The life of the real QUEEN CHARLOTTE of Mecklenburg-Strelitz | Who was married to George III?

she was Queen consort at 17 mother to 15 children married to the man who has gone down in history as the king who lost America and went mad four times and the first queen of the United Kingdom the story of Charlotte of Mecklenburg strelitz has as much drama as anything you'll read in a novel or watch on screen but what was the real Queen Charlotte like and how much of what you see of her in shows like Bridgeton and its spin-offs is true in today's video from history calling we're heading back to the 18th century to look at this record-breaking Queen consort who deserves to be remembered as much more than just the wife of George III [Music] princess Sufi Charlotte known to history as Charlotte of Mecklenburg strelitz was born on the 19th of May 1744 the daughter of Duke Charles of Mecklenburg strelitz and his wife Elizabeth of sax hilbrickhausen she was the fourth of their five surviving children and was raised in Mecklenburg strelitz which was a tiny German duchy and considered a bit of a Backwater at the time her father died when she was eight and from then on she was raised by her mother who ensured she had a good education she was taught by a woman called Madame degrabo who was a poet of Summer nine and also by a doctor against her between them they imbued a knowledge of some French and Latin Theology and botany in the young princess who was also an excellent sewer and a great reader furthermore she was a Protestant and this was one of the key things which helped to get her to the altar with George III George became a Lecter of Hanover and King of Great Britain and Ireland as well as the British colonies in 1760 at the age of 22 and quickly set about finding a wife there had been no Queen since the death of his grandmother Caroline of amsbach in 1737 as George's own father Frederick Prince of Wales had died in 1751 before ever becoming King leaving his wife Augusta as the Director Princess of Wales George couldn't marry a Catholic thus seriously limiting his pool of potential wives and he also had a long list of requirements as to what the woman in question should be like he wanted someone young who was kind pliable and respectable not unintelligent but also not keen to rule him and interfere in politics he wasn't particularly worried about looks which was just as well as Charlotte was never considered a showstopper and as she aged countless unkind comments would be made about her appearance famed writer and politician Horace Walpole who saw her in her youth described her as not tall nor Beauty pale and very thin but look sensible and is genteel her hair is darkish and fine her forehead low her nose very well except the nostril spreading too wide her mouth has the same fault but her teeth are good I'm going to pause for a minute here to deal with something which I think a lot of you are going to ask me about but which isn't what this video is focused on and that's Queen Charlotte's skin color the real Charlotte was white something any qualified historian worth their salt who's ever looked at the mountain of evidence regarding this issue including the peel comment I just read you out from Whirlpool nose this video isn't about the casting choices of the Bridgeton shows nor is it a criticism of those shoes or the actresses who have brought those versions of Queen Charlotte to life Bridgerton is very clearly a fictional program set in an alternate reality where a complete Racial equality had been achieved in Britain by the late 18th or early 19th centuries something which unfortunately still hasn't been achieved even today personally I find it very enjoyable escapism and always look forward to it but the conversation about colorblind casting isn't my topic today by 1761 George had settled on the princess as his choice despite concerns amongst his advisors that her raising in such an undistinguished Court would not have sufficiently prepared her for the rule of being the queen consort of the British Isles George was confident that she was young enough to learn however and on the 8th of July he announced that he would marry her the offer had been enthusiastically accepted by the Mecklenburg strelitz family this was the royal equivalent of a rags to richest teal and Charlotte arrived in London on the 8th of September that CM Knight she became queen as well as electors of Hanover after marrying George at St James's Palace their joint coronation followed on the 22nd until George's mental faculties deteriorated this was to prove a remarkably happy Union his care to choose a woman who could conform to his tastes meant that they were highly compatible and those who met her were all taken with her calm gracious Pleasant and eager to please she was she didn't have the kind of glamor and sophistication that might be expected from a French princess for example but her lack of artifice or political ambition and ability to conform to the English way of life made her a hit she converted from Lutheranism to anglicanism without trouble and learned the language once she was in situ George also proved himself an attentive husband straight away by having a whole new wardrobe of fashionable English clothing created for her which was ready upon her arrival and assembling an astonishing