Charlotte

24th July 1860

Birth of Charlotte ~ The scandalous Princess of Prussia

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Getting on Queen Victoria's nerves wasn't a very difficult task, but her eldest granddaughter Princess Charlotte of Prussia, seemed to have had a natural gift for it.

Princess Charlotte was a bad daughter, a very bad mother, a double-crossing friend, and a wicked rumor monger.

This princess was both tragic, and very unlikeable.

Born on the 24th July 1860, Charlotte was the eldest daughter of Victoria~The Princess Royal, and Frederick III~German Emperor.

Though she had a healthy delivery, Charlotte would go on to suffer from multiple illnesses that first appeared at an early age.

Even as a child she was prone to violent outbursts of rage and wild tantrums, which saw her biting her nails and taking her clothes off whenever she felt uncomfortable.

While it is true that Princess Charlotte had developed a lot of negative traits throughout her life, most of them were the indirect results of the illness that tormented her ever since birth- porphyria.

A rare genetic disorder, porphyria causes a wide range of issues such as hyperactivity, physical pain, digestive troubles, skin blisters, and red urine.

Unfortunately for Charlotte, she suffered from every symptom at one point or another.

Incidentally, Charlotte wasn’t the only family member of the British royalty who suffered from this condition- other notable members include Margaret Tudor, King George III, and Mary Queen of Scots.

King George III was even nicknamed the ‘Mad King’ due to the bouts of delusions he suffered, due to his porphyria.

Though both her parents loved her a lot, Charlotte’s father was absent during most of her childhood, and so, her mother was the one who had to raise the troubled child.

Although Charlotte initially had three brothers, two of them died early on in their childhood.

This tragedy created a toxic family environment, as their mother Victoria actually started doting on her youngest three children while neglecting Charlotte and her brother Wilhelm.

Charlotte became jealous, bitter, resentful and enraged.

Charlotte was slow to mature.

Not only was she already small in size, but she would also maintain her childish behavior well into her teens.

While she wasn’t considered to be very physically attractive by the standard of her time, Charlotte more than made up for it with her tremendous confidence.

By the time she was in her late teens she had become a prominent figure in the court, and had gained the reputation for being an outrageous and mischievous flirt.

Desperate to escape her childhood home, and her overbearing family, Charlotte set her sights on getting married from an early age.

The man she chose, was very easy to charm- her second cousin Bernhard, the heir to the German Duchy of Saxe-Meiningen.

Not only did the pair have a nine-year age difference, but their personalities were also radically different.

Bernhard was a shy and soft-spoken intellectual who delved into history, archeology, and the arts.

While the renegade princess could be considered as the Kim Kardashian of her time, always producing scandals.

Ther marriage in 1778 was something straight out of a fairy tale. It was a double wedding where Princess Elisabeth Anna of Prussia and Grand Duke Augustus of Oldenburg got married alongside Princess Charlotte and Prince Bernhard, and was the event of the decade.

Royalty from all over Europe flocked to Prussia to attend the wedding, with thousands of people waiting outside.

Once the marriage ceremony was over, the real party began and it was simply wild!

She partied for 5 solid days, the princess reportedly partied so hard, that she fainted three times.

The festivities were filled with performances and sumptuous feasts, round the clock.

After her marriage celebratione were over, Charlotte moved to Berlin with her husband, and out of the dull Prussian court.

Ecstatic to start her new life as a free, adult woman, Charlotte threw herself into the privileges married life had to offer.

She turned her home into a party mansion and hosted parties, banquets, and wild game nights, where some of the most powerful families of Germany engaged in their hedonistic vices.

She was so focused on enjoying herself, that when she discovered her pregnancy merely a few months later, she was bitterly disappointed.

The pregnancy restriction ticked Charlotte off so badly, that she decided never to have a child again.

As soon as she could get back on her feet after her daughter Princess Feodora was born in 1879, Charlotte went back to her socialite lifestyle, leaving the baby with nannies and governesses. From very early on Charlotte cemented herself with the reputation as a bad mother, through her lack of maternal instincts and total indifference towards her newborn.

Charlotte was a one-woman gossip army, who found no greater pleasure than spreading gossip around, a nasty trait she retained until her death.

She would get people drunk, befriend them, learn their juicy secrets, and then spread them around while keeping her role secret.

All of this mischief was recorded on a small black diary that would go on to become the crux of one of the biggest high-society scandals in German history.

Since she was pretty average-looking, Princess Charlotte compensated for her natural looks, with the most fashionable dresses of her time.

Her wardrobe was quite large and she spared no expenses in importing the latest fashion wear from Paris.

To her family’s dismay, she also took up smoking and soon became a chain smoker.

This was especially risky given her frail health, but Charlotte wasn’t going to let that get in the way of her having some fun.

Charlotte was an absolute menace when it came to rumor-mongering and not even her family members escaped her poisonous tongue.

