What if Queen Victoria never made it to the Throne? Part 1 - The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte of Wales

Queen Victoria is one of the most famous monarchs in history. Her reign of 63 years was the longest in the history of the United Kingdom until Queen Elizabeth II surpassed her, reigning 68 years and counting. Her name is synonymous with an entire time period. Surely there was never an individual that made such an impact on a country, if not the world. 

But what if that had never happened? What if she never came to the throne? What if the original heir presumptive had lived to take the throne? And most importantly, how would the world have been different? This is an examination of those scenarios and how one death changed the entire world.

Denise Tubbs starts this series by telling us of the tragic death of Princess Charlotte of Wales.

Princess Charlotte of Wales and her husband Prince Leopold. By George Dawe.

Her name was Charlotte. Princess Charlotte to be formal.  She was the only daughter of King George IV and his wife Caroline of Brunswick. To say that her parents were in a loveless marriage didn’t quite cover the whole story. Prior to George’s ascension to the throne, he had been a party boy. He despised his father and used any chance he could get to live and spend his money. But as George III got older, he pressured his son to marry and have an heir. With him being the Prince of Wales, it was his duty. He was forced to marry Princess Caroline, Duchess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel; a woman he found utterly undesirable in every way. Now there is a rumor that George had already been married and that his new marriage to Caroline was invalid. You see George had a love and her name was Maria Fitzherbert. The two of them had been in a torrid affair long before Caroline entered the picture. But there was a problem with Maria. She was a Catholic. And for those unfamiliar with English history, that’s not a good thing. The Church of England is a Protestant church; and its head is the reigning monarch. There were rules that forbade Protestants and Catholics from marrying. After a time of being together, it is suspected that the two were married in a Catholic ceremony held in secret. If it were true it would have thrown the succession and the state of the country into question. There has never been any confirmation of this, but his treatment of Caroline was downright horrible. Caroline’s story is a sad one, and she wouldn’t live long enough to see the events that later transpired.

The feeling was mutual on Caroline’s part. She hated George. After the wedding night, the two never found each other in the same bed. But at least one thing came of the wedding night. Charlotte was born just after the new year in 1796. Now that he had an heir, George felt his duty was fulfilled. Little did he know or realize that his father George III would eventually descend into madness. His madness was called “the madness of King George.” At the time, no one understood what caused the old king to lose all his faculties. His illness would later be a fear to all those descended from him. Every monarch after him feared that they too would get the madness. Later on, the theory was that his madness was based on the disease of Porphyria. Whether or not there is any truth is still debated to this day. 

George became more and more involved in the day-to-day responsibilities for his father until the old King died in 1820. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. So much happened in the five years before the old king passed away that changed the history of the world. 

Charlotte grows up

As Charlotte became older, naturally she was told she would be wed to someone of equal stature. She had many suitors to choose from. She was introduced to William, Hereditary Prince of Orange, who did not make the best impression on her. There was a rumor that her father got a hold too that Charlotte wanted to marry Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh. This would be problematic since they were closely related. Prince William Frederick and Charlotte were both grandchildren of George III. This would make them first cousins, a bit too close in the bloodline. Her father was against this and berated her for even thinking of the notion. 

She eventually settled on a young Prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. He was a German who had fought with Russia against Napoleon. They married in 1816, and she became pregnant with their first child soon after. On November 3, 1817 she went into labor. Up until that moment, Charlotte had what seemed to be a normal pregnancy. But it became apparent soon after that not all was right. She was having trouble pushing the child out, and time was passing quickly. On November 5 she finally gave birth to a stillborn son. Charlotte was exhausted after the ordeal and her doctors confirmed that the Princess was doing well.

Tragedy

However, the situation was far from ok. On November 6, Charlotte woke up to sickness. She vomited and held her abdomen in pain. The doctors were recalled to her bedside, while others rushed to wake Prince Leopold. The Prince, who had stayed with his wife throughout the previous days, was given opium and had gone to bed to rest. The doctor noticed she was clammy, cold, and bleeding. He could not stop the bleeding despite his efforts. By now Charlotte was having difficulty breathing, and they were having trouble waking the Prince. Sir Christian Stockmar, who was the primary doctor of Prince Leopold, had run into the room to see the Princess. She said the words “they have made me tipsy.” Sir Richard turned to go back to the Prince when the Princess shouted at him “Stocky, Stocky!” He returned to the room to find that the Princess was dead. 

Charlotte’s death sent shockwaves across the country. Only during the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, some 180 years later had there been this amount of grief in the nation. You could say that she was the Diana of her day. Adored by all, and a loss of not just to the Royal Family but the country too. Shops were closed for days, commemorative trinkets were produced in her memory, and windows and doors were draped in black. Her father was distraught with grief. So distraught, he could not even go to her funeral. They say her death changed him forever; he was never the same after. She is buried with her son in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. 

