The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Wednesday 9 February 2005

Fifteen children were not enough. By the time King George III and Queen Charlotte of England and Hanover greeted the birth of their fifteenth baby, they probably assumed there would never be another succession crisis. If each of their 15 children had only two children, that would have meant 30 grandchildren eligible for the throne. If all 15 had had 15 each, that would have been 225 grandkids. If they had continued to reproduce at that rate, their descendants would number more than 38 billion today. 

Fortunately for the world�s food supplies, that�s not how it happened.  

Of the 15 children, two princes, Octavius and Alfred, died in childhood, leaving only seven royal brothers and six royal sisters to pass along the family name. The oldest son, George Prince of Wales (who was later named Prince Regent when Papa went mad), secretly and illegally married a twice-widowed Catholic woman a few years his senior. The next son, Frederick Duke of York, dutifully married a Prussian princess, and although the two of them put a good face on their mutual distaste, they did not manage to produce any children. The third son, William Duke of Clarence, set up housekeeping with a stage actress who produced 10 illegitimate ing�nues. The fourth son, Edward Duke of Kent, shacked up with an older Frenchwoman. The fifth son, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was rumored to be both the incestuous lover of one of his sisters and a murderer. The sixth son, Augustus Duke of Sussex, was disowned when his own illegal marriage was revealed to the King. The seventh son, Adolphus Duke of Cambridge, was sent off to serve as regent for the continental Kingdom of Hanover, but he spent more time playing in his science lab than in his bedroom. 

Only one of the daughters, Charlotte Princess Royal, had been permitted to marry, but not until she was in her 30s, an old bride by the standards of the day, and she had no children. Her younger sisters were kept at home as glorified handmaidens to the Queen. A couple of them managed to sneak a few trysts with courtiers, and at least one secretly gave birth to an illegitimate child. 

That�s how things stood in 1796 when King George III celebrated his 58^th birthday. Fifteen children and no legitimate grandchildren. Then, the Prince of Wales got into some financial problems and asked for more money. The King and Parliament agreed to give it to him, if he would settle down with an eligible princess�his illegal marriage was still a secret. The unscrupulous young man said, �sounds good to me,� and married his first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick. (By the way, he didn�t divorce his first wife. In fact, he went back to her later, but that�s a story for another day.) The Prince of Wales and Caroline hated each other immediately. He had to get himself good and drunk to even make it through the wedding! Nevertheless, they did manage to do their matrimonial duty for a few weeks, and that was enough to earn them a daughter, Princess Charlotte Augusta. 

While the Waleses begged the King for a legal separation, Princess Charlotte Augusta was sent to live in a household of her own, the constant subject of custody disputes between her mother, her father and the King. When she grew up, she fell in love with a perfectly suitable but penniless prince and married him. After she suffered one miscarriage, the kingdom rejoiced as she prepared to deliver a full-term second child.  

And they waited. And they waited. Finally, several weeks late, the Princess went into labor. And they waited. And they waited. And the doctors did nothing. And they waited some more. Until, finally, at last, the baby was born dead, followed within a few hours by his mother. 

Now, mad King George had 12 surviving children�the youngest daughter had died a few years earlier�and no legitimate grandchildren. Fortunately, you can usually trust a middle-aged prince to do his duty (unless he�s the heir to a tiny Mediterranean principality). And the royal studs were off. 

Yoics! the Royal sport�s begun!
I�faith, but it is glorious fun,
For hot and hard each Royal pair
Are at it hunting for the heir.    

�Peter Pindar

The Duke of York was stuck with his barren, fifty-something wife and the Duke of Sussex�s low marriage had long before sealed his fate, but the other princes were willing enough to dump their aging mistresses in exchange for willing, young princesses�especially when it meant more money and a possible crown.  

The Duke of Clarence quickly married Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen, who willingly served as step-mum to his bevy of illegitimate kids, but had very little luck becoming a mum herself. After the deaths of two baby princesses and the stillbirths of two more, the Clarences were out of the running. 

In desperate need of money, the Duke of Kent actually had started his search for a royal bride just before Charlotte Augusta died. With his niece�s death, he finalized his decision to marry the young widow, Victoria Princess of Leinengen, proving a far better wife-picker than his big brothers. Not only was Victoria loaded with cash, she already had proven herself capable of producing healthy babies for her first husband. 

A few years earlier, the Duke of Cumberland had gambled on the idea of becoming King of Hanover one day because, as a woman, Charlotte Augusta was ineligible for that throne. He had married the twice-widowed Frederica Princess of Solms-Braunfels. Although she had given her first two husbands a total of eight children, she and Cumberland had not yet been visited by the stork. 

In Hanover, the Duke of Cambridge rushed out of his laboratory and proposed to Augusta of Hesse-Cassel less than two weeks after Charlotte�s death. Just two years later, the British royal nurseries were overflowing, but there could be only one winning father in the Royal Baby Race. Ironically, he turned out to be the unluckiest of them all. 

Edward Duke of Kent and his rich wife, Victoria, had produced a little princess in May 1819, and had planned to name her Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Alexandrina Victoria. The night before the christening however, the Prince Regent refused to let them use his dead daughter�s name or any other family names, especially Georgiana, which had been offered in his honor. He couldn�t allow his name to precede Alexandrina, which was proposed in honor of the Russian czar, and he certainly wouldn�t let the Czar precede him either. Thus, the little babe�s name was still undecided when the Archbishop asked what the child should be called. �Alexandrina,� the Prince Regent finally declared. The Duke of Kent pushed for at least one more name to be added. �Name her for her mother, then.�  

Within a few months, the new father caught a cold and predeceased all three of his older brothers, leaving Princess Alexandrina Victoria as the eventual heir to the throne. Her father�s early death was bad news for him, but it guaranteed that no little brother would step between the baby girl and the throne. Eighteen years later, young Victoria went to sleep as a princess and awakened as a queen.

- Cheryl