The biggest victim in the family due to this nasty habit of hers, was her younger sister Viktoria.

Viktoria was already having trouble finding a suitor due to her less-than-average looks, and to make things worse, Charlotte spread rumors that Viktoria had multiple affairs ~ which seriously damaged her marriage prospects.

Not only content with directing her malice toward her younger sister, Charlotte also went to extreme lengths to spite her older brother as well.

So much so, that she would go on to jeopardize her cousin, Marie of Edinburgh’s marriage with her brother.

She encouraged Marie, to fall for Prince Ferdinand of Romania, with whom she conspired to drive the naïve girl away from Wilhelm.

Once Wilhelm ascended the throne, Charlotte stopped messing around with him, as she was cunning enough to understand that her social standing and access to money depended on her brother’s whim.

Despite her best efforts to butter up her brother, Wilhelm and Charlotte’s relationship continued to deteriorate.

This was mainly due to her partying and gossiping habits, which Wilhelm disliked intensely.

It’s surprising by today’s standards, the most controversial habit Charlotte that caused quite the stir in the Prussian court, was her biking hobby.

She was one of the first women in Europe to ride bikes, and it was one of her favorite pastimes on the days she was healthy and happy.

Many of the courtiers found it indecent, including her older brother’s wife.

But this was nothing compared to the hedonistic life she led behind the scenes.

Her most daring antic was a hunting trip at Grunewald lodge which she organized with Duke Ernst Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein that was attended by 15 people.

This trip would go on to become the center of the biggest scandals in Europe, as under the façade of a hunting trip ~ it actually was an orgy.

A few months after the orgy, a string of blackmail letters suddenly sprung up detailing the debauchery that took place on that hunting trip.

This immediately set the court in a frenzy as all of the participants of that trip were high-ranking members of the royal court, and their spouses.

There were photos to go along with the letters, and soon a lot of denials and finger-pointing started.

Most modern historians believe that Charlotte was behind it all, and Charlotte herself wrote the letters, which were then made public by her co-host and his mistress.

But since she left no traces of her involvement in the affair, very few mustered the courage to point their fingers at her.

Understandably once these letters began to surface, Emperor Wilhelm was extremely angry.

He ordered an investigation, which saw the arrest of some of his closest courtiers.

The investigators discovered, that a woman was involved in the planning of the whole affair, his Sister Charlotte.

Charlotte started to feel the heat, and suddenly her prized black-covered diary vanished into thin air.

But to her misfortune, the diary resurfaced again and when it did, it fell into the hands of her brother ~ who now had first-hand accounts of his sister’s debauchery, and hedonistic lifestyle.

Wilhelm handled the situation with tact and finesse, that was uncharacteristic of him.

First, he assigned Charlotte’s husband Bernhard to a far-off military regiment in Breslau, which basically exiled his sister unofficially from the hustle and bustle of Berlin and the royal court.

Then he put the screws on Charlotte's allowance, which significantly cut her ability to afford any of her luxuries.

Strangely, the mild-mannered and quiet Bernhard staunchly and fiercely defended his wife’s honor.

He even threatened to retire from his military duties, claiming he and his wife were above such dirty accusations.

After leaving Berlin, Bernhard and Charlotte left for Romania, where Charlotte started flexing her acid tongue again, and badmouthing her own brother, to King Carol I.

While Charlotte and her family were in exile, her daughter found the love of her life, after meeting with Prince Henry XX of Reuss and immediately getting engaged to him.

The two got married the following year, much to Charlotte’s chagrin, who finally realized how little control she had over her daughter.

Charlotte was so spiteful, that when she learned her daughter couldn’t conceive, she was pleased since Feodora desperately wanted children.

Charlotte started spreading rumors about her own daughter.

In 1903 when both she and her daughter were suffering from rashes, she started spreading disgusting rumors that Feodora got an STD from her husband.

Her daughter and son-in-law were so enraged that they refused to speak with her for an entire decade.

The next time Charlotte and her daughter spoke after 10 years, was when Feodora had undergone a life-threatening surgery to help her conceive.

Despite the animosity between herself and her daughter, Charlotte paid a visit to Feodora.

Charlotte was very ill at the time, and had to resort to opium as the only form of treatment to relieve the pain.

By 1919 Charlotte’s physical conditions worsened to the extreme.

She was suffering from swollen legs, boils, chronic aches, and kidney troubles simultaneously leaving Charlotte unable to walk.

In that year she also started having heart troubles which forced her to seek treatment.

However, when doctors at the Baden-Baden hospital diagnosed her, she was beyond help.

Princess Charlotte met her end on 1st October 1919, after suffering from a sudden heart attack.

She died at the age of 59 leaving her husband a widower.

Bernhard died nine years later and was buried with her at Schloss Altenstein, in Thuringia, Germany.

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Princess Charlotte 1899~Portrait by Philip de László