Could we not divert to courtesy titles, so Earl of Armagh for George Cumberland and Earl of Strathearn for George Cambridge?
Crown Imperial: An Alt British Monarchy
- Thread starter Opo
- Start date
It wasn't so much advertising then (it did happen not so long after with special incentives) but certainly British newspapers made the colonies sound very different from what they actually were like. I think a lot of soldiers etc got a nasty shock when they arrived in certain places abroad to find that what they'd been told to expect was very different from the reality.
For George Cumberland, his nickname could be Freddy as his first middle name was Friederich. And for George Cambridge, his nickname could be Billy or Bill because his middle name was William.
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I think it would be fun if Charles Dickens came to the palace and read The Old Curiosity Shop to Louise and George(both of them)
GV: Part Two, Chapter 31: Negotiations
King George V
Part Two, Chapter Thirty-One: Negotiations
Part Two, Chapter Thirty-One: Negotiations
The Christmas of 1840 was a tense one for all concerned. The King was still furious with Prince George of Cambridge but he declared a truce for the festivities as he sensed everybody in the family needed a respite from unpleasantness. Still, the Duchess of Buccleuch wrote that she had “never known a Christmas like it” with all the usual fun and noise replaced by “a quiet, morose sort of affair”. There were none of the usual games and even though presents were still exchanged and a grand luncheon offered to guests on Christmas Day, everybody noted how subdued the members of the Royal Family were. It was also noted that the Earl of Tipperary [1] made himself scarce where possible, hiding away in the room allocated to him and only venturing beyond it’s four walls when his presence was deemed absolutely necessary. By contrast, Prince George of Cumberland proved himself once again to have a talent for cheering people with his relaxed and friendly manner. The highlight for many, which even brought the Duchess of Cambridge to helpless laughter, was the moment Cumberland presented his Aunt Mary with the most unexpected of gifts; a white kitten called Snowbell. Snowbell was no doubt intended to keep the old lady company and initially Princess Mary was delighted with her gift. That was until the kitten got a little too excited and climbed its way up the folds of Mary’s dress, settling itself on the Princess’ shoulder where it dispatched a nasty little message down her back.
By New Year's Day, the Queen felt well enough to travel and she asked if she might go to Windsor. The King was not at all keen on the idea and tried to talk his wife out of making the journey. He was eagerly backed in this endeavour by the Cambridges and Princess Mary. Windsor was far too cold and damp at Christmas, that's why they had enjoyed being at Buckingham Palace so much for the occasion. Far better, they said, to wait for a week or two. It was all a ruse of course, a great surprise delayed a little but nonetheless something the older generation of the family knew the Queen really needed to cheer her spirits. The Duchess of Cambridge had written urgently to her sister (the Queen’s Mother, Grand Duchess Marie) the moment the Queen had suffered her unfortunate loss. Marie snapped into action and made arrangements to leave Neustrelitz for England as soon as possible, arriving in London on the 3rd of January 1841. The Duke of Sussex was dispatched to meet her and at a small family party held that evening, the King and Queen were half way through supper with the Sussexes, the Cambridges and Princess Mary when all of a sudden, Augusta stood up and tapped the table with her knuckles. The King was puzzled. The Queen watched her aunt nod toward a footman poised by the double doors to the dining room.
There was a great clatter of cutlery dropping onto plates as the King and Queen bolted from their chairs and ran towards the open door. There stood Grand Duchess Marie. In her arms, she held a bright eyed and beaming Princess Marie Louise. Missy was home.
“Mama!”, the King cried out, kissing her on the cheek with tears in his eyes, “When did you arrive?!”
“This afternoon!”, Grand Duchess Marie said with a smile, “Though I had to be hidden away!"
"Oh darling Mama!", the Queen sobbed merrily, "How long will you be with us?"
"For a week or two", the Grand Duchess replied, "But only if you promise to take me to Covent Garden. You never have and I am simply longing to go!"
