When G1 finally kicks it, en route to Hannover, Fritz of Wales acts as chief mourner at the funeral in Hannover. He'd seen his grandfather during the later's regular visits to Hannover, but no other member of his family. And despite there being four months between G1's death and G2's coronation, he wasn't invited. He wasn't invited for over a year, and then, finally, only because of, surprise surprise, a certain marriage projects.
Like I said, with the birth and survival of William of Cumberland at the latest, Caroline and George Augustus emotionally buried their oldest, long before Fritz of Wales had any chance to personally piss them off. Which also can be seen by the inheritance question.
G1 in his last will, written at a point when "Fritzchen" was still the only son future G2 had, had written that if at some future point there were two male heirs in the same generation, the older should get Britain and the younger Hannover. This was intended for Fritz of Wales' future heirs, since both George Louis and George Augustus at the point when the will was written had only one son each. However, once George Augustus had actually a second son who made it out of the first few months of babyhood alive, there was suddenly a situation where this scenario could happen a generation earlier. At which point G2 and Caroline pointed out that since Fritz of Wales was educated in Hannover, it would make sense if he'd get Hannover and new beloved Bill get Britain. G1 wasn't keen on anything G2 suggested, but he said this actually made kind of sense BUT that it was unfair to do this without asking Fritz of Wales what HE wanted. (Who was raised bilingualy and trained as hard as Wilhelmine at the same time for his destiny as future King of England.) This, G2 and Caroline did not want. They wanted it to be decided, full stop. G1 didn't budge. End result: when G1 died, G2 went to some considerale effort to collect all three copies of the will and destroy them, lest it could be used to make young Cumberland go to Hannover and give Fritz of Wales Britain.
The infamous marriage project also was subject to G2's kneejerk reaction to anything his father had suggested first, to wit, the Fritz of Prussia/ Princess A? and Wilhelmine/Fritz of Wales matching. G2 never liked the idea of a spawn of FW as an in-law. Dennison provides a quote from G2 on this matter which I hadn't been familiar with before, to wit: Grafting my half-witted (son) upon a madwoman would not mend the breed. (Source footnoting for this one: Hervey's memoirs, the latest non-Victorian edition we DON'T have, volume 3, and a biography of Princess Anne.) Then legend has it this happens:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed since Granddad died, I'm still in Hannover, still single, that's it, gonna show up in Berlin and marry Wilhelmine on my lonesome. G2 (informed by spies): No you don't! Kidnap the Prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Whereas Dennison says this happened:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed, I'm still in Hannover, gonna make myself useful and help arrange the marriage between my cousin of Ansbach and Friederike, my hopefully soon sister-in-law, daughter of FW. Caroline: You what? What business is my nephew's marriage of yours? Husband, we need to bring him here. G2: Kidnap the prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Fritz of Wales arrives without public fanfare through the back entrance of the St. James Palace and is presented with a family who hasn't been missing him. Things go downhill from there.
As for Hervey: Dennison goes with a replacement mother/son relationship between him and Caroline, additionally ensuring the relationship between him and Fritz of Wales is doomed, though he oddly doesn't mention the fact that Caroline's disliked lady in waiting Lady Bristol was Hervey's mother, who hated him as Caroline came to hate Fritz of Wales.
Now, remember how the fervent German nationalist historian detailing Sir Charles Hotham's mission to Berlin who ranted against perfidious and doubletongued Albion had gone on about how SD had written a lovely letter to Caroline in the winter of 1729 asking what was up and how Caroline the double tongued never replied, and that Hotham never refered to this key letter towards FW etc.? In Dennison's Caroline biography, the same series of events sound like this:
A letter written by a British diplomat in December 1729 suggested that Frederick William had "forced" Sophia Dorothea "to write an insolent letter of his dictating to our Queen (Caroline), insisting on her speedy performance of hte opes she has given her of marrying Prince Frederick to her oldest daughter (Anne), and this before February next, and unconditionally, or else she cannot hinder her husband from disposing of her to someone else." In George Augustus, to whom Caroline was bound to show such a letter, such high-handedness inspired a predictable response.
Sidenote: I'm the last to believe fervent German nationalists, but I think that one quoted SD's letter, and it did sound somewhat differently as far as I recall. Anyway, that's the last we hear of the Prussian drama, since Hannover dysfunctionality is about to kick in its own big gear once Fritz of Wales does get married. No new facts here, except that Dennison interprets the famous last exchange between a dying Caroline and G2 a bit differently. To remind everyone, it was, in French:
Caroline: *tells G2 to marry again after her death* G2: Never! I shall have mistresses. Caroline in Hervey's memoirs: That works, too. Caroline in Dennison's biography: That's no impediment to marriage.
