Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaronminkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate grandchild of King
Speaker 1: George the Third of England, the woman who was directly
Speaker 1: in line to become Queen of England herself, died in
Speaker 1: the early hours of the morning on November sixth, eighteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: and plunged the entire nation into mourning. She was the
Speaker 1: beloved daughter of the country, the bright light of a
Speaker 1: nation that had been battered down by war with Napoleon.
Speaker 1: Her grandfather, George the Third, had gone mad, and her father,
Speaker 1: the hedonistic and philandering Prince Regent future King George the Fourth,
Speaker 1: was hated by the people. She alone, Charlotte had been
Speaker 1: their hope for the future. The country had celebrated with
Speaker 1: her when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg selfeld
Speaker 1: and eagerly placed bets on the sex of her infant.
Speaker 1: When it was announced that she was pregnant, no one
Speaker 1: was prepared to lose her. Charlotte was just twenty one
Speaker 1: years old and she had been married to her husband
Speaker 1: for only a year. She died just hours after giving
Speaker 1: birth to a stillborn son, a child that, had he lived,
Speaker 1: would have become a King of England. After her death,
Speaker 1: stores closed for two weeks, and not just stores, the courts,
Speaker 1: the Royal Exchange docs even gambling parlors closed. On the
Speaker 1: day of her funeral, Linnen drapers ran out of black
Speaker 1: cloth because frivolous decoration was forbidden during official morning at
Speaker 1: a sir and point. Ribbon makers had to petition the
Speaker 1: government to shorten the morning period to prevent them from
Speaker 1: going bankrupt. Poets ranging from Felicia Harman, Letitia Elizabeth Langdon,
Speaker 1: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, they all wrote about Charlotte's death.
Speaker 1: In Byron's poem, he wrote a stanza that goes scions
Speaker 1: of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou fond hope of
Speaker 1: many nations? Art thou dead, could not the grave, forget
Speaker 1: thee and lay low some majestic less beloved head. The
Speaker 1: physician who had been attending to Charlotte as she delivered
Speaker 1: her child, and who had been treating her as she died,
Speaker 1: was a man named Sir Richard Croft, a baron. Though
Speaker 1: female midwives had traditionally delivered infants. At the turn of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, it became fashionable to have male midwives,
Speaker 1: sometimes called a coucher, deliver one's child. Three months after
Speaker 1: Charlotte's death, her loss and the grief of the entire
Speaker 1: nation continued to weigh heavily on Dr Croft. While he
Speaker 1: was in the home of another patient, with the woman
Speaker 1: delivering a child upstairs, Croft went down to their study,
Speaker 1: sat in a high backed chair, and shot himself in
Speaker 1: the head with a gun. For all of the extreme
Speaker 1: heartache that Princess Charlotte's death caused at the time, today
Speaker 1: she is rarely discussed. She's a historical footnote, eclipsed by
Speaker 1: another bright, romantic young woman, the future Queen Victoria, Charlotte's cousin,
Speaker 1: born two years after Charlotte's death, ironically to fill the
Speaker 1: gap in succession that Charlotte left behind. Had Charlotte lived,
Speaker 1: the course of history would have been irrevocably altered. But
Speaker 1: history is all of miss Rhodes and false starts, And
Speaker 1: the fascinating, maddening thing about monarchy is that the fates
Speaker 1: of entire nations do change with the fates of individuals.
Speaker 1: Princess Charlotte was progressive and adventurous and dreamed of becoming
Speaker 1: queen and undermining the tired conservative Tory regime of her
Speaker 1: father and grandfather. But instead she spent her entire short
Speaker 1: life as a pawn, first upon under parents who loathed
Speaker 1: each other, then by a government that wanted her to
Speaker 1: be a tool of diplomacy, then by men who wanted
Speaker 1: to marry her, and then by the political parties who
Speaker 1: saw her popularity as a means to their own ends.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of Sir Richard Croft's death by suicide,
Speaker 1: investigators on the scene noticed that a book had fluttered
Speaker 1: open nearby, purely out of coincidence. It was a copy
Speaker 1: of the Shakespeare lay Love's Labor's Lost, and it was
Speaker 1: open to Act five, Scene two. On the page, mere
Speaker 1: feet from where the slumped body of the man whose
Speaker 1: guilt had consumed him, were the words, fair, sir, God
Speaker 1: save you. Where is the princess? I'm Danish Wartz and
Speaker 1: this is noble blood. To call the marriage of Princess
Speaker 1: Charlotte's parents an unhappy one would be a vast understatement,
Speaker 1: almost to the point of being misleading. The union of
Speaker 1: the future George the Fourth of England and Caroline of
Speaker 1: Brunswick was nothing short of calamity. George the Fourth, the
Speaker 1: oldest son of King George the Third, was a disastrously
Speaker 1: unpopular figure in England at the time, routinely mocked in
Speaker 1: the press with character chairs. The perception of him, and
Speaker 1: not necessarily an incorrect one, was that he was an overindulged, irresponsible,
Speaker 1: vain man and not too intelligent. He womanized frequently and
Speaker 1: spent extravagantly. When having his portrait painted, he forced servants
Speaker 1: to help squeeze him into a girdle several sizes too
Speaker 1: small to try to cut a more fashionable figure. In
Speaker 1: my estimation, George the Fourth suffered from the tragedy of
Speaker 1: being a prince in an era when princes were no
Speaker 1: longer considered God's vessels on earth. There was an irreconcilable
Speaker 1: disconnect between his own sense of his importance and his
Speaker 1: actual abilities, and this just happened to coincide with the
Speaker 1: age when it was easier than ever for the population
Speaker 1: to draw and distribute mean cartoons about him. The historian
Speaker 1: James Chambers, in his book Charlotte and Leopold, describes the
Speaker 1: then prince's failings. In almost poetic terms, quote, he longed
Speaker 1: to be regarded as the leader of fashion, the nation's
Speaker 1: foremost sportsman, and the most eminent connoisseur of art and architecture.
