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Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III

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Flora Fraser is the next generation in the fine biographical/historical tradition of her mother Lady Antonia Fraser and her late grandmother Elizabeth (Countess of) Longford. Like her forebears, Fraser combines scholarship with an elegant and witty writing style to produce books which illuminate and engage.

King George III's six daughters tend to get short shrift from historians and biographers who focus on their father, their brothers, and their niece Queen Victoria. The prevailing picture of them is of six mousy women pushed into the background. Fraser has pulled Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia out of the shadows and let us see that they had strong personalities and lives of their own.

The six princesses were victims of circumstance even more than most eighteenth century royal women. Ordinarily they would have been married off to men they scarcely knew almost as soon as they reached puberty in order to strengthen Britain's alliances. George III, however, had been horrified by the ill treatment two of his own sisters received at the hands of unloving husbands, and he was determined that his own daughters would not suffer such a fate. Unfortunately his paternal affections did not extend to allowing his daughters to marry Englishmen they loved, and only meant that he turned down overtures from many foreign princes, usually without consulting his daughters at all. Furthermore, as the princesses reached marriageable age the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars meant many possible suitors were now the enemies of Britain and thus out of bounds. Finally, George III's bouts of madness/porphyria attacks made him unable to entertain marriage offers, and his wife Queen Charlotte's deep depression over her husband's malady meant that she could not be a matchmaker either.

Bereft of the chance to be proper wives and mothers (the only acceptable role for nearly all women of the period) the princesses lived under their parents' noses well into middle age. They developed literary and artistic interests and were patrons of British charities, and managed little flirtations and dalliances here and there with gentlemen of the court. One of Augusta's liaisons possibly ended in (an illegal) marriage, while Sophia actually produced an illegitimate child. The princesses were dutiful and loving children to their increasingly difficult parents and were supportive siblings to their rackety brothers, who were also denied the chance to legally marry women they loved.

It was only in middle age that some of the daughters married, Charlotte and Elizabeth to German princelings, Mary to an English cousin. Charlotte probably had the most adventurous life, living in Wurttemburg right through several invasions by Napoleon and having to flee for her life at one point (Fraser's description of her life in temporary exile, accompanied by two kangaroos, is among the most amusing of the many anecdotes in the book.)

The fine human qualities of the daughters are well portrayed here. I felt sorriest for Amelia, whose unrequited love for an English officer lasted until her death in 1810. I was impressed with the love the daughters showed for their parents and their brothers, and by the love their brothers gave them in return. (Usually the later Hanoverians are depicted as self-indulgent reprobates devoid of any finer qualities.) Finally, the love and regard the daughters had for each other, going to great trouble to visit when one was ill for example, is admirable.

The final years of the daughters were quiet, marked by illness and decline, but I was glad to see that they were not lonely ones, but rather filled with visits from their surviving siblings and other relations and friends. There is a charming photograph in the book of Queen Victoria with two of her children visiting Mary, the last survivor. It is a fitting end to this story of six women who, though related to some of the wealthiest and most powerful people of their time, enjoyed unassuming and generally unremarked upon lives.

Known popularly as the Nunnery, the 6 daughters of George III led sheltered and almost monastic lives. Shut up in a stultifying court, with little chance of escape too often their lives, and their plight, have been overlooked - or speculated on to the detriment of what is known, or can be proven.

There have been a few recent attempts to try to rectify this, usually within biographies of either their father or their brothers. Dorothy Stuart's biography has been the best atetmpt so far (in my opinion) but Fraser's account exceeds this in many ways. Whether she had access to better information, or simply resisted over-speculating, this account is definitely a cut above the rest.

George III and his wife had 6 daughters and 6 sons. And the difference in the lives is astonishing. While the sons, almost to a man, went out and lived profligate lives, wasting the privy purse and shacking up with actresses. The daughters were kept under strict purdah only allowed to participate in court life. Although at times they begged for marriage their prospects were limited. There was little chance generally for them to be married at a time when Britain was almost entirely cut off from the continent thanks to conflict withfrench and later napoleon. But also because G III had seen his own sisters suffer in unhappy marriages.