set of jewels for her to wear ensuring that she could be the bale of any ball at least as far as her fashion and accessories went perhaps even better from Charlotte's point of view he was fearful to her one of relatively few English kings who as far as we know didn't cheat on their wives the main job of a queen consort was of course to produce an heir to the throne and here Charlotte quickly exhaled she would become the most productive Queen of England Scotland or Great Britain ever producing 15 live children of whom 13 lived to adulthood furthermore she had no stillbirths and few if any miscarriages One Source I read said she had none and other reported rumors from 1764 that she'd had one and she didn't die in childbirth This childbearing Record alone makes her incredible all the more so when we consider the age in which she lived her children were as follows her eldest was the future George IV and was born in 1762 11 months after his parents marriage he was followed by Prince Frederick Duke of York in 1763 and William Duke of Clarence later William IV in 1765. Charlotte the Princess Royal was born in 1766 much to the Delight of her parents who very much wanted a Girl by that point then in 1767 Kim Edward Duke of Kent ultimately the father of Queen Victoria next there was Princess Augusta in 1768 princess Elizabeth in 1770 Prince Ernst Duke of Cumberland in 1771 Prince Augustus Duke of Sussex in 1773 Prince Adolphus Duke of Cambridge in 1774. Princess Mary in 1776 Princess Sofia in 1777 Prince Octavius in 1779 so named because he was Charlotte's eighth boy Prince Alfred in 1780 and finally princess Amelia in 1783. both king and queen were attentive parents by the standards of the day who do it on their children whilst they were young and they frequently visited the nursery that said Charlotte was not as relaxed with her Offspring as George was and didn't play with them on the floor as the king would nor did her duties as Queen give her the time to be the kind of ever-present fixture in her children's lives that she might have liked to be instead as was perfectly normal the children had wet nurses governesses tutors and a variety of other servants to care for them and attend to their education and most day-to-day needs while their father and mother dealt with life as Monarch and consort when the boys were older their father had them moved into their own establishments and placed under a strict educational regime which unfortunately led to the usual Hanoverian pattern emerging of an increasingly fraught relationship between the king and his sons especially his heir Charlotte though ever benign and comfortable to her husband's wishes did nothing to ease her boy's suffering in the school room with tutors who would beat them if they were thought to have misbehaved eventually most of them save the Prince of Wales were sent to Germany to complete their education or dispatched into a naval career and they were mostly miserable in having to do so the girls stayed at home to be taught and among their other teachers were the renowned painter Thomas Gainsborough and the famed musician Johann Christian Bach away from her children the Queen's days were a mix of social duties engagements and time spent with her husband Janice hadlow in her book on the hanoverians which was the main secondary source for this video in which I've linked below for you provides an overview of Charlotte's life there were trips to the theater and London's pleasure Gardens Weekly concerts at home at which she and other members of the royal family play their instruments and twice Weekly Drawing rooms over which she presided with the King both she and George also continue to love reading and it along with music was another of their shared interests they spend as much of their time together as was practical given their various responsibilities and even slept together something which was unusual for the time period when spices of their rank usually used separate bedrooms they had few personal friends though and Charlotte's must have been a lonely existence much of the time George didn't want his spouse to become embroiled with the local aristocracy feeling that propriety meant she should stand apart from them and perhaps worrying that any personal attachments would seep into politics and lead to the creation of a queen's party through which her ladies and their politician husbands might try to influence him via his wife the English ladies he had chosen for her household for her arrival were on the whole much older than her and the fact that she didn't initially speak English or even very good french cannot have helped instead she relied heavily on a German woman named Juliana schvelenberg who had come with her from Mecklenburg strelitz and who despite her unwavering on popularity with pretty much everyone at court including the king stayed with Charlotte until her death in 1797. there was another reason for her social isolation though George liked to have her all to himself and if they were alive today I can't help but wonder if their relationship would be considered obsessive and controlling on his part and deeply unhealthy his brother the Duke of Gloucester later wrote that George quote delighted in having an impressionable and malleable 17 year old girl whom he could mold as he liked and