Speaker 1: To that end, he had squandered absurd sums on clothes
Speaker 1: and horses, and he had lavished fortunes on building and
Speaker 1: embellishing his pavilion in Brighton and his home in London,
Speaker 1: Carlton House, each of which he had crammed with an
Speaker 1: indiscriminate clutter of both exquisite and tasteless pictures and furniture
Speaker 1: end quote. As you might imagine, desperately trying to buy
Speaker 1: his way into being respected and thought of as smart.
Speaker 1: Didn't do much for George except rack up his debts.
Speaker 1: By sevento his debt had reached over six hundred thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: and his annual allowance from the Privy Purse of sixty
Speaker 1: thousand pounds was barely enough to even cover the interest.
Speaker 1: The government had already bailed him out once by this point,
Speaker 1: and they would not happily do so again. George, who
Speaker 1: at this point was Prince of Wales, only had one option.
Speaker 1: He needed to get married. If the Prince made a
Speaker 1: suitable marriage, the first step to him fulfilling his duty
Speaker 1: of providing the kingdom with an air. His allowance would
Speaker 1: be increased to one hundred thousand pounds annually in theory
Speaker 1: to provide for a larger household. It was the money,
Speaker 1: more than any sense of duty, certainly not love, that
Speaker 1: motivated George, then in his mid thirties, to get married.
Speaker 1: Well a brief but important side note here, technically, George
Speaker 1: already was married, or at least he thought he was,
Speaker 1: almost a decade before. When he was twenty three, he
Speaker 1: had secretly, and without the permission of his father, the King,
Speaker 1: had a private wedding with a woman named Maria fitz Herbert,
Speaker 1: who just so happened to be Catholic. If that sounds
Speaker 1: familiar to you or you're getting deja vu, I did
Speaker 1: an episode all about this secret marriage years ago, a
Speaker 1: very very early episode of this podcast called What I
Speaker 1: Has Wept for George the Fourth. But to the vast
Speaker 1: relief of the King's cabinet, the marriage between George and
Speaker 1: Maria fitz Herbert was easily nullified. It broke a handful
Speaker 1: of laws. First, any royal marriage needed the approval of
Speaker 1: the King, but second, and more importantly, Maria fitz Herbert
Speaker 1: being Catholic meant that the marriage was invalidated automatically by
Speaker 1: both the Bill of Rights of sixty nine and the
Speaker 1: Active Settlement of seventeen hundred, and so, needing to make
Speaker 1: an appropriate and legal marriage, George selected from among the
Speaker 1: small pool of eligible foreign princess is his first cousin, Caroline,
Speaker 1: Duchess of Brunswick. The diplomat Lord Malmsbury, came to Brunswick
Speaker 1: to escort Caroline to her new home in England, but
Speaker 1: fairly quickly Malmsbury realized that the match might be troublesome
Speaker 1: for the Prince. Allegedly, Caroline's behavior was rowdy and uncouth,
Speaker 1: and Malmsbury reported that she didn't wash or change her
Speaker 1: clothes often enough. There were rumors about Caroline being unsuitable
Speaker 1: even before the Prince had chosen her, but the prince's
Speaker 1: mistress at the time, a woman named Lady Jersey, was
Speaker 1: all too happy to encourage the match between her lover
Speaker 1: and a woman who was considered unpleasant and undignified, where
Speaker 1: there was no risk of him growing to love her
Speaker 1: more than her. So George made his choice and then
Speaker 1: appointed his mistress Lady Jersey as his new wife to
Speaker 1: bes Lady in waiting. The alleged and oft repeated anecdote
Speaker 1: about Prince George meeting his future wife Caroline in person
Speaker 1: for the first time right before their wedding is that
Speaker 1: after greeting her, he went pale as a ghost and
Speaker 1: called out for his friend Harris. He said, I'm not
Speaker 1: feeling well. Pray get me a glass of brandy. But
Speaker 1: some of the English reports about Caroline being unladylike need
Speaker 1: to be, in my opinion, given just a little bit
Speaker 1: of indulgence. When Caroline first arrived in England after a
Speaker 1: long and arduous journey through a Europe besieged by Napoleonic War,
Speaker 1: her future husband was not at the port to greet her. Instead,
Speaker 1: the only representative from her new home was Lady Jersey,
Speaker 1: whom Caroline quickly and correctly gleaned was her fiance's mistress.
