King Mountbatten

Has anyone heard of the little-known idea which surfaced towards the
end of World War II?

In the biography of Empress Zita that a plan was hatched to divide what
we now know as Germany, combining Bavaria and Austria to create a
Catholic state under the restored Hapsburgs and leaving northern
Germany to be a Protestant kingdom with, odd as it might perhaps seem,
Lord Louis Mountbatten as King. Of course it's not really that odd when
one considers that the real name of the Mountbatten family is
Battenberg, changed to disguise their Teutonicity during the Great War
when the fervor of hatred against our cousin the Hun ran willy-nilly.
While Mountbatten was born in Windosr Castle and served as First Sea
Lord as well as the final Viceroy of India, he was really entirely
German in terms of ancestry. His parents were Prince Louis of
Battenberg and Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine, while Louis
IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine was his grandfather. By right, he
was His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Battenberg, but cherishing
their adopted country, the family were intimidated into dropping all
German styles and titles in 1917.

Lord Mountbatten apparently took the proposal seriously enough that he
began to brush up on his German, and informed Empress Zita, living in
exile in the Dominion of Canada during the Second World War, of its
prospects for both their families. Of course, with Yalta, nothing was
ever to come of it .

cj.buyers...

One wouldn't want to let facts get in the way of a fantastic yarn, but
Earl Mountbatten of Burma didn't become Viceroy of India until 1947 and
First Sea Lord until 1955.

As for the family being intimidated into dropping their German titles,
that doesn't quite seem to have been the attitude taken by Prince Louis
of Battenberg, who dealt with the whole episode with a certain degree
of nonchalance. He was staying at his sons house when his renunciation
took effect and wrote in the visitors book "Arrived Prince Jekyll,
Departed Lord Hyde". And why not. He was made a peer of the realm, with
a hereditary seat in the greatest parliament, of the greatest empire in
the then known world, in the country he had adopted and served all his
life. No doubt he viewed it as a cut above being some remote morganaut
of a little German backwater where all his properties had been
confiscated.