In many ways the history of the United Kingdom is the history of the Monarchy.
On September 8th 2022, the world saw what it had not seen for 70 years and 214 days,
a new British monarch. Charles III became the oldest man ever to ascend to the British throne.
But while this particular succession might be something of a novelty, in the past succession
has been sometimes well, more contentious. Leading sometimes to years of conflict, and at
other times seeming to turn on twists of chance. In an odd twist 115 years before Elizabeth II,
the daughter of the fourth son of the king, who himself had never been a king, was crowned
Queen. It its history that deserves to be remembered.
Elizabeth and Charles's Reign itself can be said to have been something of a surprise.
When he was born Elizabeth's father, Albert, who was not the oldest but the second son of
the Prince of Wales, the Future King George V. It was generally assumed that his older brother,
the future Edward VIII would be king, but things often don't work out as expected,
and in this case in a way that was even more unexpected. Edward indeed ascended to the
throne when his father died in 1936, but not only did he fail to produce an heir, he made
the startling choice to abdicate his throne in order to marry a twice divorced American.
Quite to the surprise of the nation, Albert Frederick Arthur George became King George VI,
followed by his daughter Queen Elizabeth II, and Grandson King Charles III.
But in many ways the ascension of another queen was more surprising than that of George VI,
and that all started with George III. George III was of the House of Hanover,
the Hanoverian dynasty was the result of the 1701 Act of Settlement, which settled the line
of succession on Protestants only. Following the death of the last Monarch of the Stewart Dynasty,
Queen Anne in 1707, the act by excluding any person who was either Catholic or married to a
Catholic, passed over at least six living people closer to kinship to Anne than the one eventually
chosen, George the First. The new line were the descendants of Sophie of Hanover, granddaughter
of James the First. And if that all seems confusing, well you're starting to get the point.
George III had an exceptionally long reign becoming King of Great Britain and Ireland
on October 26 1760. He was King when the kingdoms were United on January 1st 1801,
making him the first king of the United Kingdom, and ruling until his death on January 29 1820.
His 60-year reign made him the longest running King in British history.
It was of course an interesting reign which included the American war for independence,
the Napoleonic Wars and the Banning of the transatlantic slave trade.
But his reign is now perhaps most remembered for his mental illness which manifested for the
first time possibly as early as 1765, and for which there has been no definitive diagnosis.
And while analyzes of the success of the rule of George III sometimes disagree with each other,
one thing is certain, he did not have difficulty producing heirs with his wife of 57 years,
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. He proved if nothing else through
his mere fecundity his commitment to preserving the British crown.
George III's oldest son was also named George, and born August 12th 1762. A second son, Frederick was
born almost exactly a year later on August 16th. William Henry was born in August 1765. Charlotte
in September 1766. Edward in November 1767. Augusta Sophia in November 1768. Elizabeth in
May of 1770. Earnest Augustus in June of 1771. Augustus in January 1773. Adolphus in February
1774. Mary in April 1776. Sophia in November 1777. Octavius in February 1779. Alfred in September
1780, and Amelia in August 1783. That's correct, Queen Charlotte produced 15 children in 21 years.
The tragedy came with their later children. Octavius, Alfred and Amelia all predeceased the
King and Queen. Alfred died before reaching the age of two, and Octavius at age four, both from
illnesses after being inoculated against smallpox. Both deaths were a shock as the children had
previously been healthy. Prior to Edward Jenner's vaccine, people were inoculated against smallpox
using a mild form of the disease, but still one to two percent died from that weakened form.
Amelia, always sickly, died after a bout of measles on November 2nd 1810 at the age of 27.
Still, 12 surviving children would seem to have been enough to preserve the Royal Line.
But it wasn't enough simply to preserve the line, you also had to preserve the status of the Royal
House. In 1771, George III's brother, Prince Henry Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn married
a commoner named Anne Horton. The king thought the marriage was unsuitable and diminished the crown,
thus he suggested to Parliament the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. In brief, the ACT
stipulated that any descendant of George II must secure approval of the reigning monarch signified
under the Great Seal and declared in Council in order to marry. Any marriage not so approved would
be invalid, and any children of such marriages not in the line of succession to the throne.
Spurred by his brother's marriage, the ACT would have a huge impact on
George's own children and grandchildren, the next two generations of monarchs.
George the Third’s bouts of insanity became more of a serious problem in 1788,
and Parliament began discussions of giving his son George, the Prince of Wales,
limited power under a Regency Act although the king recovered before one was passed. He
would eventually be granted a Regency with limited power when his father's illness relapsed in 1810.
In contrast to his father, the younger George was given to scandal, a wastel who was chronically in
debt. In 1785, he contracted marriage with a commoner, Mary Fitzherbert, but the marriage
was illegal. He did not obtain, or even apparently seek the king's consent to marry. No children are
known to have come from their relationship, but any would not have been considered legitimate,
and thus not be heirs to the throne. Instead he was pressured to marry Carolyn of Brunswick,
his first cousin in 1795. It was an unhappy marriage, but it produced a daughter,
Princess Charlotte born in January 1796. As her father was Prince of Wales and heir to the throne,
Charlotte became second in line to the throne of England. On May 2nd 1816 to the delight of
the Prince Regent and the British public, the 20 year old princess married a nobleman
from the Saxon Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Leopold. The princess quickly became pregnant
but suffered first a miscarriage, and then on November 5th 1817, delivered a stillborn boy.