“In that case, Covent Garden shall come to you Mama”, the King said laughing loudly, “Phipps, invite the company here for a private performance on Sunday evening would you? And my charming mother-in-law shall list her favourites, I want her to hear them all”.
If the Earl of Armagh had managed to bring the Queen through the worst of her tragedy, it was Grand Duchess Marie who gave both her daughter and her son-in-law the lift they truly needed. Whilst Missy’s visit would not be a long one, it cheered the King and Queen greatly to see their two daughters together and reminded them perhaps that though they had both suffered a great loss, they had already been given many blessings in the form of Princess Marie Louise and Princess Victoria. There was to be another happy surprise during that visit too that gave the royal couple a much-needed glimpse of hope. A few days after their arrival, Grand Duchess Marie and Missy were sitting with the King and Queen in the nursery as the King tried to help his eldest daughter build a tower from wooden blocks. When the blocks fell in a heap, Missy babbled out with delight.
“Did you enjoy that Missy?”, the King said, eagerly stacking the blocks again.
“More!”, the little girl said loudly. Everybody in the room sat in stunned silence. Missy spoke. But more than that, she seemed to have responded to the King’s voice; she heard him. Dr Allison was immediately called to examine the Princess.
“I can say nothing more than what you saw for yourself. Her Royal Highness heard you Sir”, Allison beamed, “And that is a fine indication that her treatment is of great benefit”.
It has since been speculated that the Princess Royal was not completely deaf but that her hearing loss was still significant enough to slow her progress and make life extremely challenging for her. Most historians agree that she had no hearing at all in her right ear and only around 30% in her left. This still presented major challenges which no doubt her specialist education helped to resolve but she was spared the added trials of being mute (as many deaf children were at this time) [2], though her parents were warned that her speech might yet be limited and her hearing might degenerate further as she grew older. Nonetheless, even these caveats could not dull the King and Queen’s happiness and so it was that the new year began in a much happier atmosphere than the old year had ended.
The Princess Royal, painted in 1842 by Winterhalter.
But there was still a trace of anxiety to be had behind palace walls. The Cambridges were forced to leave England earlier than they might have liked, their priority being to remove themselves from London before Captain Marsden’s Private Members’ Bill petitioning for divorce was to be read in the House. They had been braced for the worst. It was likely that letters would be produced from the Prince which would hardly make for edifying reading and though the public interest in the Marsden Scandal had ebbed a little over Christmas, it was likely to be the nation’s favourite topic of conversation until it was concluded. There was also talk of heavy damages to be paid which Prince George could ill-afford and when the Duke of Cambridge asked his son what exactly he had agreed with the King at Sandhurst, the Prince would say nothing other than “I gave my word I would do the right thing and I will”. This ambiguity did not reassure the Duke or the Duchess as they prepared to weather the storm.
Though she remained privately aggrieved that the King had insisted on Prince George being married (with Princess Alexandrine of Baden as his preferred candidate), the Duchess of Cambridge had finally agreed that seeing her son settle down was the only way to restore his reputation at home and abroad. Prince George was sent back to Herrenhausen with his parents in the new year of 1841, officially returning for further training with his Hanoverian regiment for the foreseeable future. In reality, he was being subjected to a kind of house arrest, kept under the close watch of his parents who now dictated his every move. The Duchess was kinder than her husband, the Duke insisting that their son couldn’t even go out into the gardens at Herrenhausen without an escort in case he decided to make a bolt for it. Augusta arranged little excursions for her son as distractions to his predicament, selecting one or two of her most trusted courtiers to accompany him to the theatre or a restaurant but choosing those who were a little more lively in their company than the crusty old retainers the Duke preferred.
