20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Illicit loves, marriages and madness, December 17, 2006
This review is from: A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings (Hardcover)
After reading Stella Tillyard's previous work, Aristocrats about the four Lennox sisters and their romances, I was hooked on this author's wit and style. Most of all it was her ability to look down deep into the hearts of her subjects and help the reader understand why someone would do what they did. Now Tillyard takes on another British family in A Royal Affair.
This time, it's none other than the Hannoverian kings, who first took the British throne in 1714 after the death of Queen Anne. Having a tenuous descent from the Stuarts, they took to the English in a way, happy to have control of a growing empire, and a well-established military and navy, but perhaps not quite comfortable yet with a government that shared power with Parliment and where the monarch was an example and figurehead, and expected to defer as needed to the actual government. Compared to other monarchies in Europe, where the King's word was absolute, it was a very new system to adjust to. Sons who did not become the monarch would be expected to take on leadership roles in the army and navy, and daughters would become bargaining points in arranging treaties and making marriages with other royalties, leaving the homes they had known and doing as best they could in foreign lands.
Unfortunately for King George II, he loathed his eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the relationship was anything but good. Harried, and accused of trying to commit treason, Frederick turned to his wife, a German born princess for love and comfort, and their growing brood of children. There would eventually be eight children, the eldest son, George, would become George III, most famous for losing the American colonies and his madness. Two of the daughters, Augusta and Caroline Matilda, would survive childhood and marry into European dynasties. The other sons grew up without the seriousness of their elder brother, and all of the siblings would cause anguish for their brother and king, who after the deaths of their father and grandfather, viewed himself as both a brother and parent.
While Tillyard touches a bit on the other siblings, it is on the youngest child, Caroline Mathilde that she focuses most of her attention. Only four months old after the early death of her father Frederick, Caroline grew up knowing that she would be married off to some prince or king, and watching her own mother's unhappiness and that of her elder sister, was no doubt a sobering influence on her own prospects. She was pretty and blonde, with the pale blue eyes and full mouth that ran her family, and figure that promised to be plump later on in life. At the age of fifteen she was married by proxy to the young king of Denmark, Christian VII. He was also a cousin, with Great Britain and Denmark having regularly suppling princesses to serve as queen consort in each others countries for a while. An etching survives of Caroline at the time, dressed in ermine and pearls, her eyes brimming and a look of misery on her face; she knew that it was unlikely that she would ever return to England, or see anyone in her family again.
Unfortunately for Caroline, her husband was young and immature, and subject to fits of mania, and a strong sadomasochistic streak. Caroline managed to bear her husband a son and heir, and tried to make the best of a bad situation; she hated formality and ceremonial, and yearned for simplicity and more pastorial life. When a doctor came to consult for the king, Caroline found herself involved in intrigue, and a scandal erupted that rocked Europe.
Struensee was ambitionous, much older than Caroline, and a man that Christian VII trusted. It became a sort of three-sided relationship, with Caroline acting more for the king when he was lost in his fits of violence, and turning ever more to Struensee for advice, which the good doctor was more than happy to give to her. Eventually, the relationship became much more intimate and personal, and when the scandal broke, Caroline had not only given birth to a child who was not the king's, but faced the very real possibility of exile, imprisonment or even execution.
What happens next was a shocker. I was fascinated by this story of royalty gone wrong and especially one that I had never heard of before. It also shed light on George III's relationships with his own children, from the sons who gambled, were spendthrifts and married all sorts of the wrong women, and to his six daughters that he adored, but didn't want to marry. Could it be that his own observations on his sisters' and mother's fates influenced his decisions for his daughters' futures?
Tillyard's writing is excellent, and the stories of these unfortunate royals makes for compelling reading. While the story does get a bit dry in the telling of it, the emotional pitch is high, and I found myself caring if anyone in these stories was going to have a happy ending. It's also a very personal tale of love and politics.
Included in the text are two inserts of colour and black and white depictions of the main characters, and there is a map of Denmark, as well as two genelogical charts showing the links between the English and Danish royal families. Extensive notes, bibliography and index provide an opportunity for future research.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
fine gossip with a scholarly twist, December 16, 2006
This review is from: A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings (Hardcover)
Stella Tillyard continues in her singular mode of enlightened gossip from the age of enlightenment that she has employed in previous histories. I was delighted a few years ago by her "Citizen Lord: The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, Irish Revolutionary," which gave a spirited biography of a real-life romantic figure. In "A Royal Affair," the era is a little earlier and the environs a bit more easterly. Once again, Tillyard has done her homework and cites heavily from original sources. Yes, it is gossip on a grand scale. But if it were just that, it would simply be People Magazine transposed by two-hundred and thirty-odd years. Instead, Tillyard brings the zeitgeist of London and Denmark to this readable book; moreover, she links the personal actions of the principals to the intellectual eddies brought forth by the French philosophes Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. Most interesting to me was her consideration of how budding aristocrats were educated. This linkage between grand ideas and real actions of large players on the European stage which welded both childcraft and statecraft renders this a winning book. The final chapter gives an interpretation of how George III's behavior in his family affairs may be mirrored in his actions to his rebelling colonies. I must re-read this section before I am convinced that it is not a tidy, but stretched, bow to wrap around an otherwise fine book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love, Scandal, and Tragedy, Eighteenth Century Style, February 20, 2007
This review is from: A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings (Hardcover)
Stella Tillyard's latest effort brings to mind her magnificent earlier work Aristocrats. In A Royal Affair she moves from the nobility to the Royal Family itself, and has produced another fine, scholarly work which has more drama and interest than any novel.
George III and his siblings were the children of Frederick, Prince of Wales and his wife Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. Frederick was despised by his parents King George II and Queen Caroline for no very good reason except that he was the next generation in line to the throne. Despite a lonely upbringing devoid of love and affection he appears here to have been a caring and fairly decent husband and father until his untimely death in 1751.
Losing their father at an early age had an enormous impact on Fred's children. Raised in somewhat straitened and isolated circumstances by a mother who had few maternal feelings, they grew up with various quirks and personality problems which made their lives painful but fascinating to read about. George III, as the oldest son, tried to take on a paternal role even before he became King. His siblings not unnaturally rebelled at this and showed it in a variety of ways. His three brothers Edward Duke of York, Henry Duke of Cumberland, and William Duke of Gloucester caroused and whored their way around London, shocking society and the literate public and infuriating their older brother, who had become oppressively staid and inflexible in dealing with sins of the flesh. The two daughters who lived to adulthood made unhappy political marriages, especially the youngest Caroline Mathilda, who was married off at the age of 15 to the King of Denmark, a 16 year old who was already displaying signs of what today would be diagnosed as schizophrenia.
Tillyard tells the stories of these royal siblings compassionately and well. As she does so she also provides some fascinating discussions of such varied subjects as Enlightenment philosophy and how it led to the development of a literate English public and a national press inclined to investigate and criticize the conduct of royalty, nobility, and politicians alike; the well-developed espionage networks in northern Europe and the Baltic; power politics between and within Britain, Denmark, Germany, and France; and, most importantly, the similarities between George III's troubles with his family and his problems with the American colonists.
If after reading A Royal Affair you are eager for more about the House of Hanover, I recommend Tillyard's earlier work Aristocrats; Christopher Hibbert's George III: A Personal History; and Flora Fraser's Princesses and The Unruly Queen.
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