Long before the world knew him as Edward VIII, a small prince and his younger siblings were brought up by nannies, which was the usual way upper-class families raised children at the time.
One of his earliest nannies had a particular way of handling the moments when the boy was due to be presented to his mother and father.
Just before he was handed over, she’d pinch him so that he cried, and his parents would then send the boy and his nanny away again.
The nanny was later dismissed. Still, the episode says a great deal about the house around her, where a few tears were enough to end a small boy’s audience with his own family.
In the grandest families of that era, the daily work of raising children was often handed to staff, while the adults tended to see the results in brief, formal visits.
But that handoff had a purpose of its own. The people in the nursery were shaping boys and girls for very different futures, the sons to carry a name and a fortune forward, the daughters to make the kin…