It is fair to say that King George V only preferred Alexandrine of Baden as a candidate for the future bride of his Cambridge cousin because she was of the right age, the right religion and because her parents were not entirely in a position to reject Prince George based on his well-catalogued misdemeanours. The Grand Duke was of morganatic birth and his wife’s family had been chased out of Sweden following a series of coups that had seen her grandfather murdered, her father deposed and her brother disinherited in favour of a French general called Bernadotte. [3] Furthermore, the couple had become estranged, the imperious Grand Duchess Sophie proving to be deeply unpopular with the people of Baden. The Grand Duke was still well-liked but there was constant talk of his peculiar ancestry and the dynasty seemed to be built on very shaky foundations indeed. A British marriage would enhance the reputation of the Badens whilst helping to settle Prince George and this being the priority, the King pushed Princess Alexandrine’s dance card towards the Cambridges on the understanding that his Aunt do all she could to secure an introduction.
This proved to be easier said than done. At Karlsruhe, Augusta's letter imposed on an already frosty relationship. Grand Duke Leopold of Baden had married his half-niece Princess Sophie of Sweden in 1819 for one reason and one reason only; to improve his standing among his counterparts who did not have the worry of the dreaded “morganatische”. Sophie belonged to the House of Holstein-Gottorp through her paternal line which had only reigned in Sweden since 1751 but which descended from the royal House of Vasa which seized the Swedish throne in the 16th century. Indeed, Sophie’s grandfather King Gustav III expressed a wish that his royal house be known as Vasa as a continuation of the line but nobody paid much attention and his dynasty was always known as that of Holstein-Gottorp. Eventually the Swedish nobility grew tired of Gustav III and assassinated him, the throne passing to Sophie’s father Gustav IV Adolf who escaped assassination but was nonetheless deposed in a coup in 1809. Sophie’s brother (another Gustav) was disinherited and when Sophie’s childless uncle Charles XIII died, he was succeeded by the French general Jean Bernadotte as King of Sweden. [4] Grand Duchess Sophie was therefore perceived to hail from an exhausted dynasty with no standing, no influence and no money. Yet she was a royal princess and this was all Leopold needed to steady his own lineage for the next generation of Grand Dukes of Baden.
Grand Duchess Sophie of Baden.
Sophie was imperious and haughty, bitter and resentful that she had been denied her rightful place at the court in Stockholm. She refused to speak Swedish yet pretended that nothing had changed there. Her brother, created the Prince of Vasa by the Austrian Emperor, was (to Sophie’s mind at least) a King-in-Exile and this gave her the right to expect absolute deference and respect; she never tired of comparing herself to the French Madame Adelaide who held great authority at her brother’s court, yet at least King Louis-Philippe actually had a court instead of a modest mansion in Saxony staffed by only a handful of servants and the odd courtier of yesteryear who couldn’t face the reign of the Bernadottes in Stockholm. This made Sophie unpopular in Baden, though the people were kind to her when she first arrived there. All that changed when a young man called Kasper Hauser appeared in Baden claiming to have spent his formative years in a dungeon cell on the orders of the Grand Ducal Family. He claimed he was the rightful heir to Baden and his tale quickly caught the attention of people not only in the Grandy Duchy itself but as far away as Vienna and Rome. In 1833, Hauser was found stabbed to death leaving a cryptic clue to his assailant’s identity but many didn’t need a Poirot style trail to lead them to the perpetrator; many believed Grand Duchess Sophie had ordered Hauser to be killed as he posed a threat to her position. [5]
The ensuing scandal was enough for Grand Duke Leopold to become permanently estranged from his wife who became even more indignant and overbearing in an effort to remind people that it was she who had “made the Hochbergs respectable”. In a way, her personality was very similar to that of the British Queen Mother, the Dowager Queen Louise, who tried so hard to reinforce her importance than people simply tired of her and as a result, her influence actually diminished until her presence was resented. It should therefore come as no surprise that when the Duchess of Cambridge wrote to Grand Duke Leopold inviting him and his family to Herrenhausen for a visit, the Grand Duchess Sophie did not respond favourably.
She was no fool. Much of her time was spent attending to the daily glut of letters on her desk from Europe’s capitals, particularly Vienna, where many members of Sophie’s immediate family, their friends, courtiers and supporters, had settled following the 1809 coup in Stockholm. The Grand Duchess had a great interest in politics and a small army of correspondents kept her well informed as to what was happening in London, Paris and Rome. She knew therefore that the Cambridges had left England to return to Hanover to duck the worst fall-out from a divorce bill in the British parliament which named their son and heir as a cad and a scoundrel – the son they now needed to marry off as quickly as possible. No doubt their attention had settled on Leopold and Sophie’s eldest daughter Alexandrine to whom the British King and Queen could claim some vague connection Sophie thought too far removed to be of any great interest. [6]
Sophie forbad Leopold from accepting the invitation; or rather, she tried to. “You may pay court to those British horrors”, she said grandly, “But I shan’t go with you and you shan’t take Alexandrine either”. Unfortunately, everything Grand Duke Leopold needed from his wife had long been extorted and her opinion on this matter was not of any great value in his decision making. Sophie protested that Alexandrine already had a good prospect in the Hereditary Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha but Grand Duke Leopold reasoned that if Ernst was seriously considering marriage with their eldest daughter, he would not have delayed declaring his interest after his attitude towards the relationship had once seemed so enthusiastic. It is possible that Grand Duke Leopold had heard the rumours about Hereditary Duke Ernst too, that he could not consider marriage whilst he was being treated for sexually transmitted infections picked up in the brothels of Europe. Either way, the Grand Duke put his foot down. [7] The British interest in Alexandrine was evidently born of a need for them to settle Prince George as quickly as possible. Such a match would be advantageous both to Alexandrine and the wider Baden family, though naturally much would hinge on the outcome of the Marsden Scandal.
With Prince George now in Hanover and the first reading of the Private Members’ Bill which would resolve the Marsden Scandal one way or the other a month away, the King allowed himself some time with his family as Missy prepared to return to Germany with her grandmother. This time the parting, though still difficult to bear, was perhaps made easier by the feeling that it was becoming routine. In a few months the King and Queen would be reunited with their daughter at Rumpenheim or Neustrelitz and so the prolonged absence of the Princess Royal from England was broken into something far less daunting and more manageable. Travelling with Missy and Grand Duchess Marie was the Earl of Armagh, his long visit to England now at an end. The King almost begged George to stay, suggesting that he might like to use Marlborough House, now empty since the marriage of the King’s sister, but the news from Berlin that the Duchess of Cumberland was not faring well and that her illness might prove to be far more serious than had first been thought saw the young man return to Germany, at least for a time. The King promised that Armagh would be invited to Rumpenheim or Neustrelitz as the case may be in the summer.
In the second week of January, the King and Queen were invited to tour Regent’s Park where metal tent pegs had been driven into the ground and strung with ropes to mark off each area to be developed. Work was to begin as soon as the weather improved but the January chill did little to put off the crowds who assembled to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. It was reported that he told one spectator; “This part of the park will be yours to use whenever you should like. I hope you will spend many happy hours here”. The concept of recreational time in 1841 was very different to that which we know today. The vast majority of George’s subjects worked 6 days a week, some only scraping a half-day a week on a Sunday morning to call their own and which was inevitably spent in church. There were far more wide-open spaces in cities (especially in London) than we see in 2022, yet these spaces were privately owned and so a brand-new public park captured the imagination in a way we may not quite appreciate today. Whilst the development of Regent’s Park saw the space split into three, it was decided that the main priority was the “big house” in the inner circle in what would become Lisson Park. With the foundations laid there, work could then begin in creating public pathways, planting avenues of trees, erecting statues and monuments and landscaping flower beds.