It may seem a dull subject for a biograpy...yet many contributing factors make this well worth reading. The lives of teh daughters were dictated to by the impending madness of their father (a fate you wonder might not have been visited on at least one or two of the brothers as well). The strange life at court which is an alien world with its formality etc to us now.

Also later two of the daughters married, and the letters used are wonderful, rich and at times hilarious.

I recommend this book in the highest, you will really enjoy it and come away with a great understanding of Georgian England and Court life in a painless and fun way.

Perhaps best known in the United States as being the British king who wanted the colonies to pay for military protection with things like the tax on tea, George III was King of England from 1760 until 1820. He fathered fifteen children, six of whom were daughters, this is their story.

The King's growing madness is heavily emphasized in this story. And this is fitting because this was a growing part of the lives of the children. Ms. Fraser did a remarkable job with this book. It is based on the extensive letters between Queen Charlotte and the six girls. It is not a typical biography talking of the major events of King George's rule, it is the personal story of this group of women trying to live a semi-normal life amidst life at the court.

It is a fascinating book that looks at a time far removed from ours.

After THE UNRULY QUEEN I was already an admirer of this author but now I am in awe of her. Knowing the mountain of original sources Fraser used I find her selections, editing and writing of the overall narrative simply wonderful. It is a very complicated landscape The Princesses lived in and yet the author has succeeded in not only turning up the volume on each Princess as an individual, but portrays the dynamics of that huge family within one of the most turbulent periods of modern history. Also, explanations of the manners and mores of the times are seamlessly interwoven, which in turn nicely contrasts public propriety with the daily private reality. I have a large George III library and this is a valuable addition to it.

The ebb and flow of human relationships is common to all ages; the ways in which these connections are expressed is dictated by their context. Flora Fraser's "Princesses" reveals to us women whose emotions are not at all unfamiliar to us, but whose time compels their expression (or suppression!) in ways that seem foreign to Americans of the 21st century.

The six daughters of George III of England and his wife Queen Charlotte (who also had nine sons) were born between 1768 and 1778--the youngest died in 1857. Only three of them were allowed to marry, and that only in their middle age. (Their papa didn't want to part with them.) That did not prevent them from leading active, and sometimes dangerous, romantic lives--perhaps the more active from being restricted. There were consummated and unconsummated affairs, an illegitimate child, possible incest, and perhaps a secret marriage or two. (The House of Windsor has nothing on the House of Hanover when it comes to scandalous affairs of the heart.)

The abundant letters which passed between the sisters themselves (Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Sophia, Amelia, and Mary) and the rest of the family provide the chief means of knowing them. I had always thought of George III and his family as still being fundamentally German, but nothing could be more English in sense and feeling than these letters. They are surprisingly contemporary to modern ear and eye, and they are extremely lively, full of feeling, and very literate--to me, an eye-opener.

At the heart of "Princesses" lies the madness of their father. The sisters grew up in a hierarchical (and a man's) world in which there were many rules and not many options for those who flouted them; their father was at the top of the pinnacle. (It was George who in fact signed the Royal Marriages Act which, with certain exceptions, prevented those of the blood royal from marrying without the king's previous consent.) The sisters already knew how loathe the king was to see them leave the family circle, very likely for a foreign country, even when he was in good spirits. After the king's first bouts with ill health, would any "good" daughter want to take the chance of disturbing his mental balance (and thus the balance of the kingdom) by requiring his approval of her marriage? How would a daughter cope with the inappropriate sexual activity of her mentally troubled father? How would she relate to a mother who turned her father out of the bedroom when that daughter believed that this precipitated the king's sexual misbehavior? If you are an affectionate woman of some intelligence, but in a position of some prominence, how do you make a life for yourself under these circumstances?--questions that do not arise solely in eighteenth century Britain. Flora Fraser allows us to look over the ladies' shoulders as they cope with these trials, with each other, and with the rest of their world.

