George V

George Frederick Ernest Albert was born 3 June 1865, second son to the Prince of Wales, third in line behind an older brother expected to be king. He spent fifteen years in the Royal Navy until January 1892, when his brother's sudden death pulled him back to the succession. The next year he married his late brother's fiancée, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck; they had six children. He became Prince of Wales in 1901 when his father took the throne as Edward VII, then king-emperor in 1910. His twenty-six-year reign saw the rise of socialism, communism, fascism, Irish republicanism, and the Indian independence movement - forces that reshaped the empire even as it peaked in the early 1920s. The Parliament Act of 1911 gave the elected Commons supremacy over the Lords; the 1931 Statute of Westminster made the Dominions independent states within a Commonwealth. Smoking caught up with him in his later years. He died 20 January 1936, succeeded by his eldest son Edward VIII, who abdicated within months for his younger brother Albert - George VI.