SCANDALOUS LOVE LIFE OF GEORGE I | The wife of George I | Messy royal marriages | Hanoverian history

hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where i bring you new videos every week on all aspects of the past today on history calling i have a good juicy scandal video for you about some very messy royal marriages we're going to look at a king of england who had one if not two wives living at the time he held the throne but no queen this teal involves serial adultery salacious love letters a royal murder mystery and an imprisoned princess who was the mother of george ii and the woman who should have been queen of england but who you've probably never heard of this my friends is the scandalous love life of george the first [Music] [Music] if you enjoy learning about history especially royal history please remember to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel with notifications switched on so that youtube lets you know every time i upload you can also find links to my instagram account and patreon page in the description box below as well as for some additional resources all about george and his women the future george the first was born george ludwig or george louie and he came into the world in hanover on the 28th of may 1660. his father was ernst august of brunswick lunenburg his mother was sophia a granddaughter of james the first of england this connection is why george would eventually inherit the british throne after the protestant branch of the stewart family died out and the catholic branch were barred from inheriting for more on the failure of the protestant shirts to successfully procreate see my video on what happened to queen anne's children linked on screen and below for you in november 1682 george married his 16 year old cousin sophia dorothea of sela which is in modern germany and which i think i pronounced correctly because i looked up an actual german person saying it but i'm sure someone will let me know in the comments if i haven't her father george wilhelm was the brother of george ludwig's father this arranged marriage was made for dynastic reasons but george the first's biographer ragnald hatton whose book is linked below for you has noted that the groom was perfectly happy with the choice made for him and there was no indication at the time of the wedding of the mess that was to come the pair produced two children the future george ii born in november 1683 and another sofia dorothea born in march 1687 who later became the queen of prussia dynastically the couple had done their duty but their union was otherwise an increasing disaster husband and wife were frequently apart thanks to george ludwig's military commitments and by 1686 sophia dorothea's lydian wedding reported that her mysteries had become apathetic towards her spice still it was apparently he who strayed first beginning an affair with one of his mother's ladies in wedding the fabulously named erin guard melisina van der schulenberg who was generally known as melusina or melusine and as i've studied her life a little bit before in my pre-youtube days and always called her melisina that's the name i'm going to use for her from here on out she gave birth to the first of their three daughters in january 1692 though none of these girls were ever acknowledged as being their parents children and were instead passed off as the daughters of melicina's sisters by the early 1690s sophia dorothea who now held the title of electoral princess had also turned her attention elsewhere and it had landed on the swedish count philip kristoff von kunic's mark having met in 1689 the two began corresponding in 1690 and a large number of their letters to each other survive this show that matters progressed from letters to secret meetings to a physical affair by 1692 though sophia dorothea later denied this in march of that year however von kunic's mark wrote to her after they had met that i slept like a king and i hope you did the see him what joy what rapture what enchantment did i not taste in your sweet arms the gods what a night i spend the memory of it blots out all my troubles and for the moment i count myself the happiest man on earth the correspondence is too long to go through it all here but other letters describe the many kisses they shared and strongly suggest that more occurred of course this was the 17th century and the double standard around infidelity was in full force george ludwig's affair might be tolerated at court but his wives was not especially given the implications it could have had for the succession if she produced an illegitimate child i have to wonder if it was only her frequent separations from her lover necessitated by his military career which prevented a pregnancy hatton has argued that if sophia dorothea had shown more prudence and discretion events might not have turned against her and won connig's mark so disastrously but she did not instead the number of servants and friends involved in facilitating these meetings and the sending of messages between the two when they were apart meant that the relationship had no hope of remaining quiet and they knew it as a letter from von konig's mark in december 1692 shows he wrote tell me if you think it possible for us to meet tomorrow they certainly spy upon us but if we fear no surprises poor la more de ju meaning for the love of god let me see you i cannot live so many days without a glimpse of you i would rather die than lose my love in other letters both parties mention that some of their correspondence has gone astray with no idea where the incriminating letters may have ended up sophia dorothea was warned of the dangers she was placing herself in and told by