Speaker 1: At her first dinner with George the Fourth, Caroline made
Speaker 1: a number of jokes poking fun at her soon to
Speaker 1: be husband, blatant in discretions which he and the rest
Speaker 1: of the court were aghast at, but which I personally
Speaker 1: feel Caroline was perfectly in her right to do, no doubt,
Speaker 1: a tiny attempt at staking out a little bit of
Speaker 1: power and a little humor in a very vulnerable and
Speaker 1: uncomfortable situation. Meanwhile, Prince George was loudly mocking her to
Speaker 1: his friends, calling her ugly and unhygienic, and speculating that
Speaker 1: she wasn't a virgin. Not that it matters, but remember
Speaker 1: George was most certainly not a virgin himself. And though
Speaker 1: most people recount the story of the prince asking for
Speaker 1: brandy after their first meeting, it should also be noted
Speaker 1: that Caroline wasn't impressed with her future husband either. He's
Speaker 1: nothing like as handsome as his portrait, she said as
Speaker 1: she was leaving. It was a marriage doomed from the start,
Speaker 1: and though on their wedding night the Prince was so
Speaker 1: drunk that he slept on the floor, they did manage
Speaker 1: to consummate the marriage very shortly after, and nine months
Speaker 1: after the wedding and January seven, seventeen ninety six, Caroline
Speaker 1: gave birth to a little girl, young Princess Charlotte. Three
Speaker 1: days after that, George separated from his wife and declared
Speaker 1: that their union was all but over. King George the third.
Speaker 1: George's father, Hervard, hoped that the couple would eventually reconcile
Speaker 1: and have a baby boy, but fairly quickly it became
Speaker 1: apparent that would never happen. George and Caroline despised each
Speaker 1: other and their only child, their daughter, Charlotte, was caught
Speaker 1: in the middle. For a period during Charlotte's childhood, they
Speaker 1: all lived in the same mansion, Carlton House in London,
Speaker 1: albeit on different floors, but eventually Caroline moved to Blackheath,
Speaker 1: an area of southeast London, and when Charlotte was eight
Speaker 1: years old, she moved to another palace, Warwick House, and
Speaker 1: was given her own household, and so from eight years
Speaker 1: old on Charlotte was surrounded only by people who were
Speaker 1: paid to be with her. Charlotte was in direct line
Speaker 1: to be queen after her father, and as heir presumptive,
Speaker 1: she was incredibly well educated. Although some historians remarked that
Speaker 1: Charlotte was not particularly studious or a natural scholar, she
Speaker 1: was bright and inquisitive and interested in poetry, politics, and literature.
Speaker 1: When Jane Austen's novel Sentence Sensibility came out at the time,
Speaker 1: published anonymously, authored only by quote a lady. Charlotte read
Speaker 1: and enjoyed it, and even wrote to a friend that
Speaker 1: she related to the character of Marianne. Because her father
Speaker 1: was a royal prince and Charlotte was a ill air.
Speaker 1: Her father had full custody of care. But when she
Speaker 1: was young, Charlotte still saw her mother frequently and spent
Speaker 1: her summers in Blackheath to spend even more time with her.
