Birth of the May Queen

She really was a May queen. Mary of Teck was born in May while perhaps the most significant moment of her royal career took place in its sunlit days. Those who loved her called her May for her whole life. She really was a May queen.

She almost missed being a May baby. She was born on May 26th 1867, the first child of Francis of Teck and his wife, Mary Adelaide of Cambridge. Their daughter made her debut in the same room of Kensington Palace where Queen Victoria had been born almost fifty years earlier. Her monarchical cousin would have a huge impact on her life and their bond was set in the May days of 1867 when Victoria visited the new arrival.

''A very fine one, with pretty little features and a quantity of hair''. Victoria's diary entry on her young relation was almost gushing by her standards - she famously found babies rather tiresome while this new little princess had arrived less than four years into her deeply felt widowhood. The baby was given her name, along with many others, and baptised Victoria Mary August Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes. But from her earliest days, she was called May.

That was the name used by the royal brothers who would go on to court her and the name that became among the most revered at court when she wed the second in line to the throne, George, in 1893. It became the name of the Princess of Wales in 1901 when Victoria died and her throne passed to her son, Edward, and George became heir. And it became the name of a queen, in private at least, on a May day in 1910.

On May 6th 1910, Edward VII died and, instantly, May became queen consort. Born a poor relation, laughed at in her youth by wealthier relatives as she and her family fled abroad to escape their creditors, May was now the first lady of the land. From that point on, she was Mary, queen and empress. But behind palace doors, she remained May to those who knew her best.

It is a pretty name and perhaps at odds with the popular image of Mary as a forbidding, staid and almost old fashioned presence. But it is fitting with the real woman, the determined yet mellow matriarch whose focus remained on regenerating and sustaining the Monarchy throughout her years at its helm. Mary really was the May queen.