that he was quote determined she should be wholly devoted to him and that she have no other friend or Society there is no diet it had a negative effect on Charlotte over the years she wrote to her brother of her boredom heavily regulated and confined lifestyle and frequent unhappiness though she kept these feelings well hidden from those around her in England and rarely showed any strong emotion to those who saw her she was nothing like the Charlotte scene in the Bridgeton universe who is strident commanding and even mischievous the couple lived first at St James's Palace but soon they brought into the royal family one of the most famous homes associated with it tired with the rundowns and James in 1762 George purchased Buckingham house it soon became known as the Queen's house and it was officially given to Charlotte by parliament in 1775. nowadays it is of course known as Buckingham Palace and is the center of the monarchy in later years after the death of George's mother they would also take on her house at Q and revamp Windsor Castle and its surrounding buildings so that they could be used too Charlotte admitted that she disliked the constant annoyance of moving between these three homes but as ever she been to her husband's wishes and endured it the queen was an active philanthropist and supported numerous hospitals schools and arms houses including the famous Magdalen Hospital in London as I've already mentioned it was the king's desire that she not involve herself in British politics but Clarissa Campbell Orr argues in her Oxford DNB entry on Charlotte that the King's opinion of certain ministers could be impacted by his wife's reaction to and opinion of them she also points out that as a lectress of Hanover Charlotte was slightly more involved especially as George had made her brother his military Governor there were certain issues which the queen could not avoid however and the American Revolution was one of them I don't want to get sidetracked into giving a history of the Revolution as it's not the purpose of this video but essentially between about 1775 though there have been problems earlier than that and 1783 the 13 British colonies which form part of what is now the United States were lost when offered the chance to compromise and still retain considerable control over these colonies whilst also allowing them more autonomy than they had their to forehead George pushed for Total Domination instead now he was a constitutional not an absolute monarch but he still held a lot of sway over government policies which had to be signed off on by him just as Royal Ascend is still used today he was therefore far from powerless and he became heavily identified with the long and expensive War which resulted in part from his refusal to modernize how the colonies were run it greatly tarnished his reputation on both sides of the Atlantic then and now and has led to him being remembered as the king who lost America for Charlotte it meant she was living with a husband who was even more overworked than he had been before and under even greater stress George even considered abdication in 1783 and withdrawal to Hanover with her and the younger children but was talked out of it the unhappiness in the royal family was only increased by the death in 1782 of the always sickly two-year-old Prince Alfred at which the usually very composed Charlotte wept bitterly eight months later in 1783 her four-year-old son Octavius suddenly died as well possibly from a chill caught when his father took him out into the gardens one evening he had been ill only 48 hours and the shock of losing him was immense both parents were desolate Octavius had been a particular favorite of George's and Charlotte continued to speak of her grief at the loss of her two boys for years to come though not particularly good at showing her affection for her children there is no doubt that she loved them very much the 17 yetis had begun poorly and unfortunately they would only get worse the nigh adult Prince of Wales was a constant source of annoyance and embarrassment to his mother and father having affairs with married women and getting his name in the papers for all the wrong reasons his relationship with both parents deteriorated as a result as king and queen rebuked him for his feelings other than their second son Frederick they had poor relations with the other boys too who were scattered around Europe and sometimes North America kept on a very tight Financial leash and whose letters they even feel to respond to sometimes quite High George and Charlotte thought they were building a strong loving and respectable royal family or raising their sons to be the man they wanted them to be is anyone's guess as for the princesses they were kept at home and frequently bored out of their minds as their father refused to get husbands for them George seems to have felt he was protecting them from the world and was also loathed to be parted from them and so his girls spent almost no time with anyone outside the immediate Court Charlotte did nothing to remedy the situation for she was equally averse to saying anything to the King which might upset him and the situation dragged on soon though all their lives would be upended by one of the most famous aspects of the Rhian the so-called Madness of King George in the