her family including her mother and mother-in-law slash aunt that the affair must cease but she paid no heed likewise von connick's mark was told by his fellow military officers to stay away from the princess and the future king of england himself seems to have known about the relationship and warned his wife to put an end to it on the one hand this was hypocritical given his own affair with melusina but on the other the fact that he seems to have tolerated it for some time and given sofia dorothea the chance to end it is surprisingly lenient particularly when compared to how many other husbands would have acted just think of how henry viii responded to catherine howard's alleged indiscretions for instance the lovers were not just reckless and immune to the good advice given to them they were also completely deluded about their future together despite sofia dorothea having no independent income and von connick's mark having run up enormous deaths due to his desire to live well beyond his means they began to make plans for her to end her marriage and for the two of them to run away together the idea that the princesses family not just her husband but her parents and in-laws too would ever allow such a scandalous event to happen shows how woefully out of touch these two were when it began to look like the pair might make a break for it after the count had been given a saxon regiment with a solid income by friedrich august the first of saxony the royal family stepped in the result was still a scandal some of the details of which remain obscured to this day but it was a scandal which could at least be somewhat controlled by the house of hanover matters came to a head when the lovers both arrived back in hanover after separate trips away in 1694. george ludwig was away in berlin at the time and on the first of july von koenig's mark was seen entering the lina palace where sophia dorothea was living whether he made it to her rooms is unknown though her lydian weddings were he hadn't but either way he was never seen alive again and hatton says that he was certainly murdered that night four courtiers were rumored to have killed him by sword and one of them a man named nicole montalban was soon afterwards gifted the extraordinary sum of one hundred and fifty thousand taylor which was the currency of the time from sofia dorothea's father-in-law ernst august bear in mind as hatton points out that this man's usual salary was just 200 taylor per year the count's body was supposedly disposed of in the nearby river liner in a witted down sack though no one really knows for certain nor can we know if the future george the first had anything to do with this but there is no evidence that he did and he wasn't in town at the time the involvement of his father however is beyond dispute ernst august's mistress the countess von platten is also often cited as one of the conspirators who had philip killed having supposedly been offended after he spurned her advances but as hatton points out there is no real evidence to support this although she may have colluded with ernst august about the details of the plan the kind's disappearance caused a europe-wide scandal as his powerful family friends and employers people who included friedrich august the first of saxony and louis xiv of france sought news of him but no trace was ever found and the hanoverian royal family consistently denied any knowledge of his fiat there was a flurry of excitement in 2016 when some old bones were discovered in lina castle and there was speculation that they were the remains of the missing philip however analysis showed that some were animal bones and the others came from at least five individuals only one of these people was the correct age to be the 29 year old kind but that person was a woman the mystery of what happened to von konig's mark therefore continues but now let's turn our attention back to sofia dorothea and her ruined marriage to george with her lover dead the princess was locked in her apartments her letters to the kind were discovered and her husband father and father-in-law slash uncle decided to arrange a divorce on the grounds that she refused to live with george ludwig the incriminating correspondence was suppressed and some of it apparently destroyed while what remains only came to light and was published centuries later sofia dorothea who doesn't seem to have realized yet what had happened to her lover and naively thought she was going to be able to live with him agreed to the divorce and showed no interest in reconciling with her husband this divorce and it was a divorce rather than an annulment of the type that henry viii so frequently got was formalized in december 1694 in the following manner the matrimonial suit of the illustrious prince george lee electoral prince of hanover against his consort the illustrious princess sophie dorothea etc we constituted president and judges of the matrimonial court of the electorate and duchy of brunswick-luneburg declare and pronounce judgment after attempts have been tried and have failed to settle the matter amicably and in accordance with the documents and verbal declarations of the princess and other detailed circumstances we agree that her continued denial of matrimonial duty and cohabitation is well founded and consequently that it is to be considered as an intentional desertion in consequence whereof we have considered sentence and now declare the ties of matrimony to be entirely dissolved and annulled since in similar cases of desertion it has been permitted to the innocent party to remarry while the other is forbidden the same judicial par will be exercised in the present instance in favor of his