Charlotte of Mecklenburg

Birth of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

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Born on 19th May 1744, young Charlotte’s family ruled over a tiny, backwater duchy in North Germany.

The land, called Mecklenburg-Strelitz, lacked the glamor of places like London or Paris.

Despite being a princess, Charlotte didn’t have the usual royal upbringing.

Most people who met Charlotte, weren’t stunned by her beauty.

Her looks were descibed as somewhere between passable to downright awful.

People wrote about how her very large mouth and flat nose, were unflattering.

Despite her shortcomings in the looks department, Charlotte was lively and had a great sense of humor.

Young Charlotte wasn’t especially learned.

Her tutors instructed her a bit in languages, music, botany, and natural history, but the bulk of her education concentrated on household management and religion.

When George III took the British throne on 25th October 1760, everyone held their breath, as the newly-crowned king decided on his queen.

In a move that shocked everyone, George chose unassuming, humble Charlotte to be his bride.

George wasn’t looking for a political equal.

He actively wanted someone who didn’t have a taste for politics and power, and he thought young, naive Charlotte was perfect for this role.

Just a year later, Charlotte, totally unprepared, became the queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

Charlotte didn’t speak any English, so she had to learn, and quickly.

On the voyage to her new British home, Charlotte brought along a harpsichord and practiced performing well-known English songs to get herself started.

Even when storms battered the ship, the young queen could be heard practicing.

The English ladies who accompanied Charlotte on her journey to England, dropped some strong hints about her appearance.

They suggested that she’d need to adopt English fashion trends to please her new husband.

Upon being told to get a makeover, Charlotte saucily replied,

“Let him dress himself as he likes. I’ll dress as I please.”

As soon as she landed in Harwich, Charlotte rushed to London. Along the way, she was told that her marriage was taking place immediately...that very day!

Upon hearing the news, the pressure and exhaustion caused poor Charlotte to faint, just as her carriage rolled up to the castle gates.

Charlotte’s ladies quickly revived a miserable and exhausted Charlotte, before ushering her out to greet George at the palace gates.

Charlotte awkwardly tried to kneel before George, who became mortified at her clumsy attempt, and stepped in to stop her from embarrassing herself any further.

With that, everyone realized that Charlotte was way in over her head.

Unfortunately, it was too late for the new queen to turn back now.

Charlotte was quickly whisked away to dress for a state dinner. After getting a chance to catch her breath, Charlotte turned on her natural charm, winning over her guests.

Even George, who felt more than a bit nervous about his awkward new bride, ended up telling his family that “he already felt a great affection for her.”

By the end of the night, Charlotte and George were officially wed, and everyone was happy.

Almost immediately, Charlottes actions as queen caused a scandal.

She and her new husband moved out of St. James’s palace, the traditional home of English monarchs, to the humble Buckingham House.

There, the two entertained guests and took walks without guards present....scandalous!!

Charlotte’s preference for these simple pleasures, drew horrified looks from her courtiers.

George’s mother, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, was a total monster-in-law to poor Charlotte.

Augusta hated Charlotte’s casual outlook on court life and insisted on strict, proper court decorum.

This meant no more parties and no more walks without guards in tow.

To ensure that Charlotte acted like a proper queen, Augusta even appointed spies as members of Charlotte’s staff.

Charlotte took the phrase “an heir and a spare” and really ran with it.

On 12th August 1762, she had her first son George IV ~ the Prince of Wales.

After that, she basically never stopped having children.

She had 14 more children after the birth of the Prince of Wales and, in a nearly-impossible achievement for the time period, almost all of them survived into adulthood.

Everything seemed to be going just fine for Charlotte, until disaster struck.

In 1765, King George was temporarily struck with a mysterious “mental disorder.”

His mother and her associates carefully monitored the ill king, while making sure to keep the full extent of the King’s illness a secret from his own wife, poor Queen Charlotte.

The queen, who was beside herself with worry, was often found weeping throughout the palace.

The King recovered, but in 1782, tragedy befell Charlotte again.

Her young son, Prince Alfred, passed away on 20th August.

This broke Charlotte's heart.

They buried him in Westminster Abbey and, in a sweet gesture, her husband ordered the sides of Prince Alfred’s and his grandparent’s coffins removed, so that their bodies would lie close to each other.

The year following Prince Alfred’s passing, Charlotte's son Octavius, fell ill due to smallpox.

He lost his battle with the disease on 30th May 1782.

Although she had plenty of children, the losses didn’t hurt any less for Charlotte.

On 11th June 1788, King George was hit with a sudden high fever while in Cheltenham.

Fifteen days later, Charlotte and the rest of the family understood the full extent of his illness, when, in the middle of a sermon, the King began ranting and raving, while frantically grabbing at Charlotte and their daughters.

The doctors immediately set to work trying to cure the King with a bit of good old fashioned bloodletting.

Unsurprisingly, this didn’t work.

Instead, the King seemed to grow worse with each day.

Charlotte and her children began to notice, much to their horror, that the King would literally talk nonstop.

Only exhaustion stopped the King and his ceaseless babbling.

Trying to preserve a sense of normalcy, Charlotte continued to bring the King and the rest of the family along to state functions and dinners.

Tragically, the King’s illness ruined these evenings.

On the 5th November, the family was dining with a lord when the King suddenly rose from the table and slammed his oldest son, the Prince of Wales, against a wall, accusing him of cowardice.

Charlotte fled to her room in terror, where an attendant tried to keep her calm.

Her husband soon followed.....