Speaker 1: But all of that changed after something that came to
Speaker 1: be known as the Delicate investigation. Separation hadn't made Charlotte's
Speaker 1: parents grow fonder, In fact, living their own separate lives,
Speaker 1: each taking on their own extramarital flirtations, their mutual dislike
Speaker 1: turned to loathing. Meanwhile, both of their reputations took a
Speaker 1: turn for the worst. George was considered frivolous for his
Speaker 1: overspending in the time of war against Napoleon, and while
Speaker 1: Caroline was popular among the people, gaining sympathy and seen
Speaker 1: as a jilted wife among the nobility, she was derided
Speaker 1: for her informality and her suggestive and crude behavior. Living
Speaker 1: on her own, separated from her daughter, Caroline informally adopted
Speaker 1: around eight poor children paying for their education and their
Speaker 1: room and board. The rumors started that one of the children,
Speaker 1: a boy named William Austin, was actually Caroline's biological child,
Speaker 1: an illegitimate son born out of wedlock. The rumor was
Speaker 1: likely started by Caroline herself, who found it funny to
Speaker 1: laugh at little William's antics and joke that the boy
Speaker 1: was actually hers and George's. Of course, the scandal of
Speaker 1: the wife of the future King of England bearing a
Speaker 1: son can't be overstated. It would throw the entire line
Speaker 1: of succession into question. The matter was so important that
Speaker 1: the question as to whether or not Caroline had had
Speaker 1: another child was actually given over to a commission that
Speaker 1: included the Prime Minister, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief
Speaker 1: Justice of England and Wales, and the Home Secretary. Members
Speaker 1: of Caroline's household staff confirmed that she was sometimes flirtatious
Speaker 1: with visiting male suitors, but they had no actual evidence
Speaker 1: that she was having an affair, let alone that she
Speaker 1: had ever been pregnant or had another child. And there
Speaker 1: was also the small matter of young William Austin actually
Speaker 1: having a mother who came and visited him at the palace.
Speaker 1: Often the delicate investigation was closed, and though the commission
Speaker 1: remarked that some of Caroline's behavior might have been a
Speaker 1: little less than seemly, there was no actual evidence of
Speaker 1: an affair or an illegitimate child. With the end of
Speaker 1: the investigation also came the end of the hope George
Speaker 1: had no doubt been carrying that he would finally have
Speaker 1: recourse to get an official divorce. Their poor daughter, Charlotte,
Speaker 1: was caught in the middle of it all. Kept from
Speaker 1: her mother during all of us by her father. She
Speaker 1: would write George letters asking for permission to see her mother,
Speaker 1: or at least to write to her. At one point
Speaker 1: during the investigation, George was so intent on keeping his
Speaker 1: wife away from their daughter that Caroline was forbidden from
Speaker 1: acknowledging her daughter. When their carriages happened to pass in
Speaker 1: the park one afternoon, Young Charlotte wrote about the event
Speaker 1: to her father, recounting that she had seen but not
Speaker 1: spoken to her mother, worried that if she didn't tell him,
Speaker 1: he would be upset at her. Respectful as she was
Speaker 1: of her father's wishes, it seemed that something of her
Speaker 1: mother had inadvertently rubbed off on Charlotte. People noted that
Speaker 1: though she was beautiful, her table manners didn't quite match,
Speaker 1: and Charlotte wore ankle length drawers that showed at the
Speaker 1: hem of her dresses in a scandalous manner. And even
Speaker 1: more scandalous, when Charlotte was a teenager, she began a
Speaker 1: little romance with a man named Charles Hess, a captain
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth Light Dragoons. Charles had a reputation as
Speaker 1: a cad but Charlotte was captivated. He was her first love,
Speaker 1: and they exchanged romantic letters back and forth. It likely
Speaker 1: went no further than that, although at one point Charlotte
Speaker 1: was staying with her mother and Caroline. Ever, the joker
Speaker 1: locked the sixteen year old in her room with her
Speaker 1: sweetheart and told the pair to amuse themselves. Still, like
Speaker 1: most childhood loves, this one faded into the background, and
Speaker 1: by the time Charlotte turned seventeen, talk turned in earnest
Speaker 1: to finding her a husband. The front runner, at least
Speaker 1: in her father's mind, was easy William, the Hereditary Prince
Speaker 1: of Orange, son of the newly minted Sovereign Prince of
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, a title that their family had reclaimed after
Speaker 1: Napoleon's men were driven out of Holland. In George's mind,
Speaker 1: tying his daughter, the future Queen of England, to the
Speaker 1: future King of the Netherlands was a brilliant strategic move
Speaker 1: to secure British influence in the northwest part of Europe.