Charlotte suffered complications and she died the next day. The kingdom mourned. But the problem was
even deeper than the death of a beloved Royal. Her father the Prince Regent was 55 years old, he had
no other children, he was estranged from his wife, he was obese and possibly addicted to laudanum.
George proved unable to obtain a divorce, even after he ascended to the throne after his father's
death in 1820. An attempt to move an act through Parliament proved unpopular with the public and
failed. George IV and his Queen consort were estranged, but could not be divorced, and as long
as Carolyn lived he could have no more legitimate children. The Prince Regent would have no heir.
But perhaps even more surprising, despite having 12 surviving children in their 40s and 50s, he did
not have a single living legitimate grandchild. His five daughters were all beyond childbearing
age and yet had produced no offspring. His second son, Frederick the Duke of York, a military
officer now second in line for the throne was married to a Prussian princess but it was another
poor match, and the two had no children. They were estranged, although amicably. And in any case,
she was also beyond childbearing age. Four of the five remaining sons were still unmarried,
while Augustus the Duke of Sussex was married, but the marriage was not valid under the Royal
marriages Act. With both the Prince Regent and the Duke of York mired in estranged marriages,
focus fell on the next oldest son, 52 year old William Henry, Duke of Clarence and Saint Andrews.
William had served with the Royal Navy including serving in New York during the American
Revolution, the only member of the royal family to visit the Americas during the revolution. As a
third son, William Henry had never been expected, nor apparently expected himself, to inherit the
throne. And so the Duke had settled into domestic life with an Irish actress named Dorothea Bland.
The couple apparently enjoyed a degree of domestic bliss, and the coupling had produced 10 children
between 1794 and 1807. But while George III accepted the relationship, the twice divorced
actress was certainly not suitable for marriage; she was a mistress. The two never married,
and the ten children, all grandchildren of the king, could not be in the line of succession;
Dorothea died in 1816. Now the Duke, who never expected to inherit the throne was third in
the line of succession, and of the three oldest brothers by far the most healthy. He now was not
only likely to eventually inherit the throne, but had the greatest possibility of siring the
next monarch. A suitable match was found in 26 year old Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.
The pairing received Royal assent and the two married on July 11 1818. Despite the difference
in their ages, their marriage seems to have been a happy one and produced five children,
but none would be a monarch. Three were stillborn, and the remaining two died in infancy. While there
were occasional rumors of other pregnancies no other children came from the marriage.
If William had never been expected to inherit the throne, certainly Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and
Strathearn, never faced the expectation. An army officer who had spent years in Canada
after the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817 he, like his brothers, hurried to marry in the
hopes of producing an heir. The 50-year-old Prince married yet another German Princess,
Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widow 18 years his junior and sister of Princess Charlotte's
husband Leopold. They married May 29 1818, the marriage produced just a single child, a daughter
named after her mother. But Edward died suddenly of pneumonia in January 1820, and six days later
the venerable King George III finally passed away on January 29th. The Prince Regent became
King George IV, ruling for a decade until his death June 26 1830. Frederick had died in 1827,
so the crown passed to William Henry who ruled as William IV. George III's next oldest child
Charlotte, the Princess Royal, had passed away in 1828. And as William, despite having 10 children,
had no surviving legitimate heirs. The next in line was the only child of the fourth son and
fifth child of George III, the deceased Duke of Kent. When William IV passed away in June 1837,
18 year old Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom.
Queen Victoria ruled for the next 67 years during one of the most dynamic periods in the
history of the British Empire. The single longest reigning British monarch before Elizabeth II.
But there was one more twist for the children of George III. While Victoria became the Queen
of the United Kingdom, since she was a woman she was barred from ascending to the throne of the
kingdom of Hanover, thus Ernest Augustus, the fifth son and eighth child of George III became
King of Hanover. Thus ended the 123-year personal Union between the United Kingdom and Hanover.
He had one child with his wife Frederica Louise Caroline Sophie
Alexandrina of Mecklenburg-Strelitz who would become King George V of Hanover,
but was behind Victoria in the line of succession for the British throne. Finally,
Adolphus, George the Third's seventh son and tenth child, also fathered legitimate children. His
granddaughter was Mary of Teck who married George V of England, and was Elizabeth II's grandmother.
It all seems a rather obscure path to the throne for the great-great-great grandmother of the new
king of the United Kingdom. But Victoria's nine children became so intermarried throughout the
royal families of Europe that in her time she was called the Grandmother of Europe.
Not only is the new King of the United Kingdom Charles III her direct descendant,
but so is the current King of Norway Harold V, and the Queen of Denmark Margarethe II,
and the King of Spain Philippe VI. During the Great War both the King of the United Kingdom
George V, and the Kaiser of Germany Wilhelm II were grandchildren of Queen Victoria,
as was the wife of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. And yet for all these royal descendants,
the queen herself was never the child of a king or a queen. That is history that
deserves to be remembered in the coming months as we witness both a royal funeral, and a coronation.
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