But there was one more thing that her death caused. A vacuum had been opened. And soon it would be large enough to have all of George III’s sons scrambling to find wives. Now that Charlotte was gone, there was no heir. She had been the only legitimate child of the Hanover dynasty. When George became King in 1820, a race began to see which of George III’s sons would have a legitimate child.

Next up, we’ll discuss the other sons of George III and just how weak Charlotte’s death made the monarchy.

Now, read part 2 here: What if Queen Victoria never made it to the Throne? Part 2 - The Many Sons of George III

What do you think the legacy is of Princess Charlotte of Wales? Let us know below.

Family Squabbles and the Outbreak of World War I

Rebecca Fachner starts a series of articles on World War I by considering how close family ties between many European rulers may have contributed to the outbreak of war – like a family squabble on a grandiose scale.

This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, and over the next few months there will be plenty of articles and books that deal with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the diplomatic machinations between the various countries after the Archduke’s death, and the outbreak of hostilities a few weeks later. One of the most interesting aspects of the beginning of the war is how most of the major powers seemed completely prepared for war, but stunned that war broke out so quickly. It is then, worth considering the political situation before the war to understand why the situation fell apart in the way it did, with the speed that it did.

Queen Victoria in 1887. Her relatives were closely connected prior to World War I.

Many people have compared World War I to a bar fight; there is even an internet graphic floating around that imagines the entire war as if the countries involved were drunks fighting at a bar rather than nations. If the war itself was a bar fight, the political situation leading up to the war is best characterized as a family squabble. Part of the reason that a comparison to a family makes sense is that the European political landscape at that time was in some ways like that of a large family. King George V of Great Britain was a grandson of Queen Victoria, first cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany through his father and the Kaiser’s mother. He was also first cousins with the Tsarina of Russia, Empress Alexandra, herself a granddaughter of Victoria. To make family dinners even more complicated, George was also a first cousin of Alexandra’s husband, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia; their mothers were sisters. His own sister was married to King Haakon of Norway, whose brother was King Christian X of Denmark, both of whom were cousins of both George and Nicholas. George and Wilhelm also had cousins in the royal houses of Greece, Romania and Spain. Confused yet? Well, almost every European royal family was related to almost every other European royal family, and untangling the branches of the family tree is a complicated endeavor, to say the least.

In an age when Europe was dominated by kingdoms and emperors, minor family disagreements became a huge problem. We all have family members that we don’t like too much for whatever reason, that’s the nature of families. But it is one thing if you don’t like your annoying cousin Nick or don’t trust cousin Bill, but when you all run countries, your dislike becomes both political and very important. Suddenly, the fact that you don’t trust your cousin has major policy implications for your government’s relationship with him and his government. This is not to suggest that pre-war alliances were purely based on family discord, or that the world lost millions of lives because of family drama. Two of the major players in the story were not linked to this large family: France because it no longer had a monarchy and Austria-Hungary because its rulers weren’t closely entwined in Queen Victoria’s royal circle. Since the war actually started between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, the non-family political situation was clearly very important too.

Why war broke out

As almost all histories tell us, World War I was the product of entangling alliances between the various powers, and their inability to stop the chain of events from overtaking them in the wake of the Archduke’s assassination. That is true; however, the crucial piece is not the entangling alliances, but the inability of each country in Europe to stop the train wreck as it was happening. The manifest weakness of many of the hereditary rulers of Europe was lethally exposed in 1914, along with their lack of diplomatic skills, their poor management style and general incompetence.

It is impossible to say whether better and more skilled (i.e. merit based) rulers would have been able to stave off a war, but it does seem clear that letting nations behave like a dysfunctional family is not the way to international harmony. Unfortunately it took an awful lot of lives to convince world leaders that international conferences shouldn’t look quite so much like a family reunion. One of the most enduring legacies of the war is that it ultimately toppled a number of the monarchies in Europe, perhaps because the conflict exposed the problems of hereditary rulers to such an extreme extent. Hereditary rule is like rolling the dice with your leadership, sometimes you roll a Peter the Great or Frederick the Great; at other times you roll a Nicholas II or Kaiser Wilhelm. Taking that kind of chance might have been a good idea at some point in history, but in an age of warfare on a massive scale and increasingly deadly weaponry, the major powers needed more skilled diplomats to manage international affairs, not to mention better military commanders.

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The Greatest Exhibition of the 19th century? – Image of the Week

This week’s image of the week is from the time when the British Empire was dominant.

It has been a few weeks since we shared an image of the week, so it is time for this majestic image…

The Great Exhibition, a type of World’s Fair, took place in London in 1851. Opened by Queen Victoria, it was a majestic event that happened at a time when the British Empire was at its peak. It was also well-attended and extremely popular among many of the local population, not least because it had exhibits from over 25 countries, so allowing people to marvel at wonders from the world over, as well as exhibits from closer to home.