Speaker 1: Charlotte was less convinced. For one, she wasn't too keen
Speaker 1: on getting married at all. She was hoping to bide
Speaker 1: her time. When the rumors started swirling that she was
Speaker 1: already engaged to William of Orange, Charlotte jokingly replied that
Speaker 1: she actually favored another suitor, the Duke of Gloucester. The
Speaker 1: princess's marital prospects were such a hot topic of conversation
Speaker 1: that her off handed remark was spun the way a
Speaker 1: celebrity's on the red carpet might be today. There was
Speaker 1: breathless coverage as to whether Charlotte would choose the Orange
Speaker 1: or the cheese, a reference to Gloucester cheese. The two
Speaker 1: and both named William, were dubbed by the popular press
Speaker 1: slender Billy and silly Billy. But aside from charlotte antipathy
Speaker 1: towards marriage as a whole, there were some actual problems
Speaker 1: with William of Orange. For when he was sickly, pale,
Speaker 1: and not too attractive. A friend of Charlotte's went to
Speaker 1: scope him out when he arrived in England and reported
Speaker 1: back an account that politely could be characterized as damning
Speaker 1: with faint praise. Charlotte had attended a dinner with her
Speaker 1: suitors father and he and the rest of the men
Speaker 1: in attendance got blackout, slipped down from the table, fall
Speaker 1: onto the floor drunk, which didn't do much to ingratiate
Speaker 1: her to the Orange clan. But all that aside her
Speaker 1: mother hated the Oranges. There was old European family bad
Speaker 1: blood there, and as much as George tried to persuade
Speaker 1: his her to marry William of Orange, Caroline was making
Speaker 1: herself clear on the position. In the other direction. There
Speaker 1: was another small matter that worried Charlotte at this moment
Speaker 1: that isn't quite relevant to the larger story, but which
Speaker 1: I find I just have to share because of how
Speaker 1: absolutely modern it feels. While Charlotte was weighing a possible engagement,
Speaker 1: she was preoccupied with terror about the letters she had
Speaker 1: sent to her old flame, Captain Charles Hess back when
Speaker 1: she was sixteen. She had burnt all of the letters
Speaker 1: that he sent her, but he almost certainly had not
Speaker 1: done the same. To make matters worse, Captain Has had
Speaker 1: already departed for the continent with his regiment. Charlotte begged
Speaker 1: her best friend, Mercer elephant Stone, which is incidentally just
Speaker 1: a great name, to secure those letters, and Mercer wrote
Speaker 1: to the Captain. Captain Has wrote back that no, Princess
Speaker 1: Charlotte's letters were not destroyed, but they were safe in
Speaker 1: a trunk back in England, and if he died in battle,
Speaker 1: he had told a friend to put the trunk at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the Thames. It never came to that,
Speaker 1: and ultimately Captain Has returned and did destroy the letters.
Speaker 1: We assume, but I find something very relatable about Charlotte
Speaker 1: desperately enlisting a friend to try to get an old
Speaker 1: flame to destroy evidence of their possible impropriety. But back
Speaker 1: to Charlotte's primary suitor, the Prince of Orange. On December twelfth,
Speaker 1: eighteen thirteen, George arranged dinner for his daughter to sit
Speaker 1: down and meet the Prince of Orange face to face
Speaker 1: at a dinner party. Halfway through, the Prince Regent called
Speaker 1: his daughter aside and asked if she had made a decision. Well,
Speaker 1: his personality seems fine enough so far from the very
Speaker 1: little I've seen of it, she said. Her father reacted
Speaker 1: with a resounding cheer and walked back in announcing that
Speaker 1: Charlotte had agreed to the match. It took several more
Speaker 1: months for the actual marriage contract to be ironed out,
Speaker 1: and I'll spare you the exceedingly boring details there, but
Speaker 1: the big picture was that they decided that if Charlotte
Speaker 1: had two sons, one would be the King of the
Speaker 1: Netherlands and one would be King of England, and that
Speaker 1: was the end of that. Charlotte, Princess of Wales future
Speaker 1: Queen of England, was engaged, or rather that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the end of that. In the two years
Speaker 1: that Charlotte was engaged to William of Orange, she grew
Speaker 1: less and less excited by the idea of actually marrying him.
Speaker 1: It didn't help things that at a large banquet celebrating
Speaker 1: the soldiers of the war against Napoleon, Charlotte saw her
Speaker 1: well frail and underwhelming fiancee next to far more attractive
Speaker 1: men in uniform. One of those men, Prince Frederick Augustus
Speaker 1: of Prussia. Charlotte fell head over heels four, and she
Speaker 1: often referred to her infatuation with the prince in her diaries,
Speaker 1: anonymizing him as f Prince. August even called on Charlotte secretly,
Speaker 1: of course, and it took her best friend Mercer, arriving
Speaker 1: to Warwick House and bursting in on them to remind
Speaker 1: Charlotte that this sort of meeting was not the appropriate
Speaker 1: conduct for a princess. But Charlotte was well aware that
Speaker 1: the real problem here wasn't her little indiscretions. It was
Speaker 1: that she simply did not want to marry William of Orange.
