"The Wallace" is a historical novel. Nigel Tranter is an excellent writer
who portrayed turbulent times and feelings with verve and gusto. However
his work of "The Wallace" is fiction and the original product of Tranter's
wonderful imagination. It cannot be relied on for historical fact. There
are many fictions purporting to be accurate history on the web.
For example; the Clan Sinclair's USA web site states with seeming authority
and great inaccuracy; Quote"The British Royal family changed their name
from Battenberg to Mountbatten because they felt that Battenberg was too
German (as, indeed, it was) and, later, they took the name of Windsor to
distance themselves even further from any taint of German association - a
prudent move in the light of two World Wars when Germany was the main
adversary." Niven Sinclair" Endquote.
Fact or fiction?
Fiction!
Now fact.
The British Royal family's name before WWI was Saxe-Coberg-Gotha. King
George V when anti-German feeling became intense in 1917 George took the
counsel of his government and changed his family name from Saxe-Coburg to
Windsor. Louis Mountbatten was born in Windsor, England. His original name
was Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas of Battenberg. His mother was
Princess Victoria, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and his father was
Prince Louis of Battenberg. German by birth, Prince Louis had become a
British citizen at age 14 and rose through the naval ranks to become
director of naval intelligence and then first sea lord (1912-1914). After
World War I broke out in 1914 he resigned his commission because of his
German origins, and in 1917 he changed the family name to Mountbatten.
The Mountbattens were not the British Royal family.
The glory of Scotland's past is writ large in real deeds by real men, not
the least among them were Sinclairs.
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