summer of 1788 the usually healthy George III was suddenly taken ill with what he called a bilious complaint the problem subsided and his doctor suggested he take a trip to Cheltenham Spa to take the waters there and improve his overall health this he did taking Charlotte and their eldest three daughters with him the trip seemed to do him the power of good but after returning in August he soon became unwell again complaining of a rash on the 12th of October over the next few weeks his condition rapidly deteriorated as well as tiredness and severe stomach aches which spread out into his sides and sometimes mid-breathing difficult he became increasingly mentally agitated rambling on for hours at a time on various subjects until his voice was hoarse and he was filming at the mouth and bursting into tears on some occasions Charlotte's initial reaction was to bottle up her emotions and try to maintain an aura of calm and numerality in the Royal household but as the situation progressed she began to crack the doctors could not discover what the matter was though gait was unconvincingly suggested to account for his physical symptoms George was now completing of seeing a Red Mist every time he tried to read something not being able to hear music properly and began obsessing over Charlotte especially her security their eldest two sons were called to come to dinner with a family at Windsor Castle on the 5th of November and assess the situation it did not go well the king's heavily disordered mind led to him saying numerous inappropriate things and ultimately he put his eldest son up against a wall in a ridge While most of the family sat or stood by in tears when Charlotte flared to her rooms the king followed her and made her rest in a couch in a nearby drawing room she couldn't go to bed until he finally retired several hours later at which point she had to list listen to him talking to himself in his room until he eventually barged back into hers one of her companions at the time who was living in the Royal household was the famed author Francis Bernie who described the king's mind as deranged and witnessed Charlotte in a rare show with deep emotion crying the next morning and then hearing the king continue to talk to his doctors in the same agitated state which had become his new normal stories also emerged later that he had attacked her and the Princess Royal though it is hard not to know if they are true as they didn't come from an eyewitness the breaking point had been reached the Prince of Wales now took charge of the situation calling in new doctors without consulting his mother and she was told to move to another apartment in the castle complex so that her presence would not further agitate the king with such a weak relationship with her eldest son she now became peripheral to Affairs and broke down in tears after the move sobbing what will become of me meanwhile George only became more upset and physically violent at being kept away from his wife and daughters his eating habits have become very irregular too and he barely slept it looked as though he would either be permanently insane or die one of the most popular explanations for the king's condition is porphyria but this illness was unknown in the late 18th century and in any case it has been disputed as a diagnosis for George by many modern historians and doctors alike some of him think he might have been bipolar whatever the illness was it went on for months and it was deeply distressing for his wife sometimes the Kings seem to be improving for short periods of time but always he fell back into what observers called delirium delusions and even convulsions he was moved from Windsor to queue at the end of November with Charlotte and their daughters but when he was eventually Allied to see them he said that he had never loved his Queen and that he was having an affair with a countess of Pembroke one of her ladies in wedding Charlotte for her part was noted as being increasingly thin and depressed and her hair went Gray as early as November the Prince of Wales was contemplating a Regency to fill the power vacuum left by the king's incapacitation but the deal the government offered him in December was intended to severely limit his patronage parse and caused a major Rift with Charlotte he blamed her in large part for the proposed restrictions as she supported both her husband's rights as king assuming he recovered and his government led by William Pitt in the event however the king suddenly began to improve at the end of January 1789 and within two weeks he was deemed well enough that the Regency bill which was on the point of being passed by parliament was halted in its tracks from Charlotte's point of view catastrophe had been averted but as we'll see not forever she find it hard to forgive the Prince of Wales and her second son Frederick who threw in his lot with his brother for not better supporting their father and mother during this difficult time hadlow also argues that her personality was forever altered and that she became harder less cheerful more bad tempered and was never able to completely forget the humiliation and grief which sprouted from being rejected by George and told that he loved lady Pembroke her irratability meant that relations with her daughters deteriorated never to fully