serene highness the electoral prince it was only when the arrangements were complete that the princess discovered that she was going to be imprisoned by her father and never allowed to see her children again she was locked up under heavy guard here in alden castle and known as the princess or duchess of alden though well provided for financially only her mother was allowed to visit her and despite numerous requests over the years to be freed including to her by then adult daughter barring one brief trip to sela from april to september 1700 when it looked like the french might invade the territories where her normal prison was she never left alton castle and its grounds again she died there in november 1726 and when the earth around the castle proved to be too waterlogged to be used for burial her ex-husband allowed her to be interred in the duckle vaults in a church in selah in may 1727 but what of george ludwig he continued the relationship with melisina and when he became the elector of hanover upon the death of his father in 1698 she was given precedence over all other ladies at court see if his mother and any queens or princesses who might happen to be visiting in 1714 he became king of great britain and ireland and moved with her and their three daughters who were still presented as her nieces to london although technically free to marry again under hanoverian law in england the modern concept of divorce was in its infancy and it was not permissible for him to remarry while his former wife lived nevertheless there have been rumors for centuries that he had a more genetic marriage with melusina if you've never come across this phrase before it means a union between two people of desperate rank in which the person of lower rank does not get the social privileges of the marriage like titles and the children though legitimate are barred from inheriting their wealthier higher ranked parents money land and titles it is still a legal marriage though in the sense that neither party can marry another without committing bigamy the evidence that george and melusina had such a marriage is insufficient to be sure of the matter one way or the other one of george's granddaughters said that they were more genetic spices and melusina was given german titles in 1715 when she was created a countess of the holy roman empire and in 1722 when the holy roman emperor charles vi made her a princess of epperstein some have seen these honors as an indication of her status as george's wife but there is no evidence that any marriage ceremony ever took place and as far as we know neither george nor melusina ever referred to one another as husband and wife this is understandable given that any such announcement would have dredged up the scandal of the marriage too and the imprisonment of sophia dorothea who was after all the mother of the heir to the throne however melusina acted as george's primary hostess and was a well-known conduit to royal favor in 1720 the english politician robert walpole said of her that she was in effect as much queen of england as ever any was her unofficial position and importance to the king were marked in other ways too george gave her the irish title of the duchess of monster then the english title of duchess of candle plus a hefty income to go with him perhaps had he had more time after sofia dorothy's death and before his own he might have publicly made an honest woman of melusina but we'll never know george the first died seven months after his ex-wife on the 11th of june 1727 whilst on a trip back to hanover melusina went back to britain where she lived out her days with her surviving daughters one of them had predeceased george and died in 1743 she is buried in south oddly street chapel in london with her two eldest children with her passing the messy love life of george the first had at last come to an end and ironically given the scandal caused at the time it has even become something of a footnote in history after all how many people have heard of sophia dorothea of cella erin guard melisina van der schulenberg or account philip kristoff bonconics mark probably not that many before i leave you i'd like to take this opportunity to thank my patrons for their generous support of this channel which helps me to keep creating videos for you if you'd like to become a patron and get some history calling perks see the patreon link in the description box below i've also had some questions from some of you about making a one-off donation if that is something you would prefer to do for any reason youtube also have a thanks button below videos with preset amounts which will enable you to do so this allows you to post a customizable and brightly colored comment and get a one-time animation over the top of the video and i'd like to again take this chance to thank you for your support that's all from me for this week but do let me know in the comments below what you think of sofia dorothy's treatment by her family and make sure you're back for next week's video until then as always keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 40,130

Keywords: scandalous love life of george I, george i's messy love life, messy royal marriages, who was george ii's mother, the woman who should have been queen of England, the wife of george I, English royal history documentary, royal murder mystery, scandals of the house of hanover, who was george i's mistress, royal love triangle, who was the duchess of Kendal, philip christoph von königsmarck, sophia dorothea of celle, the imprisoned princess, ehrengard Melusina Von Der Schulenberg

Id: Ycoh_arGzi8

Length: 17min 30sec (1050 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 11 2022