Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:18, 26 April 2005

Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (May 19, 1744 - November 17, 1818) was the queen consort of King George III.

Birth, youth, and marriage

The youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick, and Elizabeth Albertin of Saxe-Hilburghausen, Duchess of Saxony, Charlotte was born in Mirow in her father's duchy of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany. When only seventeen years old, she was selected as the bride of the young King George (who had already flirted with several young women considered unsuitable by his mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and by his political advisors). Charlotte arrived in Britain in 1761 and the couple were married at the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, London, on September 8 of that year.

Despite not having been his first choice, and having been treated with a general lack of sympathy by his mother, Charlotte's relationship with her husband soon blossomed, and he was apparently never unfaithful to her. In the course of their marriage, they had fifteen children, all but two — Octavius and Alfred — of whom survived into adulthood.

Modern ancestral studies

In recent years, Charlotte's distant ancestry has become of interest to some scholars of the African diaspora. The queen's biographer Olwen Hedley stated that Queen Charlotte's personal physician, Christian Friedrich, Baron von Stockmar, described his patient as having "true mulatto features" ("ein wahres Mulattengesicht"). In support of this comment, some researchers have noted that Queen Charlotte was a descendant, through as few as three and as many as six lines, of Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a Portuguese noblewoman who lived in the 15th century. Castro herself was a descendant of the twelfth century Portuguese monarch Affonso III and his apparently African or Moorish mistress, Mourana Gil, and was an ancestor of most northern European royals, including George III. Critics of this research argue that Castro's distant perch in the queen's family tree makes any presumed African or Moorish ancestry negligible, and no different from that held by any other member of a German princely house at that time. However, Charlotte, to date, is the most prominent of Castro's descendants to have been described by contemporaries as having what they believed were negroid features, features that were much commented on during her youth and caricatured by contemporary cartoonists.

Husband's illness

After the onset of his illness, then misunderstood as madness, George III was placed in the care of his wife, who could not bring herself to visit him very often. However, Charlotte remained supportive of her husband as his mental illness, now believed to be porphyria, worsened in old age.

Old age and death

Charlotte had become the fond grandmother of Princess Charlotte of Wales, and it was a great blow to her when this granddaughter died in childbirth. A year after her granddaughter Charlotte's death, the Queen died seated in a small armchair holding the hand of her eldest son. She died at Kew Palace, their family home in Surrey, and was buried at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

Named in her honor

The medium-large Southern US city of Charlotte, North Carolina was named for her by James K. Polk's uncle Thomas Polk fairly early in America's history. Also, another city named for her is Charlottetown, the provincial capital of Prince Edward Island, Canada. The Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Queen's College, New Brunswick, New Jersey (now Rutgers University), and Queens College, Charlotte, North Carolina are also named for her.

External links and references

• Page at Genealogics.org
• Royal Genealogies
• King George III: Mad or Misunderstood?
• Hedley, Olwen Queen Charlotte J Murray, January 1975, ISBN 0719531047
• Scobie, Edward. African Women in Early Europe. African Presence in Early Europe. Edited by Ivan Van Sertima. New Brunswick: Journal of African Civilizations, 1985: 202-22.

• 1744 births
• 1818 deaths
• British queen consorts
• House of Hanover