recover still Royal life soon got back on track with George's popularity improved in many ways by his recovery and not a moment too soon for it was also in 1789 that the French Revolution took off ultimately leading to the execution of France's king and queen Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette the British Royals could use all the popularity they could get new scandals were on the horizon though this time thanks to the Royal princes the prims of Wheels had contracted an illegal Union with the widowed and Catholic Maria fitzherbert back in December 1785. though this fact had been denied for years afterwards her religion meant that the union was in contravention of the 1701 active settlement which forbid such a marriage between the heir to the throne and a Catholic and the 1772 Royal marriages act prohibited the prince from marrying without his father's consent went under the age of 25. the marriage was therefore considered legally void Young Prince Augustus made a similarly illegal Union in 1793 with Lydia Augusta Murray in Rome which was officially declared invalid in July 1794 and the baby boy it had produced left illegitimate this wasn't a good introduction to the Royal marriage market for Charlotte's children but it only got worse when the Prince of Wales decided to make a legal Union on the 8th of April 1795 he was weared to his paternal cousin Caroline of Brunswick it was a complete disaster Prince George made no inquiries into the character of his soon-to-be wife seemingly thinking only of the money he would get from Parliament for marrying and the two were not remotely suited to each other Queen Charlotte who already knew something of her niece was dead set against the union but couldn't prevent it the first time they met the prince called for Brandy declaring that he was not well and Caroline called him fat and nowhere near as good looking as the portrait she had seen had led her to believe neither wanted to go through with a ceremony but it was too late to back out the prince and princess of Wales had only one child princess Charlotte named after her grandmother of course who was born almost precisely nine months after the wedding on the 6th of January 1796 just days later her parents split up and they were formally separated the following year Queen Charlotte could do nothing but OB of her son and daughter-in-law's misery unable to do anything about it she also headed her public rule more and more complaining about how poorly the Press treated her no matter how hard she worked to fulfill her duties you can see one example of what she was putting up with in this satirical print she refused to do anything to help her miserable daughters escape the Purgatory that was the royal household as well the eldest though was finally released by The persistent courtship albeit remotely of the widowed Frederick Duke of wurttemberg and in May 1797 the Princess Royal married him and moved to the duchy Charlotte was sad to see her go especially as all guests correctly that they would never meet again and she later decided that she did not like her son-in-law who was forever asking for political assistance from the King but the princess was delighted to finally be free of her life with her parents and sisters as for her sisters they continued on at home but their lives were marked by tragedy and scandal by the late 1790s it was evident that the health of the youngest princess Emilia was feeling as she had contracted tuberculosis but it was her sister Sophia who caused the most immediate concern though some argue that what I'm about to tell you never happened and was merely a slander against the princess the evidence strongly suggests that in the summer of 1800 she gave birth to an illegitimate son fathered by one of King George's equaries the baby was initially placed with a local tailor and his wife but the child's apparent father Major General Thomas Garth soon took the boy also called Thomas into his own household this was an absolute disgrace for the royal family and although it was hushed up as much as possible with Sophia removed from public view until after the birth it was an Open Secret Charlotte never really acknowledged what had happened Beyond a cryptic comment after the birth that Sophia's Health had literally improved but she must have been appalled by the lapse in virtue of yet another of her children on top of the Playboy reputations her sons already had and their two invalid marriages the year after this debacle came two changes to Charlotte's position and life the first will have made little practical difference to her at the start of 1801 the active Union between Great Britain and Ireland came into force and she became the first ever Queen of the new United Kingdom the second was that one of her great fears came to pass for in February the king's mental ailment returned it was much the same as in 1788 George seemed deranged to use the phrase in common at the time he was feverish and he even fell into a coma at the start of March there were fears he would die but remarkably after a few days he recovered he was still not himself though and Charlotte feared being alone with him remembering what he had been like in 1788 and early 1789. this put a strain on their relationship as she tried to avoid him wherever possible and the