The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline [Paperback]

Flora Fraser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 1997

Flora Fraser gives us the fascinating story of a mismatched Prince and Princess of Wales, married in 1795 and separated less than a year later. George III arranged the marriage of his niece Caroline of Brunswick to his son George. Their disastrous, and probably bigamous, marriage (George having earlier privately married a Catholic widow), had profound political consequences culminating in the trial of Caroline for adultery. Caroline's place in history has generally been limited to that of persecuted wife but Fraser, with access to previously unavailable documents, provides a complex portrait of a spirited woman who refused to be victimized.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"There are two types of British queens," says Columbia University historian David Cannadine."Those who hold the position strictly as wife of the king, and those (few) who have ruled as sovereign in absence of a male heir." Queen Caroline, who briefly held title when King George IV was crowned in 1820 is numbered among the former. Vulgar, selfish, and undisciplined, she fled from the husband she hated and became nearly as well known for her promiscuity as King George IV himself. Viewed by the public as a wronged woman, she survived George's attempts to dissolve the marriage, but opinion turned against her and she died in 1821. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The predicament of a rejected royal spouse denied her crown by an openly adulterous husband on grounds of her own flagrant adultery has contemporary resonances. The adventures of Queen Caroline have often been recounted, but Fraser (Emma, Lady Hamilton) has done more archival homework than past biographers, and her version will intrigue more than Charles-and-Di voyeurs. Caroline's introduction to adultery, the queen herself contended, occurred between the conjugal sheets. The foppish future George IV was already illegally wed to a Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert. Once the royal couple?first cousins?conceived a legal heiress, only days into the marriage, the Prince of Wales abandoned his wife for his mistresses. Sexually frustrated, socially snubbed and parsimoniously financed, his unsophisticated and uneducated bride from Brunswick lapsed into reckless and disreputable conduct, "a depraved woman but an injured wife," in the words of a Windsor observer. Meanness incarnate, Prince George tried for two decades and more to shed her, even after their only child, Charlotte, died in childbirth, leaving no heirs except George's dissolute brothers, none of whom had legal children. The suit for divorce, played out in Parliament, is a page-turner. Although the biography opens melodramatically with Coronation Day, it slips into lackluster prose to record the sordid beginnings of the relationship, gaining momentum only as the determined Caroline plays the game of getting even with one of the most unsavory occupants of the British throne. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 537 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (November 13, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520212754
• ISBN-13: 978-0520212756
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,805,896 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An enigma, still unexplained, January 24, 2005

By 

PMcC-DC (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (Paperback)

This is a fascinating, almost incredible, true story, but (as reviewers who've preceded me here have pointed out) Flora Fraser hasn't managed to do it justice. Queen Caroline's actions are so baffling, so inconsistent, and so seemingly self-destructive that a writer really must have a "take" on her for a biography to be enlightening or moving. Fraser seems almost afraid to take a stand, or else so mired in her research that she's lost the need for a big picture. The result is that when Caroline veers in completely new directions-- suddenly taking lovers after years of faithfulness to a husband who despised her, or leaving England at the drop of a hat after years of determination to fight her battles there-- the reader gets the (highly detailed) facts without any insights that could help us understand a seemingly random shift. We don't even learn why Caroline, with few marital prospects into her mid-20s, was chosen to marry the future George IV in the first place. It's not even clear whether Fraser likes her subject, approves of her actions, or felt much enthusiasm for the project except as a collector of commemorative objects she calls "Carolingiana." I guess writing biographies is just the family business...

Specific oddities include no real sense of George IV's personality or motivation, the tendency of key people to drop out of the narrative altogether when they're not present in Caroline's life (even those important to Caroline, like her daughter Charlotte), and detailed descriptions of paintings (by one of Caroline's supposed lovers, Thomas Lawrence) that Fraser hasn't actually included in the illustrations. So much is made of the transformation of Caroline's appearance over the years that we really do need to see more from her later life than caricatures and cartoons.

It would seem inevitable that someone will make a great drama out of this story-- as a biography, or even as a play or film. It's a shame that Fraser didn't see that she could convey some of this drama, and real insight, without compromising her extensive research.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars May I have my time back, please?, July 20, 2003

By 

Anne Claessens "foxwold" (Grass Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (Paperback)

Whatever were they THINKING!?! I mean, the author, and worse, the editors. This is an appallingly bad book. I staggered through the whole University of California paperback version, convinced that eventually it would improve. Sadly, I was too optimistic.

Caroline of Brunswick was clearly quite an unpleasant person all 'round. Ill-educated, dishonest, gullible, ill-bred, plain at best, lacking in style and sense, desperate for any sort of attention, she would be difficult to like in the hands of the most talented biographer. It's a shame that she was left to Flora Fraser. This particular Ms. Fraser is living proof that a talent for biography isn't hereditary. She is pendantic, tedious, and apparently without enthusiasm for her subject, whom she abandons regularly in pursuit of political minutiae.

I was startled by the ineptitude of the editing. In a number of instances the vocabulary used was clearly anachronistic slang, but the quotes were not footnoted, leaving the reader bewildered as to the meaning of the quote. In these instances, the Oxford English Dictionary was no help, surely a responsible standard for an editor of a British/American release? Some quotes are simply inaccurate.

I suspect the editors may have been overawed by Flora Fraser's lineage, and hopeful of a comparison between Diana Spencer and Caroline of Brunswick. If Caroline was as Flora Fraser describes, there is scant ground for such hopes.

I majored in British history, am quite accustomed to dry texts, and have read each and every one of Lady Antonia Fraser's splendid works with pleasure. In this case, the daughter should NOT have attempted to go into the family trade, she has no talent for it.

I very much regret the time I wasted plodding through this exceedingly dull book about a sad, dreary woman who would have been best left to rest in peace.

And no, to the best of my knowledge, I'm no relation to this branch of Frasers.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's Deja Vu All Over Again, October 18, 1998

By 

Gloria E. Salavarria ([e-mail]) (Middlebury, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline (Hardcover)

Of Queen Caroline, Jane Austen said: "She was bad, but she would not have become as bad as she was if he had not been infinitely worse." Caroline of Brunswick is a fascinating person--part Fergie, part the injured Diana, Princess of Wales. The "he" in this case is George IV, the five times great uncle of the current Prince of Wales, whose petulant anger over his wife's greater popularity is so reminiscent of our century's War of the Waleses. Indeed, it is the similarities between the two that makes this book a worthwhile read. Still, this book is a weighty, scholarly tome. The author doesn't completely drown the drama but there are times (when she uses the stilted court English of the era) she comes perilously close to doing so. This material in the hands of a storyteller instead of a scholar could have been a best seller.