Speaker 1: When she and Williams sat together for the first time
Speaker 1: after they had gotten engaged, William commented that Charlotte would
Speaker 1: need to spend two or three months out of the
Speaker 1: year in Holland with him. Charlotte burst into tears and
Speaker 1: fled from the room. She didn't want to go to Holland,
Speaker 1: and there was a political angle to that as well. Politically,
Speaker 1: Charlotte was a Whig, a young progressive. Her father had
Speaker 1: been a Whig two in his youth until he became
Speaker 1: regent for the mad King George the Third and transitioned
Speaker 1: toward the more conservative Old school pro monarchy Tory party,
Speaker 1: where Charlotte's father was incredibly unpopular. Charlotte and her mother
Speaker 1: were beloved by the people, and the Whigs knew that
Speaker 1: having Charlotte and Caroline in the country, the bright young
Speaker 1: daughter and the discarded wife, was politically prudent. Wig politicians
Speaker 1: whispered to Charlotte that some set her father was eager
Speaker 1: to marry her off to a foreign prince because he
Speaker 1: resented her popularity in the country, and once Charlotte was
Speaker 1: gone it would be easier to get Caroline to move
Speaker 1: abroad as well. The English population and began to view
Speaker 1: the marriage as a choice Charlotte was making between her
Speaker 1: two parents. People would shout at her in the streets,
Speaker 1: telling her not to give in, not to abandon her
Speaker 1: mother and Mary Orange. Eventually, Charlotte wrote to William of
Speaker 1: Orange and told him no, she did not want to
Speaker 1: leave England to live in the Netherlands for any period
Speaker 1: of time, and she also put to him a question
Speaker 1: that she already knew the answer to, would her mother
Speaker 1: Caroline always be welcome in their home at court. William
Speaker 1: of Orange apologized, but told Charlotte no, given caroline scandals
Speaker 1: and the fact that George, the Prince Regent of England,
Speaker 1: hated her. He couldn't agree to that, and so Charlotte
Speaker 1: made up her mind. She broke off the engagement with William.
Speaker 1: Her father, George, was livid. He came to her London
Speaker 1: house and berated her for her insubordination, and he declared
Speaker 1: that all of her servants would be dismissed and that
Speaker 1: she would be sent to live in the remote Cranborne
Speaker 1: Lodge in Windsor, without permission for any visitors except her grandmother.
Speaker 1: Charlotte was outraged right then and there she ran out
Speaker 1: into the street. In architect, looking out the window in
Speaker 1: one of the buildings next door, noticed this woman clearly
Speaker 1: in distress, either crying or having recently been crying. He
Speaker 1: went downstairs and asked the young woman if he could
Speaker 1: help her. She asked him for help summoning a Hackney cab,
Speaker 1: something she had never done before. The architect helped her
Speaker 1: summon the cab, and when it came, he insisted on
Speaker 1: escorting her to her destination. It wasn't until they arrived
Speaker 1: at her mother's address, where the servants bowed deeply to
Speaker 1: the princess, that the man realized who his fellow passenger
Speaker 1: had been wouldever rescue Charlotte was expecting at her mother's house.
Speaker 1: She didn't find it. She was miserable, disheveled, and angry.
Speaker 1: Her mother wasn't home, and so she sent messengers to
Speaker 1: summon her back, and she also had several other prominent
Speaker 1: whigs joined them in the meeting. In the end, they
Speaker 1: all decided that the prudent thing for Charlotte to do
Speaker 1: was go back to her father's house and accept his punishment,
Speaker 1: and so, miserably, the runaway princess returned, still unwilling to
Speaker 1: marry William of Orange, but ready to accept her father's
Speaker 1: terms of exile to Windsor. The stunt made the public
Speaker 1: love her even more, and word of her father's cruelty
Speaker 1: of keeping the princess under house arrest traveled widely. It
Speaker 1: was even broached by one of the princess's allies in
Speaker 1: the House of Commons, Caroline. The princess's mother wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to visit her, and Caroline soon decided that a life
Speaker 1: on the continent would be far more amenable to the
Speaker 1: tenth situa wation. With her husband in England, Caroline left
Speaker 1: for Italy, never to see her daughter again, and Charlotte,
Speaker 1: who had rejected the Prince of Orange at least in
Speaker 1: part out of not wanting to abandon her mother, became
Speaker 1: the one feeling abandoned. George could only hold out against
Speaker 1: the tide of public sympathy for so long. After a
Speaker 1: few months of isolation, George allowed Charlotte to go visit
Speaker 1: not fashionable Bristol, but at least somewhere Weymouth. Huge crowds
Speaker 1: arrived to cheer her every leg of the way, with
Speaker 1: people throwing their hats in the air and shouting Hail
Speaker 1: Princess Charlotte, Europe's hope and Britain's glory. Her father, George,
Speaker 1: still held out hope that she would come around and
Speaker 1: marry William of Orange, but Charlotte held fast still she
Speaker 1: would need to get married, and by the end of
Speaker 1: eighteen fourteen, she herself had picked a front runner, not
Speaker 1: a dashing prince f that she mooned over. He was
Speaker 1: a cat scandalous, never a real choice to begin with,
Speaker 1: and even more heartbreaking, Lee had seemingly moved on to
Speaker 1: another woman. No, Charlotte made a pragmatic decision. She settled
Speaker 1: on the dashing prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. Charlotte had
Speaker 1: actually met Prince Leopold before in a meat cute that
Speaker 1: feels right out of a rom com, when she was
Speaker 1: in the process of breaking up her engagement with the
Speaker 1: Prince of Orange. She was meeting with the visiting Czar
Speaker 1: of Russia at the Pultney Hotel in London. Worried that
Speaker 1: she might actually run into Orange, and hoping to avoid
Speaker 1: the awkward running, she snuck out towards a back staircase
Speaker 1: and ran, actually ran into a man in uniform, Prince Leopold.