The image above shows the main hall with flags from a variety of countries and well-dressed people visiting the different stands from all over the world. At the top we can see the roof, a glass structure known as the Crystal Palace, situated in Hyde Park, London. Light also fills the exhibition hall.

The second image shows a poster advertising trips to the Great Exhibition from Abergavenny in Wales. People traveled from very far to come to what was an unprecedented spectacle and a rare opportunity to see much of the world under one roof.

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George Levrier-Jones

Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Assassinations and Assignations - Cat or Rat? The Tsar with many lives and loves

In this brilliant article with a twist at the end, Helen Saker-Parsons tells us the story of the various assassination attempts on 19th century Russian ruler Tsar Alexander II. And his compelling and complicated love life – or lives…

Historically, it is a bear that symbolizes the Russian Imperial Court. But for Alexander II, Tsar of Russia from 1855 to 1881, there are more suitable creature comparisons. His was a reign marked by assassination attempts and sexual assignations. He appeared to have the many lives of a cat but was also referred to as a rat – a love rat. For though it was customary for imperial rulers to take mistresses, Alexander II appeared to move beyond what was acceptable, even for a Tsar.

But has history misjudged his sexual misdemeanors? Or could it be argued that it was his awareness that as a cat his lives were not infinite which pushed him towards his love-rat behavior?

Tsar Alexander II, circa 1865.

Attacks on a ruler

Alexander II oversaw a period of upheaval and change in imperialist Russia. Nick-named ‘the liberator,’ it is the emancipation of the serfs for which he is most renowned. But how the country adapted to change was to leave the Tsar vulnerable, with enemies amongst both the radical reformers and conservative factions. Alexander survived several attempts on his life, firstly from lone assassins and then by the Nihilist group, Narodnaya Volya [People’s Will]. His first near-miss he later referred to “as the event of April 4 1866.” On this date the elbow of Dimitry Karakozov was reportedly nudged as he aimed his revolver at the Tsar leaving the Summer Garden in St Petersburg. When the Tsar questioned the captured wannabe assassin as to what he wanted, the latter apparently replied: “nothing.” During the 1867 World Fair, Polish immigrant Antoni Berezowski attacked Alexander’s carriage but his pistol misfired and hit a horse instead. On April 20 1879, Alexander was out walking when he spotted an armed man, 33 year old former school teacher, Alexander Soloviev, approaching. The Tsar fled, running in a zigzag pattern so that all five of  Soloviev’s bullets missed him.

The People’s Will was founded in 1879 with the principal policy of killing the Tsar. In November their initial attempt to bomb his train route at three points failed. The train diverted from the first point; the dynamite failed to ignite at the second as it did at the third – when a tunnel dug to the track from a rented apartment passed through sandy soil and flooded. On the evening of February 5, 1880, one of their members, employed as a stoker at the Winter Palace, set off a charge in the guard’s rest room aimed to coincide with the Tsar and his family gathering to eat in the dining room above. Eleven people were killed and a further thirty wounded but the Tsar and his family were not amongst the casualties, having fortuitously delayed their meal. Poor time-keeping saved Alexander on The People’s Will’s third attempt when one of their terrorists turned up too late to blow up a bridge over the Catherine Canal which the Tsar was set to cross. The fourth attempt was abandoned when the Tsar changed his travel plans thus avoiding the road that had been mined. For their fifth effort The People’s Will returned to tunneling and rented an apartment from which to burrow and bomb one of Alexander’s frequent haunts. But the terrorist group failed to represent everybody’s will and one of their neighbors denounced them.

Alexander II had survived eight times and a cat is known to have nine lives. That eventually an attempt on his life should be successful seemed an accepted fact both by Alexander and his contemporaries. The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, had remarked in 1874 that the Tsar always looked sad questioning “Whether it is satiety, or the loneliness of despotism, or fear of a violent death, I know not” and Peter Kropotkin describes the events of March 13, 1881 ‘the tragedy developed with the unavoidable fatality of one of Shakespeare’s dramas.’ On this Sunday, Alexander was travelling his usual route when a bomb was thrown under his carriage. He alighted to inspect the damage and console the wounded Cossacks who accompanied him. A second, as it happened suicidal, terrorist, Ignatei Grinevitski, seized the opportunity to throw another bomb; this time with more success. The Tsar’s legs were blown off by the blast and chunks of his flesh, combined with that of others caught in the blast, littered the lying snow. The dying emperor was taken by sleigh to the Winter Palace. His mutilated body was met by members of his family. His grandson, who later became Tsar Nicholas II and was to meet a violent demise himself, described that “there were big red spots on the carpet - when they had carried my grandfather up the stairs, blood from the terrible wounds he had suffered from the explosion poured out.” Alexander’s body was taken to his quarters, passed the secret passageway, which led down to another series of rooms. It was the presence of these and his mistress and children housed there which gained him the reputation of a rat.

