Catherine Curzon - The Real Queen Charlotte: Inside the Real Bridgerton Court

THE REAL QUEEN CHARLOTTE

To Helen, for all those worlds .

INSIDE THE REAL BRIDGERTON COURT

CATHERINE CURZON

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

PEN AND SWORD WHITE OWL

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright Catherine Curzon, 2022

ISBN 978 1 39909 701 7

ePUB ISBN 978 1 39909 702 4

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39909 702 4

The right of Catherine Curzon to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Its tea and cake all round at Pen and Sword, with the finest chips for Jon. An extra special thanks to Cecily, for whipping Queen Charlotte into shape.

Now for the usual suspects A gin-soaked rococo n roll to Rob and Kathy, who have been the very, very best.

Pippa, Nelly, and the Rakish Colonial keep watching the skies!

In a few generations there will be no joke in saying Their Highnesses the Mob .

In their first twenty-two years of marriage, George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz became parents to fifteen children. Their names are below, with the names of their spouses legal or otherwise in italics. Rumoured marriages are not included.

George IV (12 August 176226 June 1830)

Maria Fitzherbert (m.1785; not legally recognised)

Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbttel (m.1795; separated)

Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (16 August 1763 5 January 1827)

Princess Frederica of Prussia (m.1791; separated)

William IV (21 August 176520 June 1837)

Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (m.1818)

Charlotte, Princess Royal (29 September 17666 October 1828)

King Frederick of Wrttemberg (m.1797)

Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (2 November 1767 23 January 1820)

Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (m.1818)

Princess Augusta Sophia (8 November 176822 September 1840)

Princess Elizabeth (22 May 177010 January 1840)

Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg (m.1818)

Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover (5 June 177118 November 1851)

Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (m.1815)

Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (27 January 1773 21 April 1843)

Lady Augusta Murray (m.1793; annulled)

Lady Cecilia Buggin (m.1831)

Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge (24 February 17748 July 1850)

Princess Augusta of Hesse-Kassel (m.1818)

Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh (25 April 177630 April 1857)

Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (m.1816)

Princess Sophia (3 November 177727 May 1848)

Prince Octavius (23 February 17793 May 1783)

Prince Alfred (22 September 178020 August 1782)

Princess Amelia (7 August 17832 November 1810)

[Charlotte] is not tall, nor a beauty; pale, and very thin; but looks sensible, and is genteel. Her hair is darkish and fine; her forehead low, her nose very well, except the nostrils spreading too wide; her mouth has the same fault, but her teeth are good. She talks a good deal and French tolerably; possesses herself, is frank, but with great respect to the King.

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was not born to greatness. She was quiet, unassuming, and raised in a little corner of Europe from which it seemed unlikely that any queen would emerge. Yet when it came to royal marriages, a mostly forgotten little corner might turn out to be just what was needed.

When George II died in 1760, his son and heir, Frederick, was already dead. The crown passed to Freds 22-year-old son, the timid, unassuming George III. He would reign for nearly sixty years. At his side through thick and thin was Queen Charlotte, the girl from Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

What made Charlotte so remarkable was the very fact that she wasnt remarkable at all. Unpolitical, unambitious, and aspiring only to a happy home, she was a gift to the politicians who hoped to keep the young George III in check. At first, Charlotte got her wish. Though she had never met her groom before the wedding day, their marriage was loving, faithful, and mundane in its domesticity. There was not a trace of the tumultuous roller-coaster of infidelity, divorce, and murder that had tainted the marriage of George I, nor of the politically ambitious queen and procession of mistresses who had held sway at the court of George II. George III was at pains to prove to his subjects that he was not so different to them. He strove to demonstrate his Englishness, downplayed his German ancestry, and shared his brides love of home and hearth. It should have been a match made in heaven, but fate had other things in store.

Queen Charlotte and King George III were married for nearly sixty years. Their union was blighted by the kings ill health and, as his wife became more keeper than companion, she mourned for the man she had known and loved. That unassuming, optimistic girl was dragged into a life that she had little anticipated, where she fled in terror from her husbands rages, locked the bedroom door against him at night, and sought solace in her unhappy, cosseted daughters. As the royal family erupted into all-out war between the queen and the eldest son who would be Regent, what had once been a happy home became a battleground.

Yet Queen Charlotte was more than the stand-by-your-man wife at the side of an ailing husband or the gossip-hungry matriarch of the Bridgerton court. She lived through tumultuous times, and her journey from that little corner of Europe to queen of one of the grandest courts in the world is as fascinating now as it ever was. Poised, devoted, difficult, and with a temper that would send her children scattering, this is the story of the real Queen Charlotte.

Think of the Crown of England and a handsome young King dropping from the clouds into Strelitz! The crowds, the multitudes, the millions, that are to stare at her; the swarms to kiss her hand, the pomp of the Coronation. She need be but seventeen to bear it!

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, to Horace

Mann, 17 August 1761

The King I think remarkably well; the Queen as usual, sometimes sweet & sometimes sour .

Princess Amelia to the Prince of Wales, October 1806