Speaker 1: He introduced himself and offered to escort her back to
Speaker 1: her carriage. If you're a prince, Charlotte asked, why you
Speaker 1: not called on me formally like all of the others.
Speaker 1: Prince Leopold apologized and promised that he would rectify the error,
Speaker 1: and he did formally, calling on the princess a few
Speaker 1: days later and writing to her father to state his intentions.
Speaker 1: All of it was very much above board. George wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly moved by Leopold, who had few connections and less money,
Speaker 1: and Leopold eventually left with his regiment for the continent,
Speaker 1: but Charlotte's mind was made up. No arguments, no threats,
Speaker 1: shall ever bend me to marry the detested Dutchman. She
Speaker 1: wrote in a letter to a friend, she would marry Leopold, or,
Speaker 1: as she called him, the Leo. Charlotte did the thing
Speaker 1: that so many of us do when we have a
Speaker 1: crush on a new person. She began casually bringing him
Speaker 1: up in conversation, inquiring about him to her friends and relatives.
Speaker 1: What do you think of Prince Leopold, you know, just asking,
Speaker 1: just curious. She kept telling her best friend Mercer, to
Speaker 1: write him, passing hints along that she wanted him to
Speaker 1: come back to England. Finally, her father, George yielded, and
Speaker 1: in February eighteen sixteen, eighteen months after Charlotte and her
Speaker 1: Prince's meet cute at the hotel, the Prince Regent invited
Speaker 1: Leopold and Charlotte to invite him for dinner at his
Speaker 1: home in Brighton. During the dinner, everyone got along swimmingly.
Speaker 1: It didn't hurt things that just a few weeks earlier,
Speaker 1: William of Orange had finally moved on and married someone else,
Speaker 1: which meant that George's favorite horse was out of the running.
Speaker 1: He conceded that Prince Leopold was an appropriate match with
Speaker 1: quote every qualification to make a woman happy. Charlotte was thrilled.
Speaker 1: I find him charming and go to bed happier than
Speaker 1: I have ever done yet in my life. I am
Speaker 1: certainly a very fortunate creature and have to bless God.
Speaker 1: She wrote, A princess never I believe set out in
Speaker 1: life or married with such prospects of happiness, real domestic
Speaker 1: ones like other people. Charlotte and Leopold were married two
Speaker 1: months later, May second, eighteen sixteen, during a dazzling ceremony
Speaker 1: in which Charlotte donned a silver gown that cost ten
Speaker 1: thousand pounds. It's address you can still see today if
Speaker 1: you go to visit the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection at
Speaker 1: Hampton Court Palace. The only part of the wedding ceremony
Speaker 1: that didn't go exactly as scripted was during the ceremony itself,
Speaker 1: when the groom was promising to endow his new wife
Speaker 1: with all of his worldly goods, and Charlotte, knowing that
Speaker 1: her husband was basically broke and she was the rich one,
Speaker 1: couldn't help a giggle. They were a beloved couple, young
Speaker 1: beautiful and in love. When they made public appearances at
Speaker 1: the opera or theater, people would burst out into spontaneous
Speaker 1: applause or singing of God Save the King. They were
Speaker 1: enough during a time when the rulers were the infirm,
Speaker 1: mad King George the Third and his detested regent George
Speaker 1: the Fourth to make people believe in the monarchy again.
Speaker 1: When Charlotte announced less than a year later that she
Speaker 1: was pregnant, it's impossible to overstate how delighted the public was.
