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IN 1795, OVERBURDENED with debt, not at all in good odour with his family, Parliament, the populace—or his tailor—His Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales, known also as Florizel, Prinney and “that extravagant jackanapes,” at last succumbed to pressure from all of the above and agreed to a marriage with his first cousin, Princess Caroline Amelia of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.

That the prince had earlier entered into a morganatic marriage with Maria Fitzherbert, both a commoner and a Catholic, definitely two huge no-no’s for the prince, was deemed irrelevant.

That the princess Caroline was, at twenty-six, already rather long in the tooth for a bride, loud, overblown, often filthy—both in her language and in her personal hygiene—was overlooked by the Parliament that would settle the prince’s debts if only he would marry the woman, settle down and for goodness sake provide an heir.

Ah, the sacrifices one must make for one’s country. And yet, ta-ta Maria, hello princess (and at least temporary solvency). Men can be so fickle.

On the occasion of their first meeting, and already set to marry in three days, the prince took one look at his blowsy betrothed and said to an aide, “Harris, I am not well. Pray fetch me a glass of brandy.” And then he retired from the room, leaving the princess to comment to that same aide, “I find him very stout and by no means as handsome as his portrait.” In another age Harris would have written a very profitable book about the whole thing….

Meanwhile, back with the prince and his bride, it would be a vast overstatement to suggest that the marriage that followed proved to have been Fashioned In Heaven.

Love match or not, the pair managed to produce an heir, Princess Charlotte, and then they toddled off in disparate directions, the prince back to his normal pursuits (back to his middle-aged Maria and to spending money), the princess all but banished from the palace and her child (to become the darling of the citizenry and to spend lots of money).

In short, they both went about making total fools of themselves, living outrageously, spending prodigiously and openly disparaging each other in print and in deed. Since the prince had turned, politically, to the Tories, the princess, naturally, gravitated to the Whigs. Their only connection at all, their daughter, Charlotte, died in childbirth while Caroline was out of the country being as naughty as she could be, although never quite naughty enough for the prince to gain the divorce he so desperately desired.

But in 1820, George III, long ill, died, and suddenly Florizel was the king. His first thought, after rejoicing that his allowance would be raised, had to be that, if he was now the king, then—E-gods!—the hated Caroline was now his queen consort.

This was not to be borne!

The first thing the prince did was to delay his formal coronation for a year, launching a kingly demand that a way be found to discredit the new queen for her personal behavior, paving the way for that longed-for divorce.

The first thing Caroline did was to have a launch of her own—setting sail from Italy to England, to claim her rights as queen, dilly-dilly.

History reports what happened next, but imagination conjures its own scenarios….