The redevelopment plan of Regent's Park. [3]
The King and Queen were always happy when they were among their people and it is testament to George’s character that he appeared to enjoy the company of the ordinary working man far more than he the Mayors and other officials who usually fawned over royalty and stuck to the same obsequious script. One such encounter came at the foundation stone laying for Lisson where an elderly man in flat cap and shabby trousers held up by a length of twine stood in the King’s eyeline shaking his head and looking down at the pit where the stone was to be laid. Curiosity got the better of the King and so he walked over to the man and asked what he thought of the redevelopment of the park.
“Bugger the park”, the man said, “Where’s the vegetables gone?”
Prior to 1841, the inner circle had been devoted to a cluster of allotments which provided fresh produce to the neighbouring terraces. The King explained that a new farm was to be built further along to the southeast of the current park which would provide fruit and vegetables to the new houses of the inner circle.
“No it won’t”, the man replied, “See, I dug here for years and there’s nothing down there but clay Sir. You’d be lucky to get a spade in”
“You worked here?”, the King replied smiling.
“Oh yes King”, the man said cheerfully, warming to his theme, “I’ve been a gardener all my life. That’s how I know you won’t grow a thing down there. Let me show you…”
And to the confusion of the officials gathered around the foundation stone, the amusement of Queen Louise and the delight of the crowds, the King let the man lead him down to where Home Park sits today. The two men spoke for fifteen minutes, Charlie Phipps eventually stepping in to suggest the King might consider returning to the Inner Circle as the weather was bound to turn and the Queen was eager to return home.
“Quite so Charlie”, the King replied, “Now this man is Mr Dawson. And he’s to be my Head Gardener of the Home Park. For now, I’ve said he can give us a hand down in Dorset. See to it, there’s a good chap”.
Mr Samuel Dawson was 73 years old when he joined the Royal Household as a gardener. He would spend the next twenty years in the service of the King, transferring back from Hanover House when Home Park was finally established in 1843. He retired at the grand old age of 93 and was given a grace and favour cottage to live in on the Windsor Estate where he died five years later. He always called George V “King” (not Your Majesty) which pleased George enormously, so much so that whenever he wrote to Mr Dawson, he signed his notes “Your friend, King”.
On the 26th of January 1841, the King attended the State Opening of Parliament. He was not accompanied by the Queen, officially the reason given was that she had caught a chill whilst visiting a hospital in Watford, but the King had actually forbidden his wife from taking part in the ceremony because he feared it might put too much strain on her. After all, the “full rig” was incredibly heavy and Dr Allison had yet to declare the Queen fully recovered.
“I don’t know why he won’t let me go”, the Queen sighed, “Sometimes I think he would like to wrap me up in a little blanket and keep me in a drawer so I’d always be right there where he left me”.
One interesting bill announced in the Speech from the Throne that year was the introduction of a Census Act. The Population Act 1840 had prepared the way for a much more robust census which would collect far more data about the general population of England and Wales than any previous attempts to do so. For the first time in British history, the census would record not only people’s names and addresses but their ages and occupations. Census forms were delivered to around 16 million people across the United Kingdom and then collected by enumerators from each household by hand. More often than not, the enumerators were forced to help people complete their census form as many were illiterate. The King felt this to be a very interesting idea, though he had no idea how he should record himself when the census form reached Buckingham Palace later that year in June. The issue was that the form asked for an “Occupation – If Any”. Charlie Phipps advised the King should simply enter his name as The King and then leave the Occupation field blank as it was hardly appropriate for the Sovereign to describe his job on a civil registration document.
“I won’t have them say I do nothing!”, the King muttered, “I shall write ‘Sovereign’”.
And so, on the 1841 census, the first of its kind now repeated every decade in the United Kingdom, George V is listed as The King, aged 21 years, The Sovereign. Technically, it was an offence to enter anybody on the form who was not resident when the census form was returned to the enumerator but Queen Louise said she couldn’t list Princess Victoria and not the Princess Royal. So even though Missy was back in Germany, according to the 1841 census she was actually living with her parents at Buckingham Palace. This caused quite a headache for future biographers who could not understand how the little girl had managed to travel from Leipzig to London and back again in the space of 24 hours.