Caroline dies, after that painful illness, Händel composes a new work in her honor ("The Ways of Zion to Mourn"), G2 says "I never saw a woman worth to buckle her shoe" and at the Royal Exchange, a wit posts: "Death, where is thy sting? To take the Queen, and leave the King!" (As by this time, G2 had lost all the popularity he'd had as Prince of Wales, not least because by his trips to Hannover post ascension to the throne, he'd shown that he did not, as had been expected, "hate Germany and love England". Dennison thinks it's very unfair that Caroline is forgotten today, who'd been the first Princess of Wales since a young Katherine of Aragon and who'd been the most powerful Queen Consort in many a generation, too, doing more than any other single member of the Hannover royal family to assure it became largedly accepted in GB, and he opes his biography helps bringing her memory back at least somewhat.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Grafting my half-witted (son) upon a madwoman would not mend the breed.
Heh.
Sidenote: I'm the last to believe fervent German nationalists, but I think that one quoted SD's letter, and it did sound somewhat differently as far as I recall.
Hmm, that's interesting.
Dennison thinks it's very unfair that Caroline is forgotten today, who'd been the first Princess of Wales since a young Katherine of Aragon and who'd been the most powerful Queen Consort in many a generation, too, doing more than any other single member of the Hannover royal family to assure it became largedly accepted in GB, and he opes his biography helps bringing her memory back at least somewhat.
Well, between his biography and your as-always-excellent-and-entertaining writeup, you have definitely given me a lot of feelings I hadn't previously had about Caroline, who seems to have been an intelligent and overall just fascinating person.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
End result: when G1 died, G2 went to some considerale effort to collect all three copies of the will and destroy them, lest it could be used to make young Cumberland go to Hannover and give Fritz of Wales Britain.
Wooow. The Hanover dysfunction strikes again!
Grafting my half-witted (son) upon a madwoman would not mend the breed.
Loool, well, I see Wilhelmine isn't the only one who can be savage about her relatives!
(Source footnoting for this one: Hervey's memoirs, the latest non-Victorian edition we DON'T have, volume 3.)
Ooh, right, I had forgotten about these incredibly expensive memoirs. Hmmmmmm. Have put them back on my wishlist for if the consulting gig works out. :D
Then legend has it this happens:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed since Granddad died, I'm still in Hannover, still single, that's it, gonna show up in Berlin and marry Wilhelmine on my lonesome. G2 (informed by spies): No you don't! Kidnap the Prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Whereas Dennison says this happened:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed, I'm still in Hannover, gonna make myself useful and help arrange the marriage between my cousin of Ansbach and Friederike, my hopefully soon sister-in-law, daughter of FW. Caroline: You what? What business is my nephew's marriage of yours? Husband, we need to bring him here. G2: Kidnap the prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Well, those are very different things! I do remember wondering what evidence there was about the plan to sneak off and marry Wilhelmine, it seemed very unlikely. Seems like maybe it was too good to be true? Or maybe the second version was the cover-up story. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Loool, well, I see Wilhelmine isn't the only one who can be savage about her relatives!
No kidding. I do wonder whether he's speaking out of the general assumption any daughter of FW is probably as mad as FW, or whether Wilhelmine was in right in her memoirs that her old governess Leti told Lady Darlington/Gräfin Kielmannsegg all kind of negative things about her, of which the story of her having uneven shoulders (a la grandpa F1) was but one. (But the one which she had to undress in front of Hannover ladies for when Mom wanted to prove she had a straight back.)
Well, those are very different things! I do remember wondering what evidence there was about the plan to sneak off and marry Wilhelmine, it seemed very unlikely. Seems like maybe it was too good to be true? Or maybe the second version was the cover-up story. :P
Since Dennison is a good biographer who does footnotes and source references, I can tell you he has both stories from: Vivian, Frances: A life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1707 - 1751: A Connoiseur of the Arts. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2006. He does not mention who Vivian's primary sources were.
ETA: in the AU where Fritz of Wales shows up in Berlin to marry Wilhelmine and asks for asylum from mean Dad and Mom while he's at it, I've already asked how you think FW would respond; now I'm asking how Wilhelmine and Fritz would?