A history of lovers

Alexander II had many admirers, not least Queen Victoria, whom he first met in 1839, when both were barely out of their teens. She wrote in her diary: ‘I really am quite in love with the Grand Duke; he is a dear, delightful young man.’ During his month-long visit to England the two went on horse rides in Windsor, attended balls at Buckingham Palace and even spent half an hour alone behind closed curtains in the royal box at the theatre. But Alexander’s father, Tsar Nicholas I, feared a marriage would result in his son having to give up the Russian throne to become British Prince Consort. He ordered him to Germany where a more suitable suitor awaited; writing: ‘Back to Darnstadt. Don’t be a milksop.’ The parting was not without emotion and Alexander left Victoria his prized dog, Kazbek, as a leaving present. They were not to meet again until 1874 by which time Victoria was dismayed by his changed appearance and openly critical of his indiscretions.

Alexander II’s subsequent marriage to the German Princess – who became known as Maria Alexandrovna following their wedding in St Petersburg in April 1841 – was initially a happy one and she bore him eight children. Alexander’s virility was proven and there were rumors of other offspring; including twin girls born to the British Ambassador’s wife. But it was also the death of his children that reminded him of the fragility of life. His firstborn by Maria, a daughter Alexandra, died aged seven from tuberculosis and Alexander kept her nightgown beneath his pillow for the rest of his life. Their eldest son and heir, Nicholas, also died from consumption in 1865. Both tragedies contributed to Maria’s frail health, something that had already taken a severe down-turn after the birth of her final child in 1860. Diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to spend more time in warmer climates, her husband built a sanctuary for her in the Crimea. Her absences paved the way for his infidelities.

Amongst his lovers was an eighteen year old, Marie Dolgorukaia. But it was her sister Catherine who was to steal the Tsar’s heart. After the death of their father, Alexander II had taken on their guardianship and enrolled the girls in the Smolny Institute, in St Petersburg. It was on a visit here that the sisters grabbed his attention. Firstly Marie was employed as a Maid-of-Honor to his wife whilst performing more personal functions; but after less than a year the Tsar turned his eyes to her younger sister Catherine, almost thirty years his junior. Following a brief platonic period, their relationship turned sexual and intensely passionate. Catherine too was appointed as a Maid-of-Honor and assigned her own suite of rooms in the Palace, directly above the personal rooms of the Tsarina.

One love too far?

It was the flaunting of the affair and the damaging effect it had on the Tsarina’s heath that angered many, especially the couple’s children. But Alexander’s first assignation with Catherine, in July 1866, came only a few months after the initial attempt on his life. The awareness that there would be other assassination attempts must have prevailed. He had survived a second by the time Catherine bore their first child together. At a time when life seemed precious and short Alexander turned away from his often morose and religiously maniacal wife towards the intensely sexual mistress. Proof of their passion can be read in the thousands of sexually explicit letters exchanged between them, with almost everyone referring to the act of love-making or ‘bingerle’ [their pet-name for it]. The regularity of his rigor even led to the Tsar’s physicians placing him with a six-week sex-ban. During this period Catherine wrote ‘I confess that I cannot be without your fountain, which I love so… After my six weeks are over I count on renewing my injections.’

It was the permanent presence of the mistress in rooms above the wife that attracted particular criticism. It is alleged that Maria was often disturbed by the noises of Catherine’s children and even as she lay dying was purported to have uttered: “Why is there no one to check those unruly bastards?” But perhaps the most controversial and biggest bone of contention was Alexander’s rush into a morganatic marriage with Catherine forty days after his wife’s death in the summer of 1880. Although tradition dictated a year of mourning, the attempts on Alexander’s life had intensified. He was only too aware of his mortality. He wrote to his sister, Olga, on his decision: ‘I would never have married [Katia Dolgorukova] before a year of mourning if not for the dangerous time we live in and for the hazardous attempts I expose myself to daily which can actually and suddenly end my life.’

History highlights the weaknesses of Russia’s leaders, especially its monarchs who were born, not elected, to rule. Alexander II, like Henry VIII, was blinded by lust. But here was a man who acknowledged he was to be assassinated; who was aware that eventually an attempt would succeed and his many cat-lives would run out. Peter Kropotkin wrote he was: ‘a man of strong passions and weak will.’

And so on closer examination of his flaws it could be argued that the creature most closely characteristic of Tsar Alexander was neither cat nor rat - but that of a typical human being.

Helen Saker-Parsons is the author of a book about an Allied soldier who is captured and held prisoner in Italy during World War II. The book, A Captive Life, is available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

You can also read more on Russian history in this article on our blog about Grigori Rasputin here.

Selected References

• Pyotr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid

• Edvard Radzinsky, Alexander II: The last great Tsar