honorable substitution

 You know you are a collector when you have a souvenir from an event that never even happened.
Queen Elizabeth II had an Uncle Edward. He was christened Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David but everyone just called him Prince Edward.
He would have been King when his father died.
People expected him to be King when his father died.
And he was King ever so briefly.
So briefly that his coronation never took place.
If it had, this mug was ready.
It would have been a lovely souvenir of an important royal event.
Instead, Edward abdicated and moved to France. His politics and his romance were at odds.
His younger brother Albert became the King. He didn't have as many names as his big brother. Just Albert Frederick Arthur George. But then, no one had expected him to be King. He chose to be known as King George VI and was a very loved monarch.
When I was a girl, children still sang God Save the Queen every morning in school after raising the flag, but our song books were so old that they still had God Save the King printed out and we had to make the necessary substitution. The respectful and honorable substitution.
Just like King George VI had to do.