Another highlight of the Speech from the Throne was the amendment to the Prohibited Goods (Trade) Act of 1840 which set higher penalties against the sale of Opium by British ships in the China Seas. This legislation allowed the Treasury to collect and determine “a fair compensation” to be paid to the Chinese authorities when the increased penalty for trading in contraband (22.5%) was levied on British ships exporting the drug. A copy of this bill was sent with Sir Henry Pottinger to Guangdong where it was hoped it would prove enough for Lord Qishan to report to his Emperor that the British government were taking the controversial trade of opium far more seriously than before. Unfortunately, Pottinger arrived too late. Just days before his arrival in Hong Kong, the Chinese opened fire on a runner in the Bay of Kowloon, the site of a previous skirmish that had almost brought Britain and China into a state of conflict. The runner was packed with opium chests.
The view of Hong Kong from Kowloon, 1841.
The Foreign Office had hoped their pledge to tighten existing regulations through legislation might buy them a little more time, at least until the London Conference following the Oriental Crisis had been concluded in February. But the patience of the Chinese had been exhausted. Whilst the authorities were still willing to meet with Sir Henry Pottinger to discuss a new agreement, until such a time as the British gave the Chinese what they wanted, all British ships trading in the China Seas would be boarded by port authorities, searched and then issued with a certificate to dock and unload their cargo. If their cargo was found to be contraband, the ship would be impounded and the crew placed under arrest. The cargo would be destroyed and the British government billed for the expenses accrued. Lord Derby called this “a petty little insult” but he did not believe it to be anything of concern or something which could not be overcome with gentle persuasion. After all, the British government had banned the trade of opium, it was inevitable that the loophole in the existing legislation would be discovered and that the Chinese would demand it be closed.
“We shall present new assurances to the Chinese”, Sir James Graham promised the King at their weekly audience at Buckingham Palace, “And I believe these, with the added promise of financial renumeration from the penalties imposed on runners, will be enough to calm the tension”
“But they sank one of our ships Prime Minister”, the King replied cautiously, “That sounds to me as if they have tired of talking”
“It was not one of our ships Your Majesty”, Graham reasoned, “It was a runner in the employ of Jardines I believe, they knew the risks involved. Now had the Chinese sunk a Company ship…well that would be quite different”.
The King lit a cigarette, pointing the extinguished match toward Sir James.
“And what if they do sink a company ship? As they did before in Kowloon?”
The Prime Minister fixed his lips into a tight smile. It was not a very genuine smile and did little to hide his true feelings.
“There will be no war with China Your Majesty”, he said tersely, “You have my word on that”. [8]
Notes
[1] As we have three Georges in play at the moment, we'll use subsidiary titles to help differentiate where possible. The Earl of Tipperary is George of Cambridge. The Earl of Armagh is George of Cumberland.
[2] The lack of proper educational facilities in England meant that most deaf children were never offered help to communicate in other ways such as sign language or even writing. Most were listed as being both deaf and mute because at this time it was believed that the two went hand in hand. We now know this not to be the case, mostly based on the studies of men like Heinicke who developed the sort of programmes for deaf children Missy is attending in Leipzig.
[3] Gustav III, Gustav IV Adolf and Gustav, Prince of Vasa respectively.
[4] A pottered history, I've kept the detail to a minimum so we don't get distracted!
[5] Again, we're skimming this but Sophie was one of many suspects considered to have had a hand in Hauser's demise.
[6] There were tenuous links to the Hesses and the Nassau-Usingens through Leopold's paternal line and through both George and Louise's maternal line. Enough to see Leopold treated as a cousin at least.
