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ABSOLUTE ENLIGHTENMENT
An Introduction.

William, Prince of Wales, Duke of Gloucester.

Prince William Henry Frederick Stuart-Oldenburg, Duke of Gloucester (later Prince of Wales and subsequently King of Great Britain) was born on the 24th July 1689, to his mother, Queen Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, and father Prince George of Denmark-Norway, Prince-Consort of the Aforementioned Realms. Out of a total 19 pregnancies, only William survived, which is generally thought by modern doctors to have been due to the genes of Anne and various natal diseases and infections.

The Prince was a sickly child, prone to illness and stumbling, but Anne and George took a large amount of interest in him, in contrast with many Kings and Queens of the past. He is widely thought to have had Hydrocephalus, or, water on the brain, which enlarged his head. He was educated by several Cambridge Masters in the fields of Geography, History, Politics, English, French and Latin, but his favourite subject was Military History and Strategics, because to practise he had his own 'Horse Guard', a group of up to one hundred local boys all 'serving' William and acting out military strategies. His surname was Oldenburg, and this is the surname most history books shall call his descendants, but by decree of the Queen, his rarely used last name was Stuart-Oldenburg.

As a young boy, he had a good relationship with William and Mary the King and Queen who preceded his own mother, and King William, for whom he was named, often came to see the Horse Guard and The Prince play. The young prince was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter soon after, and Anne wrote of him in the summer of 1696;

"My boy continues yet very well, and looks better, I think, than ever he did in his life; I mean more healthy, for though I love him very well, I can't brag of his beauty."

As his first tutor in his later years, the King appointed the Bishop of Salisbury, who held generally more liberal views than Anne, and who was employed against Anne's wishes. As such, she tried to limit the amount of time the Prince spent with him and further the amount of time he spent with the servants she employed and her favourite's sons. One of these, The Lord Churchill, only child and first heir to the Dukedom of Marlborough, who was of a similar age to him, was the Prince William's best friend. Government Ministers reviewing the educational progress of the first-in-line to the throne wrote that they were
Finding themselves "amazed" by his "wonderful memory and good judgement".

On the night of his birthday at Windsor Castle on 24th July, 1700, he was reported to have overheated himself from dancing. Retiring to his chambers, the best medical practitioners and doctors in England, and his parents, were rushed to him. One thought he had contracted scarlet fever, another small pox, and some started to bleed him. However, one of his early tutors, Doctor Jenkins, objected to this and prescribed blistering, which was of equal effect; none. He was feared dead, and apparently went into a coma-like state and had many seizures. His doctors left him and only Dr Jenkins and his parents stayed in the Castle til the morning. He was found awake in bed by his mother the next morning, alive and well.

Doctor Jenkins was later awarded the Earldom of Ascot, and was celebrated by the Queen as the doctor who saved William, when, in reality, it hadn't been down to him. Were William to have died, there would have been a dynastic crisis in Britain that would have either meant that Catholic Stuarts would have been reinstated, or some distantly related, uninterested Continental Prince would have taken the throne.

William died two years after, in the summer of 1702, leaving Anne as Queen. William was her heir, and he was created Prince of Wales soon after. Throughout this time his intimate companion and best friend was John Churchill, Marquess of Blandford[1] (Later to become Duke of Marlborough), with whom he shared many political views. He was received a s an Observer of Parliament whilst he was 14, and he showed a keen interest in the Government, for which he was praised.

He was not a handsome youth, with an enlarged head, goofy teeth and portly body, nor a charismatic one, having grown up protected from the outside world, and the numerous marriage proposals from the families of various European Princesses were purely political in nature. With the Bishop of Salisbury still his private tutor throughout his teens, he adopted a decidedly liberal approach to politics, which was kept from the knowledge of his frequently ill mother, the Queen Anne. Several episodes of seizures, similar in description although not in intensity to the one of 1700, continued to blight him throughout his life.

In the end, out of many proposals, the Princess Ulrika Eleanora of Sweden was chosen by the Government, who wished to achieve good standing with Sweden, who were the prime Baltic state, albeit in the middle of the Great Northern War. The Princess was an immediate member of the Swedish Royal Family, although only third-in-line to the throne and so was therefore important enough to warrant being a Queen of England, and also to ensure an Anglo-Swedish Alliance, but not an immediate heir, therefore being at a lesser chance of causing an awkward union between the Stuart-Oldenburgs of England and the Wittelbachs of Sweden.

In the May of 1706, the prince travelled to Stockholm to meet his fiancé for the first time, three months prior to their wedding date. He was received with his Guard, Servants and Butler at Wrangelska Palatset [2] by the Queen Dowager of the Realm and Acting Regent of Sweden, Hedvig Eleanora, whilst the King, Charles XI of Sweden, was away in Poland at war. Here follows the account of their meeting, an excerpt from the diaries of Sir George Borders, Steward of the Prince;

...and thence upon, as instructed, we waited in the Hall of Rangel's Palace and marveled at it's beautie, for it was built in the style of the Orient, and decorated with plinths and paintings unlike those in England. indeed his grace my Prince did remark upon the building. And then a siryn sounded, and from the door behind us came young ladies of the Court; followed then by the Elder Queen, and thence by the Princess Eleanor. Of the princesses beautie I shall tell you; she was neither as pretty as a lark nor as dormant as an oak, but she was draped in garments from Cathay and Persia. She looked solemnly upon our partie, and to the Prince she walked, and then waited for the Queen Elder, who spoke for an age... At ten o' clock after the feast had ended, the Prince and the Lady were talking and smiling, and thence they retired to their respective bedchambers... In the morning they woke and ate together, and the Patent of the King arrived, and we were preparing to leave the city; the Princess was sad at her departure but her Grandmother scorned her, and we set sail for England, passing through the Germanic Sea.

The couple landed in the Medway two weeks later, having stopped at Zeeland for a day to restock their supplies. The Prince and the Princess were by no means a perfect couple, but they did not hate being with eachother, and she was an obedient wife, and he not too forceful of a husband. There was great excitement when the Princess became pregnant in the January of 1707, and the Prince was borne a daughter, Eleanor, named after it's maternal grandmother. Two miscarriages and one stillborn child followed, however.

[1] Who, OTL, didn't survive past 1703.
[2] Tre Kronor having burnt down 1697.

***

This is an idea I've had for a while rolling around in my brain, and I decided to write it all down in rather sketchy quality. Basically, the premise is that, through some kind of miracle or another, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester survives to adult age without being retarded or disabled and succeeds Queen Anne.
If you think you may have seen something like this before, then you're probably right. I posted something extremely similar to this quite a long time ago on this forum, but it never came to fruition, and some personal events meant I couldn't update it as much as I wanted. Criticism and Comments are greatly welcomed, and help or information is always appreciated.
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