almost married to two princes of England:

• Albert, the Duke of York and the future King George VI, proposed marriage to her in 1921. She accepted, but his mother shot down the marriage. (The course of the British monarchy, and British history, would have been drastically changed had the marriage gone through!)
• Prince George proposed in 1927, but this time it was King George V who rejected the marriage. This didn’t stop the two from having an affair.

She became known as one of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s, and later opened a dress shop and married a Eton cricketer.

Prince George eventually married Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark in 1934, but kept busy with a number of affairs (including with Kiki Gwynne, mentioned earlier in this blog). He was killed in a military air crash in 1942.

Prince Henry, mentioned in the text of this article, did marry Lady Mary Scott, though this didn’t happen until 1935. She lived to be 102, passing away in 2004.