[7] Most people in royal circles did know that Ernst was undergoing treatment for a "social sickness". It would be surprising if Grand Duke Leopold did not, though some accounts suggest he couldn't possibly have known as he'd never have allowed Ernst to marry Alexandrine in the OTL.
[8] A knock on effect of Palmerston's early departure from the Foreign Office means that whilst in the OTL Britain was already engaged in a war against China, conflict has thus far been avoided in TTL.
On a personal note, you'll probably notice that at the moment instalments have been just once a week. Unfortunately we're still dealing with the fall out of things here and my free time isn't as free as it was a month ago for obvious reasons. So we'll stick with once a week for a little while longer and if I can publish an additional chapter here and there, I will. I'm hoping that we can return to our normal pace as soon as possible. Once again, many thanks for reading!
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Mr Dickens will definitely be making another appearance in our TL soon.
I’m glad that Missy is doing well. I wonder how the China conflict will be resolved? Maybe, George can use his diplomatic talents again?
Kinda of a nitpick, but cigarettes were basically still very rarely used by anyone beyond the lower classes in the 1800s. Basically, the practice of even smoking cigarettes came from collecting the things (mainly tobacco) left behind from cigars and then wrapping them in paper to smoke them- because cigars were too expensive for most people. Furthermore, cigars and smoking pipes weren't even used in a similar manner to today due to how much nicotine they contained. Most often a smoker would just take the smoke of a cigarette/cigar/pipe into their mouth and then let it out. Properly inhaling the nicotine and smoke had a tendency to make you hallucinate and generally get a high, which wasn't desired.
Chewing tobacco meanwhile was the most common form of using tobacco, at least in the US. Cigarettes wouldn't become the most used form of smoking until the 1890s when a proper cigarette rolling machine was invented in the US. Prior to that, every cigarette had to be hand-rolled, which ultimately made pre-made cigarettes more expensive than the lower classes desired. Thus, it was more common to buy rolling paper and then the tobacco and roll it yourself.
Royalty wouldn't pick up the habit of cigarette smoking until maybe the 1920s when the cigarettes basically took over the world and created modern advertising. All this to say that George and his peers would either be smoking Spanish cigars or pipes around the 1840s.
EDIT: Here's a good YT video which expands on the history of tobacco:
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Thank you for this input, it made for very interesting reading! These are the sort of research rabbit holes I love falling down too.
From my research, I found that W.D. & H.O. Wills was supplying cigarettes to the Royal Household from at least 1836/7 (possibly before) as one early advertisement claims that Wills supplied cigarettes to King William IV. Obviously we can't be sure whether these were sent below stairs or whether they were offered to guests staying with the Royal Family. Given that cigarette boxes were presented as gifts to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria as engagement/wedding presents in 1839/40, I think we could reasonably assume that they had begun to keep a supply in the public rooms of the Palace even if they themselves did not smoke at all, let alone in their private rooms.
So I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility for George to adopt the habit of cigarette smoking as opposed to cigar smoking, though I am aware that in the 1840s and 50s young men who smoked cigarettes instead of cigars were often thought to "have something of the dandy about them". It was also regarded as "modern", a word I'm sure was used in a pejorative context back in the 1840s! I will have to double check but I'm sure I've seen reference to Ernst II of Coburg smoking cigarettes at Windsor on his visits there in the 1840s which really didn't please Queen Victoria at all. In fact, whilst she allowed men to smoke cigars after dinner in the private rooms of most of her residences, smoking of any kind was banned at Osborne from 1851 until 1901 outside of the allocated Smoking Room which was only opened for an hour each day after the evening meal was served. This annoyed the hell out of the Prince of Wales who was frequently scolded for smoking in his room at Osborne.