Edited 2021-08-01 11:22 (UTC)
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Well, in rl Fritz of Wales arrives in London and gets reintroduced to his (un)loving family at 7 pm on a dark December evening in 1728, so if he'd gone to Berlin instead, it would have been around this time (i.e. say, November 1728?) Of course, back then he didn't know how badly things would get with Mom and Dad, so he wouldn't have sought asylum yet. For that, the perfect year is...drumroll... 1730, when G2 at January 31st is observed by courtiers in public jesting with son William about what a fabulous King he'd make while simultanously refusing to grant Fritz of Wales more than a third of the budget George Augustus himself had had as Prince of Wales, with the argument that FoW isn't married, which doesn't look as if it's about to change soon given G2's enthusiasm for the Prussian marriage project....
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The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Like I said, with the birth and survival of William of Cumberland at the latest, Caroline and George Augustus emotionally buried their oldest, long before Fritz of Wales had any chance to personally piss them off. Which also can be seen by the inheritance question.
G1 in his last will, written at a point when "Fritzchen" was still the only son future G2 had, had written that if at some future point there were two male heirs in the same generation, the older should get Britain and the younger Hannover. This was intended for Fritz of Wales' future heirs, since both George Louis and George Augustus at the point when the will was written had only one son each. However, once George Augustus had actually a second son who made it out of the first few months of babyhood alive, there was suddenly a situation where this scenario could happen a generation earlier. At which point G2 and Caroline pointed out that since Fritz of Wales was educated in Hannover, it would make sense if he'd get Hannover and new beloved Bill get Britain. G1 wasn't keen on anything G2 suggested, but he said this actually made kind of sense BUT that it was unfair to do this without asking Fritz of Wales what HE wanted. (Who was raised bilingualy and trained as hard as Wilhelmine at the same time for his destiny as future King of England.) This, G2 and Caroline did not want. They wanted it to be decided, full stop. G1 didn't budge. End result: when G1 died, G2 went to some considerale effort to collect all three copies of the will and destroy them, lest it could be used to make young Cumberland go to Hannover and give Fritz of Wales Britain.
The infamous marriage project also was subject to G2's kneejerk reaction to anything his father had suggested first, to wit, the Fritz of Prussia/ Princess A? and Wilhelmine/Fritz of Wales matching. G2 never liked the idea of a spawn of FW as an in-law. Dennison provides a quote from G2 on this matter which I hadn't been familiar with before, to wit: Grafting my half-witted (son) upon a madwoman would not mend the breed. (Source footnoting for this one: Hervey's memoirs, the latest non-Victorian edition we DON'T have, volume 3, and a biography of Princess Anne.) Then legend has it this happens:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed since Granddad died, I'm still in Hannover, still single, that's it, gonna show up in Berlin and marry Wilhelmine on my lonesome.
G2 (informed by spies): No you don't! Kidnap the Prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Whereas Dennison says this happened:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed, I'm still in Hannover, gonna make myself useful and help arrange the marriage between my cousin of Ansbach and Friederike, my hopefully soon sister-in-law, daughter of FW.
Caroline: You what? What business is my nephew's marriage of yours? Husband, we need to bring him here.
G2: Kidnap the prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Fritz of Wales arrives without public fanfare through the back entrance of the St. James Palace and is presented with a family who hasn't been missing him. Things go downhill from there.
As for Hervey: Dennison goes with a replacement mother/son relationship between him and Caroline, additionally ensuring the relationship between him and Fritz of Wales is doomed, though he oddly doesn't mention the fact that Caroline's disliked lady in waiting Lady Bristol was Hervey's mother, who hated him as Caroline came to hate Fritz of Wales.
Now, remember how the fervent German nationalist historian detailing Sir Charles Hotham's mission to Berlin who ranted against perfidious and doubletongued Albion had gone on about how SD had written a lovely letter to Caroline in the winter of 1729 asking what was up and how Caroline the double tongued never replied, and that Hotham never refered to this key letter towards FW etc.? In Dennison's Caroline biography, the same series of events sound like this:
A letter written by a British diplomat in December 1729 suggested that Frederick William had "forced" Sophia Dorothea "to write an insolent letter of his dictating to our Queen (Caroline), insisting on her speedy performance of hte opes she has given her of marrying Prince Frederick to her oldest daughter (Anne), and this before February next, and unconditionally, or else she cannot hinder her husband from disposing of her to someone else." In George Augustus, to whom Caroline was bound to show such a letter, such high-handedness inspired a predictable response.
