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  #61  
Old 09-10-2007, 03:33 PM
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I have also read that Princess Margaret had porphyria, but it's really hard to know since the royals don't usually comment about their health issues. That might have accounted for Margaret's erratic behavior, but I always ascribed her behavior to alcohol and possible depression.

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  #62  
Old 09-10-2007, 07:22 PM
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Hi, this is my first post here but I've been lurking for a few days now.

I read a short biography of Prince William of Gloucester about 25 years ago. I do remember when he was killed in that plane crash. I remember reading that he worked in Japan for a time too He was great friends with Princess Chichibu who was the widow of the then-Emperor's younger brother.

Regarding porphyria, could it be that Princess Margaret's depression was exacerbated by her porphyria?

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  #63  
Old 11-05-2011, 12:23 PM
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Prince William of Gloucester

The other Prince William: The uncanny parallels between Wills and the dashing but doomed cousin in whose memory he was named | Mail Online

The other Prince William
The uncanny parallels between Wills and the dashing but doomed cousin in whose memory he was named


Excerpts


Two men named William. Both princes, both pilots. Both polo players with a taste for danger. Both Eton-educated, handsome men of the world. One is destined to be our future king, while the other has been long-forgotten.

Yet it is after Prince William of Gloucester, who died young in 1972, that the Duke of Cambridge was named. Next month, the older prince should have been celebrating his 70th birthday, but his life was cut tragically short. William of Gloucester, son of the Queen’s uncle the Duke of Gloucester, was Prince Charles’s hero — the man upon whom the future king modelled himself, and whose example, in so many things, Charles followed.

William of Gloucester was just 30 when the Piper Arrow single-engine aircraft he was piloting in an air race crashed, killing him and his co-pilot outright. The shock that ran through the Royal Family was colossal, but the person most affected by the loss was his first cousin once removed, Prince Charles, who was 23 at the time.

He was the first member of the Royal Family to gain a university place through open competition, the first to arrive without the shadow of a private detective. When he went up in 1960, college staff were instructed to address him as ‘Prince William, Sir’, though the bedmakers who tidied his rooms soon slipped into calling him ‘Mr Prince William’. William was bold, stylish, different. Like his present-day namesake, he loved skiing, shooting and nightclubs — and drove a high-powered sports car.

He signed up for a course at Stanford University in California, broadening his knowledge with the study of American history, German and Russian affairs, and economics. He then travelled incognito through America and Canada. He took a job at Lazard’s merchant bank but hated it. Then, after three attempts at passing rigorous Foreign Office entrance exams, he won himself a job as Third Secretary at the British High Commission in Nigeria.

It was while here that he became aware of the first symptoms of a rare and incurable blood disease called porphyria — the self-same condition that had seized his ancestor George III, and from whom he had probably inherited it through several generations. And when Alan Bennett wrote The Madness Of King George, his Oscar-winning 1994 film, Prince Charles — having learned at first hand through conversations with his cousin William the perils of the disease — interested himself deeply in the production.

As a result, all royal children are now routinely screened for this rare but pernicious condition.

Despite suffering fevers, nausea, and dizziness, William determined it should not affect his career or his leisure pursuits, and applied for a Second Secretary’s job at the British Embassy in Japan. William later resigned from the Foreign Office and took over the running of the family estate. The porphyria which had developed years before had not gone away, and he suffered increasingly uncomfortable symptoms. To ease the stress which came with those symptoms, he stepped up his flying, entering air competitions in his Piper Arrow.

It was on August 28, 1972, that William took off, accompanied by an experienced co-pilot, Lt-Commander Vyrell Mitchell. They were taking part in the Goodyear International Air Trophy being held at Halfpenny Green near Wolverhampton. Soon after take-off, the plane executed a 120-degree turn towards the first leg of the course. ‘The angle of turn made by the Piper Arrow was observed to be too steep,’ according to his old Cambridge supervisor, Dr Ronald Hyam. ‘The aircraft lost height, cut through the top of a large tree, losing part of its wing, then rolled over, diving inverted into the ground, and burst into flames. Both pilots were killed instantly.’ As Dr Hyam adds: ‘It was a desperately sad and terrible end to the life of a remarkable young man of many talents, admired by all who knew him.’

Prince Charles, for a time, paid his own personal tribute to his cousin by growing the mutton-chop whiskers that were William’s trademark. He emulated his cousin on the polo field, on the ski-slopes, in the air, on the grouse moor — and in the bedroom. His relationship with the then Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles had more than an echo of William’s own passionate love for Zsuzui Starkloff.

