The Princes of Teck were a minor German royal house that produced a Queen of England – and a surprisingly grand Earl’s Court pub
The Prince of Teck on Earl’s Court Road holds fourteen hundred reviews and a 4.1 – a large, fair-scoring sample – and it is named after one of the more obscure branches of European royalty, a minor German princely house that nonetheless managed to place a queen on the British throne.
The princes of Teck
“Teck” refers to the Duchy of Teck, a small German princely territory, and the Princes and Dukes of Teck were a minor branch of the royal house of Wurttemberg, in what is now southern Germany. They were, in the intricate world of European royalty, a relatively modest and somewhat morganatic line – a family with royal blood but not quite the first rank of European dynasties.
Nineteenth-century Britain was full of these minor German royals. The whole web of European monarchy was densely interconnected, and Britain’s own royal family was, through Queen Victoria’s marriage to the German Prince Albert and countless other connections, deeply Germanic. Minor German princely houses like Teck orbited the grander courts, providing marriage partners and connections throughout the aristocratic and royal networks of Europe.
The queen from Teck
Here is why the obscure house of Teck matters to British history: it produced a Queen of England. Princess Mary of Teck – “May” – was born into this minor German-British princely family, and she married the future King George V, becoming Queen Mary, one of the most formidable and dignified consorts in British royal history.
Queen Mary was the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, and a genuinely significant royal figure – a woman of immense dignity, a serious collector of art and antiques, and a pillar of the monarchy through the upheavals of the early twentieth century, including the abdication crisis. So the modest house of Teck, through Princess May, is woven directly into the modern British royal line – the great-great-grandmother of the current royal generation was a princess of this obscure German duchy.
The renaming of the royals
There is a poignant historical footnote here. During the First World War, when Britain was at war with Germany, the intensely Germanic names of the British royal family and its relations became an acute embarrassment. In 1917, the royal family famously changed its name from the German “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha” to the reassuringly English “Windsor.” At the same time, the various German-titled relations living in Britain – including the Tecks – gave up their German titles and took English ones. The Tecks became the Cambridges and the Athlones. So the very name “Teck” was, in a sense, cast off by its British bearers during the war – making this pub a small memorial to a royal name that its own family abandoned for being too German.
The pub
A large, popular Earl’s Court pub doing a fair 4.1 across a large and real sample, named after the obscure German princely house of Teck – which, through Queen Mary, placed itself permanently in the British royal line before abandoning its own name for being too German.
Verdict
Big, popular, fairly rated, and named after the minor German house of Teck – obscure, morganatic, and yet the source of a British queen and the great-great-grandmother of today’s royals.
Have a pint, and consider the house of Teck – grand enough to give Britain a queen, German enough to abandon its own name in the war, and now remembered chiefly by an Earl’s Court pub.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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