Queen Charlotte & King George III

Charlotte's brother Adolf Friedrich IV, Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (reigned 1752–94) and her widowed mother actively negotiated for a prominent marriage for the young princess. At the age of 17, Charlotte was not thought conventionally pretty; she had a wide nose and mouth, and dark hair. Nevertheless, she was selected as the bride of the young King George, although she was not his first choice. He had already flirted with several young women considered unsuitable by his mother, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and by his political advisers. He also was rumored to have married a young Quaker woman named Hannah Lightfoot, though all later claims to prove this marriage were deemed unfounded and the purported supporting documents found to be forgeries.

Princess Charlotte was collected at Cuxhaven by a squadron of British yachts and warships under Admiral Anson (including the specially renamed HMY Royal Charlotte), but on its return the squadron was subjected to westerly gales and took ten days to reach Harwich, which it did in early September 1761. Charlotte then travelled to London, where the couple were married at the Chapel Royal in St. James's Palace, London, on 8 September of that year. Looking back at her betrothal, Charlotte reflected, "The English people did not like me much, because I was not pretty." After a carriage accident in which she broke her nose, she joked "I think I was not so ugly after that!"

Her mother-in-law did not welcome her with open arms, and for some time there was a slight tension between the two. However, the king's mother had yet to accept any woman with whom he was alleged to have been involved, therefore it seems that the young king cared little for her approval by this time. Despite not having been her husband's first choice as a bride, and having been treated with a general lack of sympathy by her mother-in-law, the Dowager Princess of Wales, Charlotte's marriage was a happy one, and the king was apparently never unfaithful to her. In the course of their marriage, they had 15 children, all but two of whom (Octavius and Alfred) survived into adulthood. As time went on, she wielded considerable power within the realm, although she evidently never misused it.

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