But in the naming of his first-born son after Prince William of Gloucester, Charles paid the greatest tribute possible to the man he most admired in the world.
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  #64  
Old 11-06-2011, 11:06 AM
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I would take the fiest part of the story about Charles & William and thier supposed closeness with a huge grain of salt but the rest of the story was interesting.
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  #65  
Old 11-06-2011, 07:10 PM
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My dear NGalitzine,

Do you know that the two were not that close? I took from the story that Charles was sort of awestruck by his mother's cousin and Charles wanted to emulate him, not that the two were especially close. However, if Charles did name his first born after this man, that indicates a very close relationship.
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  #66  
Old 11-06-2011, 07:11 PM
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Originally Posted by NGalitzine View Post
I would take the fiest part of the story about Charles & William and thier supposed closeness with a huge grain of salt but the rest of the story was interesting.

Why would you take that with a grain of salt?

It is not uncommon for young boys to look to an older cousin as a big brother, if they don't have one of their own, and William (along with his younger brother Richard) fitted that bill nicely.


Whether they would have remained close as the 70s unfolded and Charles started to make his own way in the world we will never know but that a young boy/teenager wouldn't be close to an older cousin is perfectly feasible.
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Old 11-06-2011, 09:49 PM
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I would take it with a grain of salt because of their age disparity and the limited amount of time they would have had to know each other. When Charles was quite young William would already have been away at school and then at Cambridge and Stanford. Charles was off at school in Scotland. By the time Charles was at Cambridge William would have been in Nigeria and then Japan. When William returned to England to look after Barnwell due to his fathers failing health Charles was off on active duty with the Royal Navy. William's life was pretty low key as far as public awareness of his existence went (similar to his brother Richard) so I am unclear where the "glamorous prince" angle comes from, other than the fact that he was quite good looking. There would have been pretty limited opportunities for the 2 princes to know each other very well, and meeting other than at perhaps the Trooping of the Colour or some other large family event such as weddings seems unlikely. The Gloucesters spent their free time at Barnwell when not on official duties, while the Queen and her family would be at Windsor/Sandringham/Balmoral.
Charles went to Cambridge because that is where the palace determined he should go, as had his grandfather before him. Charles has talked about how everything was planned out for him and he really didnt have any say in things. Charles played polo because his father played polo. The Duke of Cambridge is named William because it was a name Charles and Diana liked. They said so at the time that they didnt really know anyone named Willam who was close to them, seemingly having forgotten William of Gloucester.

I am not saying the DM story isn't possibly true, I just have my doubts about it......as I do with most items in the DM. It was a nice article though.
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  #68  
Old 11-07-2011, 01:59 PM
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How interesting to read about Prince William of Gloucester.

Whether Charles and William were that close I do not know. But, oddly enough, I have no difficulty in believing that Charles looked up to William! I am giving my age away somewhat , but I did post about Prince William a few months back; I will try to find the post again [think it was on a York thread, oddly enough] but basically, I was describing how, when I was a young schoolgirl, Prince William really was THE handsome, man-about-town debonair, brave action-man Prince of his time. He skied very well [at at time before package market ski holidays had taken off and so the whole thing was imbued with a sort of jet-set glamour]. He could pilot a plane, he drove a fast sportscar. He dated beautiful [but highly eligible] aristocratic 'Park Lane gels' [a form of Sloane Ranger before that species was codified.] As I said when I posted previously, he was a type of 'royal James Bond'. Girls adored him. And, as I also posted at the time, it seemed so odd to be posting as I did, because here in 2011 everyone has all but forgotten all about him..........

Even setting-aside the reservations that people have about the DM, because of the shortage of 'dashing handsome role model princes' of the 1960's, I have no difficulty in believing that Prince Charles really did look up to his cousin as a role-model. Prince Michael was seen as relatively quieter and Prince Richard was even quieter and very studious. Prince Charles, I think,always wanted to model himself on all-action heros [possibly because he so admired Lord Mountbatten] and I really do think that Prince William was the most likely role-model.

Alex
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  #69  
Old 11-07-2011, 03:56 PM
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Oh, my, yes, Alex. Prince William was the cat's whiskers. I remember the day his plane crashed. That night at the pub, all us girls were just beside ourselves that he was gone. He was the epitomy of many a girls' dreams of the perfect man. Only 30, and he was gone.
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  #70  
Old 11-07-2011, 09:59 PM
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I remember a number of the older girls at my school were upset about his death as he was the 'dream boat' prince at the time - more dashing than his brother and Charles was still at uni so not yet fully launched.
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  #71  
Old 05-13-2012, 07:15 PM
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A well-put together tribute to the late Prince William of Gloucester made up of many photographs.


Prince William of Gloucester - YouTube





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