George III's Daughters

Okay, so George III's daughters didnt have kids due to most of them either remaining unmarried or only getting married in their mid thirties. Several matches were proposed for some of them, namely second-in-line princes to Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.

So, here's my proposal as defined by OTL marriage offers.

HRH Charlotte, the Princess Royal marries the future King Frederik VI of Denmark
HRH Princess Augusta marries Prince Adolf Frederik of Sweden (as he originally offered)
HRH Princess Elizabeth marries Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (she was forced by Queen Charlotte to decline this proposal) or Landgrave Friedrich of Homburg (as OTL, just in the late 1780s-early 1790s, not 1818)
HRH Princess Mary marries Prince Frederik of Orange (brother of Willem I of the Netherlands)

I'm not sure about who the Princesses Sophia and Amelia might marry. Maybe Charlotte's OTL stepson, King Wilhelm I of Württemberg?
 
Okay, so George III's daughters didnt have kids due to most of them either remaining unmarried or only getting married in their mid thirties. Several matches were proposed for some of them, namely second-in-line princes to Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark.

So, here's my proposal as defined by OTL marriage offers.

HRH Charlotte, the Princess Royal marries the future King Frederik VI of Denmark
HRH Princess Augusta marries Prince Adolf Frederik of Sweden (as he originally offered)
HRH Princess Elizabeth marries Louis-Philippe d'Orléans (she was forced by Queen Charlotte to decline this proposal) or Landgrave Friedrich of Homburg (as OTL, just in the late 1780s-early 1790s, not 1818)
HRH Princess Mary marries Prince Frederik of Orange (brother of Willem I of the Netherlands)

I'm not sure about who the Princesses Sophia and Amelia might marry. Maybe Charlotte's OTL stepson, King Wilhelm I of Württemberg?

The big reason so many daughters remained unmarried was because their father stipulated that their elder sisters before them needed to marry before they would be allowed to do so, and secondly, Queen Charlotte being quite a domestic woman, preferred to keep her daughters at home and unmarried as her own company, and idea that intensified as George III went mad, fearing any changes in family structure might make him worse, and of course the Napoleonic Wars, which saw many European families axed down.

The big issue is with the Princess Royal; there's a reason she didn't marry Frederick Vi of Denmark, her aunt Caroline Matilda had been married to Christian VII and that had ended badly given her affair with his advisor and doctor. Given her ill treatment, despite her actions, George III isn't going to send his daughter to the Danish Court.

I also do not see a daughter of George III marrying Louis-Philippe. Given the state of Catholics at the time and emancipation being decades away, I can't see the king giving consent even if the queen somehow doesn't force her to turn the proposal down.
 
Sophie could marry the Duke of Cumberland :)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

And Lucrezia Borgia could've married Cesare. Or, even better for English history, Anne Boleyn could've married her "sweet bruder"!:eek::D

Elizabeth marrying Louis Philippe does sound a little over the top. However, George IV was Francophile as far as I recall, and the late Egalite had been Anglophile in a big way. So, perhaps with an earlier (i.e. longer) regency period (perhaps from as early as George III's first dance with dementia (porphyry)) the Prince-Regent could help his sisters escape their overbearing mother.

Also, considering Charlotte's attitudes towards her daughters staying with her, any thoughts if that might've been hereditary, since Victoria also wanted her younger daughters to marry minor princes solely so that they could live near her.
 
I don't think that it could be called hereditary wanting to have your children near you. I think it was rather a sign of how domesticated the monarchy was growing that the princesses were allowed to stay close to mother-dearest, and also that foreign policy no longer depended as much on strengthening ties through marital alliances
 
Actually that probably had more to do with Victoria's inertia and selfishness than any desire for cozy domesticity. Had Albert lived then the younger girls (Vicky and Alice's marriages were done deals at Albert's death) might have married abroad rather than been kept at home with their domestic tyrant of a mother.
In Victoria's time there was also a bit of xenophobia and concerns creeping in - she of course adored all things german being the birth place of beloved Albert - most of her subjects didn't like the idea of their princesses being dispatched there though.
As to Queen Charlotte again the suggestion is about selfish maternal desires rather than a wish to allow her daughters to follow independent seperate lives.
 
I dont know if this was an official standpoint or not, but according to Aronson's Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes there was originally a plan to marry Princess Beatrice (OTL Princess Henry of Battenberg) to Louis Napoleon IV, Emperor of the French. Now, whether that was due to the fact that like the Battenbergs he was a "king with no crown", or that Beatrice would still be conveniently close enough in Paris, I don't know. But both she and the Empress Eugenie felt very strongly about said match. And Beatrice reportedly kept a photo of Napoleon IV amongst her personal possessions until she died.

That said, back to the original question, I think Charlotte was definitely selfish in the sense she took advantage of George III's incapacity to rule in order to keep her daughters at home. AFAIK the Princesses Charlotte and Elizabeth (the only two who escaped) were both so overjoyed at the prospect of freedom, that they cared not one jot that they would be stepmother to their husband's children (in Charlotte's case). Elizabeth reportedly said of Friedrich VI of Homburg (her OTL husband) to George IV, "I don't care who he is, if he is single, I will marry him".

According to Wikipedia, in 1788, George III (before his first bout of porphyria) had promised his daughters he would take them to Hannover, to find them husbands there [in Germany]. Which then implies George III would've followed the Hannoverian trend of marrying them amongst the German princes.

So, then, who might've made suitable husbands if said plan had been carried out? Obviously Wurttemberg and Homburg might still be on the table, IDK if any other matches were seriously contemplated (and the then wife of Friedrich I of Wurttemberg was dead by September).
 
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