Prince John Was Far More Tragic Than History Admits

In February 1916 a boy of ten sent his father a box of snowdrops he had picked himself. His father was King George V, and within three years the boy would be dead, explained to the nation in a single newspaper report. Prince John, the youngest child of George V and Queen Mary, has been remembered for a century as the Lost Prince: a royal child who embarrassed his family and was hidden away on a farm. Part of that story is true. Part of it is not. He was announced in the Gazette, christened in the parish church at Sandringham and photographed for the newspapers. His seizures began when he was four, in an age that housed people with epilepsy in colonies and was about to pass a law to certify them. His family kept him at home instead, with the nurse who loved him, and in the last years of the war moved him to a farmhouse two miles from the big house, with a household, a garden and a companion of his own. He died there in January 1919, aged thirteen. His mother called it a great relief; his eldest brother wrote words he later regretted. He was buried beside the first Johnnie, an uncle who had died as a baby in 1871. This is the full story of the boy behind the legend: was he hidden, or was he kept, and what did the difference cost him? CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:52 1. York Cottage 9:33 2. The Nursery 19:03 3. Falling Sickness 28:37 4. The Fifth Carriage 38:16 5. The Colonies 48:10 6. August 1914 58:19 7. Wood Farm 1:08:29 8. The Name on the Door 1:17:32 9. Christmas, 1918 1:24:59 10. The Telephone 1:33:01 11. The Letter from Germany 1:41:18 12. St Mary Magdalene 1:50:13 13. The Lost Prince 1:59:55 14. Coda — Two Johnnies A note on the history: this film sets a famous royal legend against the documentary record and hedges whatever that record does not settle. Queen Mary's diary and letters and the Prince of Wales's letters are quoted as they survive, with the two ways they have been read. Later guesses about John's condition, including autism, are reported as guesses that no record can test. Nothing here is drawn from the 2003 television drama, and no living person is discussed. All imagery is period photography, paintings and prints from public-domain and openly licensed collections. Only a handful of photographs of Prince John himself survive; the film uses all of them. #PrinceJohn #TheLostPrince #GeorgeV #QueenMary #BritishRoyalFamily #RoyalHistory #history #documentary