Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817)


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In our History Books it is written , she was so in love that when she would have been Queen , He should be King !
Léopold lost his wife , his Child and his throne.
(The Docter commited suicide.)
 
Yes it is one of the many truly sad events in Royal history that changed the course of British Royal history. And Leopold was devastated by her death.
 
Yes it is one of the many truly sad events in Royal history that changed the course of British Royal history. And Leopold was devastated by her death.

Completely agree and I feel that Princess Charlotte is somewhat forgotten.
 
You are right , it seems the long and succesful Reign of Queen Victoria stole the show of her Predecessors .

In our Royal Palace there is a Painting who was in King Leopold's Room showing Charlotte and her Child welcoming in Paradise ...
 
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In our History Books it is written , she was so in love that when she would have been Queen , He should be King !
Léopold lost his wife , his Child and his throne.
(The Docter commited suicide.)

Well, William of the Netherlands would apparently see Leopold and say 'there's the guy who stole my wife and my country', so. :whistling:

Contrary to popular rumor it seems Charlotte's accoucheur might not have been incompetent, she did get the best care available at the time, and there was simply nothing to be done. A very good argument: https://www.kyrackramer.com/2019/11/06/the-unpreventable-death-of-princess-charlotte-of-wales/

Which means that poor man killed himself for nothing. :sad:
 
In Charlotte & Leopold, James Chambers wrote:
Since Charlotte was the one who broke off the engagement (with William, Hereditary Prince of Orange), it was reasonable to say that she was the one who should tell her father, but Charlotte thought it was cowardly. When she wrote to her father herself that day, she made out that it was the Prince who had broken off the engagement.
 
Why did King George III appoint Lady De Clifford as Princess Charlotte's governess? Why was this not done by her father Prince George?
 
I think as the monarch he had the right to be in charge of the direct heir Charlotte’s education (and even the rest of her upbringing). His granddaughter Victoria used to make noises about being allowed to decide this and that for her son Bertie’s kids, though I don’t think she insisted on too much in the end.

For that matter as George IV, I think he possibly had the right to insist on things for his niece Princess Victoria, which he never did, except for her name.
 
I always find it quite surprising that William IV didn't intervene more in Victoria's upbringing. He was the king. The Duchess of Kent was a princess from a very minor German principality, with no power base in Britain after her husband died. John Conroy was nobody. Yet the Duchess wouldn't even let Victoria go to William's coronation. Why on earth didn't he insist?
 
I always find it quite surprising that William IV didn't intervene more in Victoria's upbringing. He was the king. The Duchess of Kent was a princess from a very minor German principality, with no power base in Britain after her husband died. John Conroy was nobody. Yet the Duchess wouldn't even let Victoria go to William's coronation. Why on earth didn't he insist?

Considering the era, I would suggest that William didn't bother because she was female and not male. Had Charlotte been a Charles, it may have been an unicorn of a totally different rainbow. ?
 
I always find it quite surprising that William IV didn't intervene more in Victoria's upbringing. He was the king. The Duchess of Kent was a princess from a very minor German principality, with no power base in Britain after her husband died. John Conroy was nobody. Yet the Duchess wouldn't even let Victoria go to William's coronation. Why on earth didn't he insist?

Well eventually he got very mad publicly and did insist! :lol: But Victoria was 17 by then.

I think it was a combination of George IV not caring enough/being a bit nihilistic/still depressed about Charlotte, and William being essentially good-natured and probably not wanting more of the Hanoverian family conflicts, the sequel.

The Duchess of Kent and Conroy may have been minor nobodies, but they weren’t stupid. They had it spread far and wide that Princess Victoria was being extremely carefully raised and she was best left to her mother’s decisions, and neither William nor Queen Adelaide, having lost all their own children, probably had the heart to look overbearing and start a fight. The public wasn’t fond of the Hanoverian family struggles, either.
 
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This must be one of the few depictions of Charlotte on film. Her "box" (and other scenes) are so sweet.
 
You bring up an interesting point and have got me thinking.

It's not just the BRF that would be different, but roughly half the thrones of Europe, and even potentially the whole world.

If Charlotte hadn't died there would have been no reason for her uncles William, Edward, or Adolphus to get married and have children (her uncle Ernest Augustus was already married and likely would have still had children).

There aren't huge implications for William not having married as he didn't have any children in his marriage, but Adolphus' line continues to exist today, and not just through the descendants of Mary of Teck (although without her we wouldn't have the current BRF).

Even bigger though is what the world would be like without Victoria. No Edward VII or any of his descendants. Which means no modern BRF and no modern Norweigan Royals (who descend from Edward's daughter, Maud).

No Victoria, and then there's no Wilhelm II of Germany - and thus potentially no World War I. You have to wonder how the world would be shaped without that one. Furthermore, Wilhelm's sister married Constantine I of Greece, so the shape of the modern Greek Royal Family would be changed - three of her sons became King of Greece, and her grandson was the last king/current pretender. One of her daughters married into the Romanian Royal Family and was the mother of the last king/current pretender.

Another one of Victoria's daughters, Alice, was the mother of another Victoria, who married into the Battenberg-turned-Mountbatten family, meaning no Lord Mountbatten, no Prince Phillip, and no Louise Mounbatten, Queen Consort of Sweden. Alice was also the mother of Alix of Hesse who married Nicholas II of Russia and introduced hemophilia to the Romanovs. Gotta wonder how history would have been different had Nicholas married someone else.

Victoria's son, Alfred, had a daughter, Marie, who gave birth to a King of Romania (Carol II), a Queen of Greece (Helen), and a Queen of Yugoslavia (Maria). The modern Romanian and Yugoslavian Royal Families descend from her. Another of Alfred's daughters married Cyril Vladimirovich and is the grandmother of everyone's favourite claimant to the throne of Russia, Maria Vladimirovna.