I have seen occasional references to the children of George III, apart from George IV and William IV, usually in biographies of Queen Victoria, but this is the first in-depth treatment that I have read of his daughters. They usually don't even rank a mention in the oft-told tale of the race to provide an heir to the throne after the death of Princess Charlotte (George IV's daughter) since, due to the rules of primogeniture and their father's reluctance to allow them to marry before middle age, they didn't even have a shot at it.

Continuing in the family tradition of writing absorbing biographies of figures in English history, Flora Fraser provides a sympathetic, if sometimes a bit too minutely detailed, picture of these six very different sisters: Charlotte, Princess Royal (known as Royal), always conscious of her rank and position, as she could hardly fail to be with such a nickname; Augusta, the family correspondent; Elizabeth, artistic and charitable; Mary, the beauty of the family, who survived all her siblings and lived well into Victoria's reign; Sophia, who "disgraced" herself by bearing an illegitimate son; and Amelia, the headstrong youngest child who was passionately in love with a man whom she could not marry. These are only thumbnail descriptions and do not do justice to Fraser's portrayal of the loving and occasionally acrimonious relationship that the princesses had with each other, their brothers, and their parents.

We often read about the political repercussions of George III's mental disability and the deterioration of the relationship between the Regent and his parents, but I found Fraser's description of the effect that it had on the Queen and their daughters to be particularly moving. However, three of them did find happiness in marriage, if not children, late in life, and with the others, were able to build satisfying lives around nieces and nephews, as well as artistic, intellectual and charitable pursuits. We can only speculate on what they might have done with their lives had more opportunities been open to them.

Daughters of kings always have tended to get short shrift, both from their families and from historians, except insofar as they have made politically useful marriages. George III had six daughters of varying temperaments, from the emotional and hypochondriachal Sophia to the "bland and beautiful" Mary. Fraser, the third generation in a family of highly regarded historians and writers, does an excellent job of portraying their lives and complex family relationships, weaving together surviving correspondence and historical accounts and demonstrating that the extremely well educated princesses largely succeeded in forging lives for themselves, acquiring lovers and even, in Sophia's case, bearing an illegitimate son. George III has largely been rehabilitated in recent decades, and Fraser does the same for his daughters by focusing her feminist lens on the psychological details.

The six daughters of George III were well-educated and encouraged to pursue and develop their individual talents, thanks to their forward thinking mother, Queen Charlotte. This served them well because they led very sequestered lives within the royal family due to their father's social, emotional, and medical needs. It wasn't until middle age were they even allowed to consider marriage, and even then not all of them ever married. The story of these princesses - which involves illicit love, unrequited love, incest and abuse -is presented against the political and historical background of the times. The author writes with great detail and utilizes many of the surviving letters written by the sisters to illuminate a story not generally known.
The author writes with great detail and

These six princesses had a lot of life to fit into one book. I happened to hear Fraser speak as she promoted the book and really looked forward to reading it after her presentation. I was a little surprised when I came across the areas that she had discussed to find that her talk about the princesses was a lot clearer and more specific than the actual writing was. Although I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it, there was a lot of the story that I would have preferred to hear in more detail. For example, Princess Royal seems practically dropped after her wedding, and although Fraser states that she appears to have been abused by her husband, she refers to that part of the princess's life less than the fact that she gained an enormous amount of weight. I would have liked to have learned more about this as it conflicts with my understanding of how royal marriages typically functioned; nor do I have any idea how, if at all, Royal dealt with a life that seems to have gone from difficult to... what? Fraser never says more than to quote a couple of letters that suggest that Royal's husband was "unkind" or "a brute" -- language that covers a lot of ground. Likewise, the latter part of all the princesses' lives seemed rather rushed. Princess Sophia's dealings with her illegitimate son are given short paragraphs here and there; descriptions of their relationship with the Duke & Duchess of Kent are very generalized and therefore hard to judge. In short, while I always enjoy a Flora Fraser book, this one was the least satisfying of a very successful collection.

I did not enjoy this biography as much as other books on the Hanover Royal Family. I was hoping for a more reader friendly text. This biography reads more like a history book, than a book about real people. It did not have the insights and humanity of other books. I was left feeling that I did not know any more about the Princesses than I did before.