The Germans and the Crown

It is reported today, Daily Telegraph and elsewhere, that a letter has recently been discovered written by the future Edward VIII saying that the royal family had "always silently prayed for" the death of his brother Prince John, who suffered from severe epilepsy and autism
The letter reveals that Edward considered his mentally disabled younger brother as "more of an animal than anything else" and that his death was "the greatest relief imaginable". 

John, the youngest child of King George V and Queen Mary and known as the Lost Prince because he was kept away from the public eye, was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of four and was confined for his entire life to a house on the Sandringham estate.
His condition worsened as he got older, although it was only revealed to the public after his death at the age of 13.
John had little contact with his family who wanted to keep John's condition a secret lest it be thought that the Royal blood was not as pure as was claimed.

The letter says a great deal about the attitude of this so-called royal family, actually no more than a collection of German immigrants foisted onto the British public in 1714 to avoid having a Catholic Monarch, there being more than fifty (Catholic) people with a greater claim to the throne than the Hanovarian George I.

Not that the Stuarts or the Tudors had any better claim than the current Germans to the throne,descended as they were from the usurper Henry VII, a Welsh upstart with an illegitimate ancestry.

The last true King of England, a Plantagenet and direct descendant of William the Conqueror, was of course the unfairly maligned, principally by Shakespeare to curry favour with the up-start Tudors, Richard III.