Another son of Victoria, Arthur, fathered a daughter (Margaret) who married the King of Sweden, and the modern SRF descends from them. Also descending from them is Margrethe II of Denmark and Anne-Marie, Queen Consort to Constantine II of Greece.

Victoria's youngest child, Beatrice, was the mother of Victoria Eugenie, Queen Consort of Spain and wife of Alfonso XIII. Juan Carlos I is their grandson, so there goes the current Spanish Royal Family.

But there are other implications too. The Belgium Royal Family is not descended from Queen Victoria, but they are descended from Leopold I of Belgium. Leopold was Charlotte's husband, and likely would have never became King of Belgium had Charlotte lived - and certainly wouldn't have fathered any of his children, including the son from whom the Royal Family descends, as they were all born to his second wife.

The other interesting aspect is the Kingdom of Hanover itself. If Charlotte had survived then she would have been the first woman in a position to inherit the throne - as history went, no Hanoverian monarch had only a daughter to inherit his titles. The only woman to come close (at that point) was Victoria - but it wasn't really in her uncle's interest to change the law of succession so that his niece could inherit all his titles over his brother. Had Charlotte lived into her father's reign, however, it may have been more in George's interest to have that changed - he surely would have preferred his child, even a daughter, to inherit his throne in Hanover over his brother.

If the Hanoverian throne hadn't been separated from the British one then you have to wonder would German unification have happened under a Prussian dominance? And if it hadn't happened under the Prussians, who would it have happened, or would it have happened at all? How would 20th century history have turned out had it not happened?
A possible Queen regnant for Hanover in those days would never be possible because Hanover like other German states ruled by Salic laws so there still would be no union between Hanover and the U.K. It was her uncle to decided to split, it was a natural consequence of Salic law. Plus none of the other German states would accept that.
 
Ish acknowledged that according to the existing law an uncle would inherit over his niece when she wrote "but it wasn't really in her uncle's interest to change the law of succession so that his niece could inherit all his titles over his brother." Incidentally, the succession to Hanover (and many other German states) was semi-Salic.
 
Ish acknowledged that according to the existing law an uncle would inherit over his niece when she wrote "but it wasn't really in her uncle's interest to change the law of succession so that his niece could inherit all his titles over his brother." Incidentally, the succession to Hanover (and many other German states) was semi-Salic.
It wasn’t semi-Salic at all, in all the ruling houses of the former German Empire only men succeeded to thrones. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t in his interest to change the succession, none of the other ruling families in Germany would accept that either and many would perceive it as the British trying to insert themselves politically into German territory.
 
So as not to derail this thread on Princess Charlotte, I have moved my response to you to the thread on the Royal House of Hanover:

You are mistaken. Quite a few ruling houses of the German Empire, and other German states, had laws of succession allowing women and/or their descendants to succeed to thrones if the ruling house became extinct in male line.

A collection of German house laws can be perused at the following link. For the kingdom of Hanover (although it was not a member of the German Empire as it already had been occupied and annexed by Prussia in the war of 1866), see "Brunswick".

https://www.heraldica.org/topics/royalty/germany_r.htm


From the 1832 house law of the whole house of Brunswick:

§ 14. [...] Erlischt der Mannsstamm des Fürstlichen Gesamt-Hauses, so geht die Regierung auf die weibliche Linie nach gleichen Grundsätzen über(2).

From the 1836 house law for the kingdom of Hanover, chapter 4:

§4. Wenn der Fall einträte, dass der Mannsstamm des Gesammthauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg erlöschte, möge nun die Königliche Mannslinie oder die Herzoglich-Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttelsche die zuletzt erlöschende sein, so geht die Thronfolge in Gemässheit des ursprünglichen Erb-Lehnbriefes Kaiser Friedrichs II. vom Jahre 1235 auf die weibliche Linie ohne Unterschied des Geschlechts in der Masse über, dass mit Ausschluss jeglicher Regredient-Erbschaft allein die Nähe der Verwandtschaft mit dem zuletzt regierenden Könige, und bei gleichem Verwandtschafts-Grade, das Alter der Linie, und in der Linie das persönliche Alter den Vorzug giebt. Es tritt aber bei der Descendenz des neuen alsdann regierenden Königlichen Hauses sofort mit dem Rechte der Erstgeburt und der Lineal-Erbfolge auch der Vorzug des Mannsstammes wieder ein.

And from the 1840 constitution of the kingdom of Hanover:

§ 12. [...] Erlischt der Mannsstamm der gegenwärtigen Königlichen Linie, so geht die Thronfolge auf den Mannsstamm der jetzigen Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttelschen Linie und, nach dessen Erlöschen, auf die weibliche Linie, ohne Unterschied des Geschlechtes, über, und zwar dergestalt, daß die Nähe der Verwandtschaft mit dem zuletzt regierenden Könige und, bei gleichem Verwandtschaftsgrade das Alter der Linie, in der Linie aber das natürliche Alter den Vorzug verschafft. [...]
 
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The Hereditary Prince of Orange told Princess Charlotte that when they were married he would not insist that she came with him every time he went to Holland.
 
One can imagine how this gown, as it looked originally, must have shone and sparkled under candlelight at the wedding ceremony.
 
One can imagine how this gown, as it looked originally, must have shone and sparkled under candlelight at the wedding ceremony.

Isn't it amazing that it has survived and going on display over 205 years later!
 
Isn't it amazing that it has survived and going on display over 205 years later!

Yes, it is in wonderful condition, really, and of course very much cared for now. I suppose it was carefully preserved in airtight Palace chests after her death.
 
Princess Charlotte of Wales, Betrothal to Prince William of Orange, AE medal, 1814
And that ended some six months later and Charlotte married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld.
 
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