Darling Georgie: The Enigma of King George V Hardcover - 1999

From the publisher

History depicts King George V as a model husband, a near-perfect father, and a self-confident monarch. Dr. Freidman's insightful study of his personal life reveals a very different picture. Freidman persuasively argues that the psychologically damaging upbringing to which Georgie was subjected profoundly affected his later life and that the effects of this are still evident in today's Royal Family. A suffocating relationship with his mother, Princess Alexandra, compounded by the absence and neglect of his father, caused him to suffer extreme separation anxiety as a child, which was reinforced by his being sent away to boarding school at the age of eleven and then into the Navy.

Friedman examines the effects of this rigid and traditional royal upbringing on his sexual development, on his marriage to Princess Mary of Teck (later Queen Mary), and on his subsequent years on the throne: "Is the real George the tormented man who concealed his true self -- or the right-minded monarch whose misguided attempts to make 'men' of his sons David (Edward VIII) and Bertie (George VI) sowed the seeds not only of their unhappiness but of the catastrophic misalliance of Prince Charles and Princess Diana?"