Setting the tone for the series of personal reminiscences (related by Mountbatten) against a more general history of the times (narrated by Mango), this episode charts Mountbatten's early years (from his birth in 1900 to the beginning of his naval career serving as midshipman under Beatty on HMS Queen Elizabeth) and his family's position in relation to the Great War and its origins. The Dreadnoughts, Gallipoli, the Battle of Jutland, U-boats, conscription, form the background to the resignation of Mountbatten's father, Prince Louis of Battenburg, as First Sea Lord, and the Battenburgs' change of name (to Mountbatten) as the result of anti-German feeling, at which point "the Mountbatten story can be said to begin."