situation came to her head when he stole up to her room on the night of the 16th of April we don't know exactly what occurred but it and the King's sudden and perhaps unhealthy interest in his errant daughter-in-law slash niece the Princess of Wales were enough for Charlotte to request that he be confined again which as hadlow explains was an extraordinary step for a woman who had been committed to following his orders and protecting his interests since the age of 17. confined he was staying at queue for a month until he flatly refused to continue conducting business unless he was released which he Julie was he was evidently still not in his right mind however and blamed Charlotte in part for his imprisonment the family founded a severe strain to be in his presence but there was little else they could do things quiet and down eventually but in 1804 the illness came back yet again it lasted for months but George was allowed to continue to live as much of his normal life as possible despite the Stray and His Manic energy and harshness towards his family put on them Charlotte's once close and largely happy marriage was in tatters as the king's love for her wilted under the pressure of his mental health problems he became suspicious of and cruel towards her and began making crude remarks to other women in her presence telling everyone Which lady he wanted to be his mistress according to the Princess of Wales he tried to force himself on her during one of the many unwelcome visits from him she endured and it seems that even his daughters were the victims of his unwanted attentions to the point that they couldn't travel in a coach with him his conduct distressed and humiliated the queen even further and she refused to continue sleeping with him for which I really can't blame her reading between the lines I strongly suspect he tried and perhaps even succeeded in forcing himself on her the romantic and companionate side of the marriage was over even when George recovered he and Charlotte did not sleep together again and were usually only together in public for the sake of appearances they lived in separate houses and the King openly criticized his wife when we consider how happy they had been and for how long I think we can only conclude that this turn of events was a tragedy for the queen if we have sympathy for her though we must also acknowledge that Charlotte could be selfish in 1808 she stubbornly refused to support a proposal of marriage from the Duke of Orleans for her daughter Elizabeth what would have made the princess happy something she her mother and sisters knew precious little of and if she had had Charlotte backing her she might have been able to bring it about despite the Duke's Catholicism especially if she'd been willing to relinquish her claim on the throne Charlotte also refused to countenance a relationship between princess Amelia and Charles Fitzroy another Royal airquery while still refusing to do anything to help her daughter or her sisters find suitable matches the king admitted that he didn't find his daughter's husband because he liked to keep them with him and Charlotte seems to have been of the same mind the denial of any form of Happiness to Amelia destroyed her relationship with her mother and is made all the worse in hindsight because the young woman was not long for this world still troubled by tuberculosis in 1810 she died aged only 27. Charlotte had not entered the final decade of her life the king had been on the throne for 50 years and they had been married almost as long but that marriage had now broken down to a large degree the King was blind and her surviving children were frequently miserable and resentful thanks to a mixture of absent parenting and harsh criticism on the boy's side the suffocating clinginess inflicted on the girls and the miseries that the 1772 Marriage Act passed by their father brought about for all their troubles weren't over yet though and the next Blue was the final disintegration of the king's mental state already at the time of Amelia's death George had been succumbing once again to the old illness and this time there would be no recovery a Regency bill was passed and on the 6th of February 1811 the future George IV officially became the prince Regent Charlotte was to have the custody and care of her husband's person with a council appointed to help her manage while her eldest son attended to The Business of Being Monarch in all but Niam she found herself completely unable to deal with the King anymore though who was completely delusional and often spoke to their dead children Octavius and Emilia and imagined himself married to Lily Pembroke Charlotte was depressed and after so many trials and tribulations seems to have been unable to be kind and patient anymore with her husband for the doctors had to ask her to be more gracious with him As Time passed though she visited him less and less instead letting their daughters deal with him but her hold over them was slowly diminishing as well in an effort to reduce swirl expenditure and in light of the fact that the King was no longer functioning as Monarch his household was reduced and the queen was offered 50 000 pounds a year by Parliament to cover her own costs which was a huge sum but not enough to maintain her establishment as it was her daughters