Ooh, I see I was presupposing a backstory that never made it into Rheinsberg. Yeah, so first G1 cheated on his wife Sophia Dorothea of Celle with Melusine, then she cheated on him, then because of double standards, her lover got "disappeared" one night while she got locked up and forbidden to see her children for the rest of her life (some 30 years).
The Jacobites were the main reason she was kept locked up so long, btw.
What? Why?
Because when your husband locks you up for decades because you cheated on him, and your lover was murdered in connection with this, you might be highly motivated to help overthrow him! SDC would have been a very powerful piece in the chess game of Hanovers vs. Jacobites, and G1 knew this.
So first, he wanted to prevent any scandal that would block the gambit to have Hanover made into an electorate (something that didn't happen until about 1708). By then, he knew he was in line to be King of England, and he didn't want anything messing with that. And there were enough Jacobite uprisings and conspiracies (the Jacobites tried to drag C12 into the mess too, but he was having none of it) in the 1708-1725 period that G1, whatever personal animus he may or may not have still felt in the 1720s, just really had an incentive to keep her under guard, far away from any Jacobites. While she was apparently (per Hatton) corresponding and conspiring to get out on her terms, which definitely did not include any admission of wrongdoing on her part.
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Re: Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the Hatton take
Date: 2021-11-18 04:36 pm (UTC)We used to think that SD (Fritz's mother) never communicated with her mother, but then
The Jacobites were the main reason she was kept locked up so long, btw.
What? Why?
Because when your husband locks you up for decades because you cheated on him, and your lover was murdered in connection with this, you might be highly motivated to help overthrow him! SDC would have been a very powerful piece in the chess game of Hanovers vs. Jacobites, and G1 knew this.
So first, he wanted to prevent any scandal that would block the gambit to have Hanover made into an electorate (something that didn't happen until about 1708). By then, he knew he was in line to be King of England, and he didn't want anything messing with that. And there were enough Jacobite uprisings and conspiracies (the Jacobites tried to drag C12 into the mess too, but he was having none of it) in the 1708-1725 period that G1, whatever personal animus he may or may not have still felt in the 1720s, just really had an incentive to keep her under guard, far away from any Jacobites. While she was apparently (per Hatton) corresponding and conspiring to get out on her terms, which definitely did not include any admission of wrongdoing on her part.