Sidenote: I'm the last to believe fervent German nationalists, but I think that one quoted SD's letter, and it did sound somewhat differently as far as I recall. Anyway, that's the last we hear of the Prussian drama, since Hannover dysfunctionality is about to kick in its own big gear once Fritz of Wales does get married. No new facts here, except that Dennison interprets the famous last exchange between a dying Caroline and G2 a bit differently. To remind everyone, it was, in French:
Caroline: *tells G2 to marry again after her death*
G2: Never! I shall have mistresses.
Caroline in Hervey's memoirs: That works, too.
Caroline in Dennison's biography: That's no impediment to marriage.
Caroline dies, after that painful illness, Händel composes a new work in her honor ("The Ways of Zion to Mourn"), G2 says "I never saw a woman worth to buckle her shoe" and at the Royal Exchange, a wit posts: "Death, where is thy sting? To take the Queen, and leave the King!" (As by this time, G2 had lost all the popularity he'd had as Prince of Wales, not least because by his trips to Hannover post ascension to the throne, he'd shown that he did not, as had been expected, "hate Germany and love England". Dennison thinks it's very unfair that Caroline is forgotten today, who'd been the first Princess of Wales since a young Katherine of Aragon and who'd been the most powerful Queen Consort in many a generation, too, doing more than any other single member of the Hannover royal family to assure it became largedly accepted in GB, and he opes his biography helps bringing her memory back at least somewhat.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Heh.
Sidenote: I'm the last to believe fervent German nationalists, but I think that one quoted SD's letter, and it did sound somewhat differently as far as I recall.
Hmm, that's interesting.
Dennison thinks it's very unfair that Caroline is forgotten today, who'd been the first Princess of Wales since a young Katherine of Aragon and who'd been the most powerful Queen Consort in many a generation, too, doing more than any other single member of the Hannover royal family to assure it became largedly accepted in GB, and he opes his biography helps bringing her memory back at least somewhat.
Well, between his biography and your as-always-excellent-and-entertaining writeup, you have definitely given me a lot of feelings I hadn't previously had about Caroline, who seems to have been an intelligent and overall just fascinating person.
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Wooow. The Hanover dysfunction strikes again!
Grafting my half-witted (son) upon a madwoman would not mend the breed.
Loool, well, I see Wilhelmine isn't the only one who can be savage about her relatives!
(Source footnoting for this one: Hervey's memoirs, the latest non-Victorian edition we DON'T have, volume 3.)
Ooh, right, I had forgotten about these incredibly expensive memoirs. Hmmmmmm. Have put them back on my wishlist for if the consulting gig works out. :D
Then legend has it this happens:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed since Granddad died, I'm still in Hannover, still single, that's it, gonna show up in Berlin and marry Wilhelmine on my lonesome.
G2 (informed by spies): No you don't! Kidnap the Prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Whereas Dennison says this happened:
Fritz of Wales: Okay, a year has passed, I'm still in Hannover, gonna make myself useful and help arrange the marriage between my cousin of Ansbach and Friederike, my hopefully soon sister-in-law, daughter of FW.
Caroline: You what? What business is my nephew's marriage of yours? Husband, we need to bring him here.
G2: Kidnap the prince at a masque ball, bring him here!
Well, those are very different things! I do remember wondering what evidence there was about the plan to sneak off and marry Wilhelmine, it seemed very unlikely. Seems like maybe it was too good to be true? Or maybe the second version was the cover-up story. :P
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
No kidding. I do wonder whether he's speaking out of the general assumption any daughter of FW is probably as mad as FW, or whether Wilhelmine was in right in her memoirs that her old governess Leti told Lady Darlington/Gräfin Kielmannsegg all kind of negative things about her, of which the story of her having uneven shoulders (a la grandpa F1) was but one. (But the one which she had to undress in front of Hannover ladies for when Mom wanted to prove she had a straight back.)
Well, those are very different things! I do remember wondering what evidence there was about the plan to sneak off and marry Wilhelmine, it seemed very unlikely. Seems like maybe it was too good to be true? Or maybe the second version was the cover-up story. :P
Since Dennison is a good biographer who does footnotes and source references, I can tell you he has both stories from: Vivian, Frances: A life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1707 - 1751: A Connoiseur of the Arts. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, 2006. He does not mention who Vivian's primary sources were.
ETA: in the AU where Fritz of Wales shows up in Berlin to marry Wilhelmine and asks for asylum from mean Dad and Mom while he's at it, I've already asked how you think FW would respond; now I'm asking how Wilhelmine and Fritz would?
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana
Ooh, that's a really good question. What year is this, remind me?
Re: The First Iron Lady: A life of Caroline of Ansbach- III: Gloriana