In my last post, I described the miserable marriage of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick. After years of restrictions and neglect, Caroline left England to go abroad, where scandal dogged her footsteps.
Following the deaths of her daughter and grandson in 1817, and the imminent succession to the throne of her estranged husband after King George III died, Caroline finally returned to England to claim her position as Queen Consort. But her husband was having none of it.
A determined divorce attempt
In August of 1820 George tried to divorce Caroline through the mechanism of a special “Bill of Pains and Penalties” in Parliament. If passed, the bill would have denied Caroline her title as well as nullify her marriage to the king.
With great solemnity Caroline was put on trial, accused of infidelity and grossly improper conduct while she was living in Italy.
Italian servants who had witnessed her interactions with Pergami were called to testify against her, while character witnesses spoke in favor of the queen.
That autumn the trial was the topic of gossip and conversation in every London drawing room and country cottage. For three months it consumed the public’s attention, eclipsing any other news.
But in the end, the new king’s scheme failed. Caroline was simply too popular with the people of Great Britain. Despite her wayward behavior, the general public sympathized with her.
The British people detested George for his years of immoral living and lavish spending while they endured economic hardships due to the expensive wars waged against Napoleon. They also blamed him for his harsh treatment of the woman he was joined to by the sanctity of marriage.
So the new king’s subjects rallied to the defense of their queen with more than 800 petitions containing close to a million signatures. In November the bill was withdrawn.
George was frustrated. The elaborate July 19, 1821, coronation he’d planned for himself was fast approaching, and he was adamant that he wasn’t going to share his special day with his unwanted wife.
An uncrowned queen
When coronation day came, George not only didn’t invite his wife to attend, but he also gave orders that she was not to be admitted to Westminster Abbey for the ceremony. She showed up anyway and banged on the doors, demanding to be let in. She was turned away.
Defeated, the unacknowledged queen went back to her lodgings at Brandenburg House in Hammersmith. On July 30 she fell ill, and she died a week later at the age of 53. The date was August 7, 1821 – coincidentally six years to the day that Emperor Napoleon was forced to leave English shores for exile on St. Helena.
As I said earlier, August can be a tough month for European royalty.
George may have been able to command his guards to bar Caroline from his coronation, but he couldn’t command his people to forsake their uncrowned queen. Caroline’s funeral cortège was mobbed as it made its way through London to the port at Harwich.
Initially, officials decided to have the procession avoid the city on its way to the coast, but throngs of mourners blocked the intended route and forced a rerouting through London and Westminster. Guards who tried to control the unruly crowd with drawn sabers had rocks and bricks thrown at them.
At Harwich, Caroline’s remains were put on a ship destined for Germany. At her request, Caroline was buried in Brunswick Cathedral. She’d left instructions for her casket plate to read “Here lies Caroline, the Injured Queen of England.”
A modern parallel
In the recent past there was another Prince and Princess of Wales who had an unhappy marriage, and that marriage has often been compared to George and Caroline’s unfortunate union.
There are undeniable parallels between Caroline of Brunswick of the Regency era and Princess Diana, an icon of the 20th century. Both women were in line to become queen of England, a destiny that didn’t quite work out for either of them. Both women had troubled marriages with their royal spouses. As a result, both princesses became embroiled in scandalous affairs.
And both met their ultimate fate during the month of August.
Like Caroline, Diana decided to take a vacation from her unhappy royal life. In the summer of 1997 Diana, recently divorced, made headlines by dating Dodi Fayed, the son of an Egyptian billionaire.
The couple was photographed on Fayed’s yacht in the Mediterranean, a holiday that the tabloid press feasted on by publishing as many photos as they could capture. Tabloid press around the world delved into this relationship with the same vigor the Regency press went after Caroline’s alleged affair with Perigami.
But Diana’s affair with Dodi didn’t last long. On August 31 the couple’s summer idyll was cut short when their car, dogged by motorcycle-mounted paparazzi, crashed in a tunnel under the city of Paris. Both Dodi and Diana were killed.
Like Caroline, Diana was much more popular than her husband, and also like Caroline, Diana was humiliated by her husband’s very public extramarital affair. Both women, as brides, had to endure the company of their husband’s mistress.
Both faced divorce proceedings from their royal spouses. And in a different world, each of them would have sat on the throne as queen.
But I don’t think the comparison between the two royal marriages holds up to much more scrutiny. Charles is no George IV, a man who was silly, vain, and frequently cruel to his wife and daughter.
And the problems in Charles and Diana’s troubled marriage were intensified by the relentless pursuit of shocking headlines by an insatiable media. George and Caroline may have been lampooned by the press of their day, but their experience was nothing like their 20th-century descendants had to endure.
In the end, the factors and personalities involved in the breakdown of these two royal marriages are unique to each case. As Tolstoy observed in his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
By all accounts, Caroline of Brunswick felt unloved and unwanted by her husband. And that’s an injury no royal title can heal.
***
Sources for this post include:
- The Prince of Pleasure and his Regency 1811-20, by J.B. Priestley, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1969.
- Our Tempestuous Day, by Carolly Erickson, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1986.
- An Elegant Madness, High Society in Regency England, by Venetia Murray, Viking (Penguin Putnam, Inc.) New York, 1999.
- The Regency Companion, by Sharon Laudermilk and Teresa L. Hamlin, Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London, 1989.
Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons