Whilst King George V was essentially an English country gentleman, he nonetheless was a member of the German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family. A look at his family below shows him to have Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia as a cousin and also Alexandra, the German wife of Czar Nicholas of Russia.

By 1917 the First World War had taken so many British lives that anti-German feeling was strong and reached a peak early that year when a German aircraft began bombing London. With Germany lead by his cousin, the Kaiser, the King was persuaded that the royal family should sever their ties to Germany and so at a meeting of the Privy Council George V signed a proclamation declaring that from henceforth they would be known as The House and Family of Windsor.