were offered and accepted nine thousand pounds a year each this would allow the princesses to have a measure of financial Independence for the first time and Charlotte reeled against the idea knowing that her control over them would be seriously impeded there was nothing she could do though many of her oldest servants left or had to be dismissed and slowly but surely her daughters began to take control over their own lives she complained bitterly and her relationships with them almost completely broke down as a result her granddaughter princess Charlotte had little time for her either and hated visiting her grandmother and aunts at Windsor though she warmed up to them after they all supported her in her decision to abandon her engagement to the prince of Orange Charlotte was to be another Hanoverian tragedy though married to Prince Leopold of sax coolberg in May 1816 she miscarried twice before becoming pregnant for a third time her grandmother expressed serious concerns about how big the princess became even in the earlier stages of her pregnancy and the size of the child may have been one of the complications in the delivery for after a long labor she finally gave birth to a stillborn son three weeks late in November 1817. only to die hours later of postpartum complications at the age of just 21. it was a terrible shock to the whole family and Queen Charlotte was grief stricken at the loss things can only have seemed all the worst to her as she was continuing to lose her daughter's company too Princess Mary was finally allowed to marry in 1816 and United with her cousin William Duke of Gloucester she still continued to be a heavy presence in the lives of her mother and wider family but was at last no longer living with them then in 1818 Kim and out of the blue proposal for the hand of the 47 year old princess Elizabeth from Frederick hereditary Prince of Hess Hamburg surprisingly Charlotte at first raised no objections to this but as she thought about it more the idea of another daughter moving to Germany never to be seen again hardened her heart against the match Elizabeth was not to be swayed though and the wedding and the move went ahead the two never did meet again for Charlotte was now approaching the end of her life the loss of her granddaughter had affected her already declining health and in the summer of 1818 whilst traveling from London to Windsor she was obliged to stop and rest at Q she wouldn't leave the place alive again suffering from heart failure she injured a slow and painful death as fluid gathered in her body and she fought for breath with the prince Regent holding her hand she died in the palace in the very chair you see here on the 17th of November 1818 aged 74. she was buried in Saint George's Chapel at Windsor where her husband joined her after his own death in 1820. so how can we sum up Queen Charlotte well she had many commendable qualities she had an incredibly strong sense of Duty and loyalty to her husband and her adopted country and during the first Decades of her marriage she always put her own needs a distant second to anything George wanted she was clever calm and dignified with great patience and graciousness and dealt with George's illness as well as I think anyone could have expected and better than many would have done she is also to be pitied for having had a possessive and controlling husband who didn't really Let Her Shine in her own right or form many meaningful friendships in her youth she was very bad at showing affection though and she was selfish when it came to the welfare of her daughters in particular thwarting their attempts at happiness on numerous occasions and squandering much of their lives just so that she could keep them with her in a state of misery in later life her temper became worse and worse snood out as a result of the strand of dealing with George and most of the family disliked dealing with her she was a record breaker though and some of those records still stand today she had the most children she was the first queen of the UK and until Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh she was the longest serving consort in English Scottish or British history Still Remains the longest serving Queen consort incidentally she also became queen of Hanover in 1814 when it changed from an electorate to a kingdom but she never visited the country it must be said that little of her Persona is apparent in the Bridgeton universe but such is the case with many shows which purport to show the lives of historical figures let me know in the comments below what you make of Charlotte's treatment of her daughters I'll be back next week with a new video for you and until then keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 425,211

Keywords: the life of the real queen charlotte, the queen with the most children, what happened when king george went mad, the first queen of the united kingdom, how many children did queen charlotte have, who was married to george iii, what was the real queen charlotte like, did queen charlotte love king george iii, the wife of george iii, who was queen charlotte, the king who lost America, the madness of king george iii, the marriage of george iii and queen charlotte

Id: ZIORImLJ3gg

Length: 37min 20sec (2240 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023