British princes who wanted to marry "inappropriate" women

Prince William of Gloucester (1941–1972) was the son of Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (d1974) and the grandson of King George V and Queen Mary. His mother was Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, daughter of 7th Duke Buccleuch. At his baptism in Windsor Castle in 1942, his godparents included Uncle King George VI and Grandma Queen Mary.

As a grandson of the British monarch in the male line, Prince William was called His Royal Highness. His father Prince Henry was important, serving in Australia as Governor-General from 1945 until 1947. And the toddler William was close enough to Princess Eliz­abeth to be a page boy at her 1947 wedding to Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince William was not home schooled; he received a proper education at Wellesley House Prep School, Eton College and Magdalene College Cambridge. He also did post-graduate studies at Stanford University in the USA. And he took a “proper job”, in the diplomatic service in various British embassies. When his father, the Duke of Gloucester, became frail, first-born son William left the diplomatic corps and returned to run the family estate in Britain.

 

Princess Margaret, Earl of Snowdon, Prince William of Gloucester and the Queen Mother
1965

Photo credit: misshonoriaglossop

So far, so good. Spouse and I were living in the UK in the early 1970s and we knew something about the handsome young prince and his royal duties. What ordinary citizens did not know were two important things. Firstly that William had recently been diagnosed with a genetic con­dition known as porphyria (blistered skin, abdominal pain, vomiting, seizures, muscle weak­ness and mental disturbances). Although the British and other royal families had a long history coping with porphyria, William’s condition was seen to be in remission.

Secondly BBC Channel 4 released a documentary called “The Other Prince William”, shown in Britain in 2015 and in Australia in 2016. There had been a published interview in the Daily Mail with the Prince’s girlfriend as far back as 2012, but I didn’t remember that article.

Basically the BBC programme acknowledged that the girlfriend, Zsuzsi Starkloff, had enjoyed a long term love affair with the prince, dating back to their time together in Tokyo in 1968. The couple travelled extensively across America, where they did whatever they wanted, without the glare of the British royals and British newspapers spoiling their fun. It was clear that they wanted to marry, but that they were blocked from fulfilling their dreams by both The Queen Mother and Prince Phillip (but not by Queen Elizabeth). There were apparently 3 irresolvable problems:
1. Starkloff was not Church of England, but was Jewish;
2. Starkloff was an older woman who had been twice divorced and had at least one child; and
3. Starkloff was Hungarian.

Under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, anyone in the royal family had to get the monarch’s permission to marry, including Prince William. But William was 9th in line to the throne and realistically speaking, would never ever become the monarch himself! Thus the Queen’s permission for a distant cousin to marry was traditional and polite, but not very meaningful by the 1970s. And why would Hungarian citizenship have been a problem? After all, members of the British royal family had married Dutch, French, German, Czech, Spanish and Greek citizens for centuries.

The royal family refused to accept their relationship, but the documentary made it clear that the lovers kept in contact via letters, telephone calls and visits. According to Starkloff, William continued to love her, until his tragic plane accident and death in August 1972. He had been a passionate and a very experienced pilot, so did the plane crash at Wolverhampton Airport occur because of external sabotage, pilot suicide or freak accident?

I remember August 1972 with crystal clarity because of the massacre of so many young Jewish athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. Yet I cannot remember the royals rushing back from Munich to be in London in time for Prince William’s funeral. Everyone was there in time … except for Zsuzsi Starkloff.

On William’s untimely death, his younger brother Prince Richard of Gloucester became heir-apparent.

What the documentary under-stated was the incredible closeness of Prin­ce William of Gloucester’s story (1968-72) to the story of his uncle, the former King Edward VIII and his much divorced lady love, Mrs Wallis Simpson (1936->). Edward had already become king on his father's death in early 1936. In the same year, the new king proposed marriage to Mrs Simpson, a commoner and a foreigner, with two ex-husbands still well and truly alive. Every single British citizen who had lived through the constitut­ional crisis provoked by King Edward back in 1936 would have made the link to Prince William in 1970. It had been only one generation earlier!

Prince William of Gloucester and Zsuzsi Starkloff

Tokyo 1965
Photo credit: The Telegraph

What the Daily Mail over-estimated was the international tragedy (as opposed to a personal one) that the royal family provoked with regard to Prince William and Zsuzsi Starkloff.  Their story was headed: “How the Queen sabotaged my passionate affair with her cousin: Zsuzsi Starkloff tells the story of how Prince William of Gloucester fell for her and scandalised the royals in the process".

Zsuzsi, who might have once married into the Royal Family, today lives a modest existence on a mountain-top in Colorado. She is many thousands of miles from the world and the intrigues of the House of Windsor which caused her downfall. She could have been Duchess of Gloucester, with a sprawling estate in Northamptonshire and a grace-and-favour apartment in Kensington Palace. Her natural modesty and cool good looks would have won her many admirers and a place in the nation’s heart.