Speaker 1: There was betting in halls about the sex of the child,
Speaker 1: and economists at the time predicted that the stock market
Speaker 1: would raise by two point five percent if she gave
Speaker 1: birth to a princess and six percent if it was
Speaker 1: a prince. November three, eighteen seventeen, Charlotte went into labor
Speaker 1: overdue at forty two weeks. The baby was lying horizontal
Speaker 1: in the womb, and the physician, attending, a trendy male
Speaker 1: midwife named Sir Richard Croft, made the decision, in line
Speaker 1: with the popular school of thought at the time, that
Speaker 1: using forceps would be more harm than good. Doctor Croft
Speaker 1: also determined that a cesarean section would be too dangerous,
Speaker 1: whether or not he made the right or wrong medical decision,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know. After being in labor for two days,
Speaker 1: Charlotte gave birth to a stillborn boy, nine pounds by
Speaker 1: all accounts, the baby was beautiful and looked just like
Speaker 1: his royal parents. The doctor tried chest compressions and water
Speaker 1: baths on the baby and mustard rubs, but the baby
Speaker 1: never breathed. Charlotte seemed to recover, at least well enough
Speaker 1: that her frantic husband, who had been by her side
Speaker 1: for the entire ordeal, was willing to take an opiate
Speaker 1: to get some sleep but side her. But just five
Speaker 1: hours later, Charlotte began bleeding heavily. She was cold to
Speaker 1: the touch and whispered of pain in her abdomen. Before
Speaker 1: her husband could even be woken up. Charlotte was dead.
Speaker 1: My Charlotte is gone from the country. It has lost her.
Speaker 1: Leopold cried when he saw his wife's body, gone cold
Speaker 1: and white. Two generations lost in an instant. The nation
Speaker 1: mourned with him. Charlotte's father, the Prince Regent George, was
Speaker 1: so distraught that he couldn't even bring himself to attend
Speaker 1: her funeral. Charlotte's mother Caroline, who had been out of
Speaker 1: the country and hadn't seen her daughter since eighteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: passed out when she heard the news. Though Leopold and
Speaker 1: George had both assured that doctor Croft that he had
Speaker 1: made the correct medical decisions. A few months later, doctor
Speaker 1: Croft shot himself in an armed share, unable to shake
Speaker 1: the grief of an entire nation from his shoulders. Even
Speaker 1: though King George the Third had had incredibly fifteen children,
Speaker 1: thirteen of whom had reached adulthood, he had no more
Speaker 1: legitimate grandchildren. His younger sons had seemed happy just to
Speaker 1: enjoy the company of their mistresses, but with Princess Charlotte's
Speaker 1: death there was a succession crisis. George the Third's middle
Speaker 1: aged children were now in a frantic race to be
Speaker 1: the first to have a legitimate heir. The winner was
Speaker 1: his fourth son, Edward, Duke of Kent, who married a
Speaker 1: young German princess in May eighteen eighteen, the year after
Speaker 1: Princess Charlotte's death. The year after that, the German princess
Speaker 1: gave birth to a baby girl at Kensington Palace, whom
Speaker 1: they named Alexandrina Victoria, Although she's better known by the
Speaker 1: name she would have when she ascended to the throne
Speaker 1: at age eighteen, Queen Victoria. That's the story of Princess
Speaker 1: Charlotte of Wales, her marriage, and her death. But keep
Speaker 1: listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the men in her life after she
Speaker 1: was gone. Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg had only been
Speaker 1: married to Princess Charlotte, the woman who had fought and
Speaker 1: advocated to marry him, for a short time, but he
Speaker 1: never forgot her. He would eventually become King of Belgium
Speaker 1: and he would marry again, and he and his second
Speaker 1: wife would have living heirs. Leopold would insist on naming
Speaker 1: their only daughter, Charlott It in honor of the woman
Speaker 1: he once loved. Unfortunately, Little Charlotte has a slightly tragic end.
Speaker 1: She would marry a man named Maximilian and they would
Speaker 1: go to Mexico as Emperor and Empress, where she would
Speaker 1: change her name to Carlotta. If you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about her, you can listen to another very early
Speaker 1: episode of this podcast called Today we Leave for Mexico.
Speaker 1: Princess Charlotte of Wales's other former Paramore. William, Prince of Orange,
Speaker 1: also went on to live a fascinating life. He was
Speaker 1: allegedly bisexual, and he was blackmailed about it in eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Now I want to be on the record blackmail is
Speaker 1: always bad, but there are actually theories that he was
Speaker 1: blackmailed into signing constitutional reforms that actually led to Netherlands
Speaker 1: becoming a parliamentary democracy. So what can we say except
Speaker 1: history truly is a rich tapestry. Noble Blood is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Minky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz.
Speaker 1: Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales,
Speaker 1: and you can learn more about the show over at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M