Queen Charlotte

Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (r. 1761-1818)

• Born: May 19, 1744
• Birthplace: Mirow, Duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (now in Germany)
• Died: November 17, 1818
• Place of death: Surrey, England

Queen Charlotte essentially ruled Great Britain and Ireland when her husband, King George III, became disabled in 1810.

Early Life

The German-born Charlotte Sophia had an unremarkable childhood in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where her uncle Frederick was the duke. She was schooled essentially by her mother and a few attendants, and she had an early interest in art. Charlotte could trace direct lineage to Marguerita de Castro y Sousa, a black member of the royal family of Portugal.

Brought up in a religious household, Charlotte venerated the church. Her displays of religious respect were apparent. For example, she always removed her jewelry before taking Holy Communion. When she and King George III were installed as king and queen of England, she wore a bejeweled headpiece. The king removed his crown before taking communion, and Charlotte was about to remove her tiara when the officiating priest excused her because the tiara was intricately woven into her hair.

Charlotte was seventeen years old when she married George III, who had assumed the throne upon the death of his father, George II, on October 25, 1760. George III delayed his coronation as long as was seemly—some eleven months following his father’s death—because he was madly in love with Lady Sarah Lennox and desperate to marry her. Both his mother, Augusta, and his most influential adviser, the earl of Bute, opposed this union so strongly that George finally had the earl draw up lists of eligible marriage prospects for him among the Protestant princesses of Europe.

Augusta and the earl of Bute attempted to persuade George to marry Princess Caroline of Brunswick, but George resisted. Caroline would marry someone else. The two matchmakers, beginning to despair of finding a suitable bride for the twenty-three-year-old king, set their sights on Princess Charlotte, reputed to be a shy, retiring young lady, not dazzlingly beautiful but slender, dark-eyed, and reasonably attractive.

On July 8, 1761, the Privy Council formally approved of George’s wish to marry Charlotte, who had never met the king. She arrived in court on September 8, 1761, unable to speak English, and was graciously received by George. The two embarked upon a marriage that lasted for fifty-seven years.

Life’s Work

Queen Charlotte delivered her first child, George IV, on August 12, 1762, attended by various courtiers and two lady attendants she had brought to England with her. Charlotte bore her first child easily, scarcely crying out during the birth according to those attending her. Between 1762 and 1783, Charlotte bore fifteen children—nine sons and six daughters—of whom all but two sons survived to maturity.

The first duty of royal wives was to produce children, preferably sons, so that the royal line could continue. In part because of her continual pregnancies, Charlotte had little direct involvement in affairs of state. George III, whose mother was intimately involved politically during her husband’s reign, did not encourage Charlotte’s involvement in matters of state because George resented his mother’s political meddling.

Charlotte became something of a nonentity during her childbearing years. She had a jealous nature and often harbored deep suspicions that George was being unfaithful to her, although nothing has surfaced to support such suspicions. George appeared to be genuinely devoted to his wife and, although he undoubtedly had a roving eye, he is generally thought never to have been unfaithful.

Added to George’s reluctance to have Charlotte involved in affairs of state was that Charlotte lived in fearful awe of the king’s mother, who had an overpowering personality. Fanny Burney, the diarist who was for several years a member of the household staff at Windsor, portrayed Charlotte as being unreasonably demanding. She imposed impossible protocols on members of the court, forbidding them from coughing or sneezing in the presence of the monarchs.

A dark cloud descended over the royal palace in the spring of 1788 when the king, suffering from a progressive disease later diagnosed as porphyria, became insane for about a year, during which he experienced brief intervals of rationality. The government had never been forced to deal with such a situation and was quite at odds about how to handle it. In the earliest stages of this hereditary disease, George had been hyperactive, as sufferers from porphyria often are. This hyperactivity had helped to ignite his open conflict with the American colonies.

As the king became increasingly psychotic, Charlotte had little choice but to take on some of the matters that normally fell to her husband. Following a two-year period of reasonable lucidity that lasted from 1799 until 1801, George resumed most of his formal activities, but he lapsed into insanity in 1801 and by 1804 was in a grave mental state. His inhibitions were fading rapidly as his language and actions became uncharacteristically crude and increasingly obscene.

Charlotte suffered considerable humiliation as the king lapsed into these trying periods. She had long since ceased to share her bed with George, who now seemed intent on taking a mistress, although no evidence substantiates his having done so. At the celebration of the royal couple’s forty-third wedding anniversary, some of the royal ministers tried to persuade the queen to resume conjugal relations with her husband, but she was resolute in her refusal, going so far as to post two women in her bedroom in the early evening lest George, who sometimes became obsessed with her, try to enter her room.

George, humiliated by Charlotte’s behavior, moved to a separate building on the grounds of Windsor Palace, declaring that he would never have a separate bed in the residence he shared with the queen. Also, the king was going blind as a result of his porphyria. By 1810, George was sufficiently disabled by his illness that he could no longer perform even the most rudimentary responsibilities of his office. Charlotte, with the knowledge and consent of Parliament, was officially empowered to take on most of the king’s official duties. She served actively as his consort until her death in 1818, which came two years before George’s death.

Significance

Because of King George’s illness and his subsequent inability to fulfill the duties of his office, Queen Charlotte graduated from being essentially a cipher whose chief activity was childbearing to becoming an increasingly active and contributing member of the royal family. Despite the relative isolation of her first thirty-five years as queen, Charlotte, who was intelligent, emerged as a woman capable of dealing with complex problems. She faced her domestic problems squarely and was resolute in her dealings with the king. Had she been equally resolute earlier in her dealings with George’s mother Augusta, the course of her life might have been different.

Charlotte has been commemorated with a group of islands named for her (the Queen Charlotte Islands off the coast of British Columbia, Canada) as well the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Queen’s College in New Jersey, now Rutgers University, was also named in her honor. Because of her exotic appearance, she was a favorite subject of artists. Sixty-four major portraits of her exist in museums throughout the world. She also inspired a special type of cream-colored earthenware that Josiah Wedgwood produced, calling it Queen’s Ware. Queen’s Ware pieces are simply decorated and clean in appearance.

Bibliography

Carretta, Vincent. George III and the Satirists from Hogarth to Byron. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. A study of how King George III and Queen Charlotte were portrayed in various art forms by artists seeking to satirize them.

Graham, Jenny. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789-1799. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000. Demonstrates how a monarch’s deteriorating mental state affected world politics.

Long, J. C. George III: The Story of a Complex Man. Boston: Little, Brown, 1960. Although dated, this volume is well written and interesting. Long reveals the complex interactions between a reigning monarch and his somewhat subdued wife, showing how these interactions necessarily changed as the monarch declined both mentally and physically.

Macalpine, Ida, and Richard Hunter. The “Insanity” of King George III: A Classic Case of Porphyria. St. Alban’s, England: Gainsborough Press, 1966. An excellent background study for understanding the problems facing Charlotte as her husband deteriorated mentally.

Tytler, Sarah. Six Royal Ladies of the House of Hanover. 2d ed. London: Hutchinson, 1898. Although this resource is more than one hundred years old, the material on Queen Charlotte provides valuable reading.