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| A portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales by Sir George Hayter |
Princess Charlotte of Wales was the queen the United Kingdom never had. She was born on 7 January 1796 to George, Prince of Wales, later King George IV, and Caroline of Brunswick. She was her parents’ only child and after her birth, the Prince and Princess of Wales separated. Since birth, hence, she was left in the care of governesses and servants and she was only allowed to see her mother for brief periods.
When she reached a marriageable age, the Prince of Wales, by then already Prince Regent to the deranged King George III, pressured her to marry William, Hereditary Prince of Orange (later King of the Netherlands). At first, she consented to the marriage but eventually ended prospects of marrying him. A battle of wills ensued between father and daughter. The Prince Regent finally relented and allowed his daughter to marry Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King of the Belgians). Shortly before the wedding, Parliament passed a bill that naturalized Leopold as a British citizen and granted him a £50,000 annuity.
They were married on May 2, 1816 to the huge acclaim of the British public. Charlotte wore a wedding dress cost over £10,000. After year and a half of happy marriage, while marred by a miscarriage, Charlotte gave birth but to a stillborn son. No sooner the princess suffered from stomach pain and she started vomiting. She died soon after midnight of November 6, 1817. While the postmortem was inconclusive as to the cause of her death, many blamed her male midwife, Sir Richard Croft, who committed suicide three months after while attending a childbirth. The nation mourned the princess’ passing for it had “lost a favorite child.” But the effect of her death did not just took a heavy blow emotionally but also triggered a succession crisis for the House of Hanover.
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