Gore Vidal: The Duke of Windsor sees his mother kill the czar

The only thing of a "historic" nature that I learned from the duke [of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII] was...about the czar and his family. "I was there," said the duke, somewhat portentously."I was there at breakfast...With the king [George V]...and the queen [Mary, left]. Just the three of us. Suddenly an equerry comes in...Not done, you know, ever. The king was furious, but the man went straight up to him with this note, which the king read and gave my mother, and she read it and gave it back and said, 'No.' The king gave it to the equerry and said, 'No.' Later that day I asked my mother what it was all about and she said the government was willing to send a ship to rescue the czar and his family but she did not think it would be good for us to have them in the country and so the Bolsheviks shot the lot of them."

  --The Duke of Windsor, quoted by Gore Vidal in his memoir Palimpsest (1995)