A Royal Affair
George III and his Troublesome Siblings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The young George III was a poignant figure, humdrum on the surface yet turbulent beneath: hiding his own passions, he tried hard to be a father to his siblings and his nation. This intimate, fast-moving book tells their intertwined stories. His sisters were doomed to marry foreign princes and leave home forever; his brothers had no role and too much time on their hands - a recipe for disaster.
At the heart of Tillyard's story is Caroline Mathilde, who married the mad Christian of Denmark in her teens, but fell in love with the royal doctor Struensee: a terrible fate awaited them, despite George's agonized negotiations. At the same time he faced his tumultuous American colonies. And at every step a feverish press pounced on the gossip, fostering a new national passion - a heated mix of celebrity and sex.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The British monarch who viewed America's Revolutionary War as a rebellion of ungrateful children against their father had a fatherly relation to his five younger siblings who brought him abundant heartache, as Tillyard relates in a gifted, prodigiously researched history. Headstrong Princess Augusta made no secret of her misery with Karl, duke of Brunswick, who spurned her for other women, his illegitimate children, regional politics and warfare. With no public role allotted to Edward, duke of York, the charming rake and gambler roamed the world seeking amusement and novelty with a coterie of restless aristocrats until he died, at 28, of malaria in Monaco. And when George's favorite brother, William, duke of Gloucester, flouted George's authority with a secret marriage, the wounded king refused to acknowledge his ambitious sister-in-law. The worst offenders were Prince Henry, duke of Cumberland, who was a third party in a sensational divorce trial, and Caroline Mathilde, who cheated on her husband, the mad Danish King Christian, with his German physician and ruled Denmark with her lover until she was exiled and her lover executed in a coup that almost provoked war with Britain. As Tillyard (Aristocrats) spotlights lesser-known royals, she keenly demonstrates how the private and public lives of monarchs are often intertwined.