Charlotte’s attendant tried to keep the King out of her room, telling him that she was ill. Upon hearing this, the King forcibly moved Charlotte into a nearby drawing-room so that he could “take care of her.”

He then ordered all his daughters into the room as well, before putting out almost all of the candles.

Charlotte and her daughters sat in near darkness with the raving King until past midnight.

Wanting to keep his wife close, George demanded that Charlotte sleep in a room right next to him.

Desperate to leave her deranged husband, Charlotte agreed. Throughout the night, Charlotte could hear George through the walls, talking nonstop.

At about 1:00 in the morning, George snuck into her room to make sure that Charlotte “would not leave him”

She managed to convince him to go back to bed.

Sensing the kings reign was drawing to an end, Charlotte suspected that her son wanted to take the throne by having his father declared insane.

The Prince of Wales suspected that Charlotte wanted to manipulate her husband into giving her the throne.

With plotting and bickering well underway, the royal family was officially in a high-stakes fight for the crown.

The Prince attempted to physically separate his mother and father, Queen Charlotte snapped,

“Prince of Wales, do it at your own peril! Where the king is, there shall I be.”

Unable to separate Charlotte and George without causing a scene, the Prince had no choice but to back down.

The Prince of Wales made daily demands to see the King, and eventually, Charlotte made the mistake of caving.

While her son visited her husband, the Prince realized that King George was actually recovering.

Most children would be happy that their dads weren’t debilitatingly insane, but most kids aren’t the Prince of Wales!

He was deeply unhappy at the idea of his father’s recovery.

But as time wore on, it became clear that Charlotte and the Prince of Wales couldn’t keep fighting, for the King’s sake, if nothing else.

So, in March of 1791, after two long years of family feuds, Charlotte extended the olive branch to the Prince of Wales.

Mother and son were finally reconciled, for now....

As time wore on, King George’s health continued to deteriorate. While he managed to stay lucid for long periods of time, he had frequent fits that left him bedridden.

In February 1801, the King suffered a particularly bad attack that left Charlotte a nervous wreck.

As the Queen tended to her husband, their son, the Prince of Wales, abandoned his ailing father and started jockeying for power yet again.

By the time the King recovered, Charlotte and her son were fighting, once again.

By 1804, George often broke out into fits where he babbled uncontrollably, which frightened Charlotte.

She began to refuse to see him alone, she slept and dined separately from him, and always made sure at least one of her daughters was with her, when he wanted to see her.

Their once amicable relationship turned sour, and even hostile. In response, Charlotte’s children began forming their own factions, supporting either Charlotte or the King.

The resulting infighting left the family in tatters, as sibling turned against sibling.

A few years later, a family tragedy marked the final blow for the royal family.

In 1810, Princess Amelia, the youngest of Charlotte’s children and the favorite of the king, lost a two year battle with measles and ill health.

Her death devastated Charlotte and the king.

King George, recognizing that Amelia’s passing had left him completely unable to rule, officially declared the Prince of Wales as the new de facto ruler of England.

Now that Charlotte’s daughters were older, they began distancing themselves from their mother.

The Prince of Wales suggested that they should all have their own estates, to which the princesses excitedly agreed.

Just like that, Charlotte’s family fell apart, and an aging Charlotte was left with just the company of her mad husband.

As George’s condition worsened, Charlotte found herself reluctant to visit him.

Charlotte found his behavior erratic, and he often lashed out at her with extreme, unpredictable reactions.

Still, she continued to support him as best as she could, and even formed a sort of peace with her eldest son in the process.

At Charlottes advanced age, her health quickly declined and she soon became bedridden with fever.

It was obvious that Charlotte wouldn’t be able to hang onto life for much longer.

On 17th November 1818, she gathered her children to her bedside and, at 1:00, departed this world, while smiling and holding her eldest son’s hand, she was 74 years old.

Despite their many fights, it looks like they eventually found peace.

Charlotte was buried at St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle.

By the time Charlotte was gone, the King had more or less become completely mad.

Without Charlotte’s care, he deteriorated rapidly.

He went deaf, blind, and lame.

14 months later, he too left this world.

In a tragic twist, the King never truly understood that Charlotte was gone forever.

His mind had deteriorated so much that he couldn’t comprehend that his wife would never again be by his side.

Charlotte is the longest-serving female consort and second-longest-serving consort in British history, after Prince Philip~Duke of Edinburgh.

Having served as such from her marriage on 8th September 1761 to her death on the 17th November 1818, a total of 57 years and 70 days.

Some historians have argued that Charlotte had African or Moorish heritage, on the Portuguese side of her family tree.

Her features, as seen in royal portraits, were conspicuously African.

Claims that the queen, though German, was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family.

These were related to Margarita de Castro e Souza, a 15th-century Portuguese noblewoman, nine generations removed.

This ancestry traces from the 13th-century ruler Alfonso III and his lover Madragana, whom was thought to have been a Moor, and thus a black African.

That said, many other historians are very sceptical about this theory.

They argue the generational distance between Charlotte and her presumed African forebear, is so great that the black part of Charlottes heritage would have been neglegated.

Furthermore, they say even the evidence that Charlottes ancestress Madragana, was black is dubious.

In fact, Charlotte may not have been our first black queen, anyway.

There is another theory that suggests that Philippa of Hainault, consort of Edward III, may have had African ancestry, so she would effectively hold that title.

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https://www.factinate.com/.../facts-charlotte-of.../

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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Queen Charlotte in Robes of State in 1779, by Joshua Reynolds