I would say though that royalty seemed to adopt the habit of smoking cigarettes well before the 1920s and I suspect that had something to do with the time the male members of the Royal Family spent in the services where they possibly mixed far more with the working classes. By the 1860s the Prince of Wales was smoking cigarettes (in addition to ten cigars a day!) which ties in quite neatly as coming almost immediately after he was finally allowed to undergo a few weeks of army training. The Princess of Wales was said to smoke cigarettes very occasionally from the 1880s onwards (though she didn't care to see her daughters or her ladies of the bedchamber follow her example) and by the Golden Jubilee of 1887, the OTL (future) George V was certainly smoking cigarettes because Queen Victoria admonished him for it. He had to apologise for kissing her without eating peppermints first.
But further afield from the UK, there's some brilliant archive footage from the turn of the century taken from the grand family get togethers in Denmark which shows the extended Royal Family at play during their annual summer holidays at Fredensborg. What surprised me about the footage isn't that people like Nicholas II (who smoked cigarettes long before his marriage to Alexandra in 1894) can be seen puffing away happily alongside George I of Greece but that an awful lot of the ladies are seen smoking too. Obviously they never assumed we'd see the footage but it's quite something to see considering that women smoking cigarettes in public was frowned upon in "polite society" well into the 20th century. Though a useless factoid on this subject is that many people believe the first royal woman to smoke in public was Princess Margaret. It was in fact Princess Marina who was told off for her doing so by her in-laws, something she couldn't understand given that a) the Prince of Wales (future Edward VIII) smoked all over the place and b) she'd smoked quite publicly in Paris and nobody had thought any the less of her for it!
I do find it quite interesting that the British royals took up smoking when it was so squarely seen as a habit of the poor. People disliked smoking as a whole due to the bad smell, which only got marginally better with different types of tobacco and actual cigarette making, but the smell was seen as a problem even after that (obviously).
But yeah, funnily enough, smoking tobacco wasn't nearly as damaging to one's health prior to the 1860s when a new variety of tobacco was made which actually allowed one to inhale the smoke into the lungs without having hallucinations and getting a high. This then started leading to the usual tar build-up and such, but we all know about that. Of course, nicotine itself has its own big problems and causes issues for one's health. It alone probably contributed to the heart problems many men had to deal with, so smoking tobacco wasn't ever a "healthy" thing, despite what the colonizers of America were brought to believe.
Anyway, coming back to the matter of the British royals; I have to assume that they took up cigarette smoking as a method of appealing to the lower classes, because as I said before, it genuinely was a hobby of the lower classes due to the expense of smoking cigars. Additionally, one has to assume that the Royals are either smoking pre-rolled Cigarettes which would indeed be too expensive for a large part of the lower class or they're rolling their own cigarettes (or having someone else roll them for them). I bring up the latter example because Cigars were often seen as more high-class in part due to a perceived notion of them being made from high-grade tobacco, so perhaps the British royals were buying "good quality" tobacco from elsewhere, having someone roll them cigarettes, and then smoking them for that effect it might have on the lower classes.
Also, I didn't mention this previously, but matches also were not common at all until the 1840s-1850s, due to the early difficulties of making a match that wasn't dangerous to one's health. For example, an early match would often contain various dangerous chemicals and would require dipping the tip of the match into something like sulfuric acid, which would then allow the match to be lit.
Of course, friction matches were already a thing by 1840, though the issue with them was actually the pungency and sheer horrid odor the match would make upon being lit. The smoke was also an issue. This all came due to the fact that matches were made with sulfur and white phosphorus. So yeah, it was a bit problematic. Thankfully by the early 1850s, the sulfur and white phosphorus was replaced at first with beeswax and then paraffin.
So if anything, the only inaccurate thing in the text would perhaps be the use of a match, instead of a parlor candle of some sort which were often used to light cigars and cigarettes due to the problems with matches.
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Of course we're now nearly thirty years diverged from our point of departure so earlier candles and matches are not outside of possibility
Wonderful update as ever. I enjoyed the reference to Kaspar Hauser, a favourite rabbit hole of my own.
