Sex with the Queen (22 page)

Duchess Sophia, looking down her long regal nose, detested Eleonore, the woman George William had preferred to her, and s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

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sneeringly called her “the little clot of dirt.”9 After Sophia Dorothea was born in 1666, Eleonore worried about the girl’s future and began agitating for an official marriage and the child’s legitimization. In 1676 Ernst August and Sophia, now se-cure in their position at Hanover and boasting several strapping sons, agreed that one puny girl would be no threat. They permit-ted George William to officially marry Eleonore and legitimize their daughter, thereby making Sophia Dorothea the richest heiress in Germany.

But just to be sure, they placed a high-level spy at George William’s court to report back to them his every move. Count Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, prime minister of Celle, be-came George William’s most trusted adviser. Clever, smooth, and deceitful, he convinced the duke of Celle to follow his advice even as he pocketed large bribes from Hanover.

Sophia Dorothea grew into a flirtatious beauty, with thick dark hair, large velvety dark eyes, and a flawless porcelain com-plexion. Proud of her tiny hands and feet, she had an exquisite figure and moved with exceptional grace. She was an avid reader and talented embroiderer, played the harpsichord beautifully, and loved to sing and dance. An only child, she was spoiled and admired, and gave free rein to her spirited emotions.

There was talk of a marriage between Sophia Dorothea and the future king of Denmark but Duchess Sophia, her blue blood curdling at the thought of seeing her enemy’s daughter a queen, persuaded her friend the reigning queen of Denmark to break it off. “Fancy a king’s son for that bit of a bastard!” she cried.10 But neither did Ernst August approve of the girl’s engagement to the heir of his rival, the duke of Wolfenbüttel. Ernst August became apoplectic at the thought of so much property going out of the family, property which would remain in the family if Sophia Dorothea were to marry his son, her first cousin, George Louis.

The day the Wolfenbüttel engagement was to be announced at a large feast, Duchess Sophia, somewhat against her will, was dis-patched galloping to Celle to convince George William of the advantages offered by a marriage to her son. Sophia Dorothea, she pointed out, would eventually reign, not over the tiny state t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y 9 9

of Wolfenbüttel-Celle but over the huge domain of Hanover- Osnabrück-Celle. In addition, she might even one day become queen of England, as Duchess Sophia was the granddaughter of King James I and the English succession was uncertain. George William, intrigued by the advantages in both property and pres-tige, agreed.

The new groom who trailed such mouthwatering possibilities in his wake was a dolt, unprepossessing in appearance, intelli-gence, and character. Six years older than Sophia Dorothea, George Louis was known as “the pig snout” in Hanover. His own mother didn’t like him and finally gave up trying to teach him literature and refinements. A poor student, he lived only for hunting and war. His parents had sent him to the court of Louis XIV to polish him up, but he returned to Germany just as tar-nished as ever. He was sullen and slow, and behind his cold exte-rior lurked a relentless vindictiveness.

Duchess Sophia found the marriage demeaning but realized the financial benefits. “One hundred thousand thalers a year is a goodly sum to pocket,” she wrote her niece Elizabeth Charlotte, duchesse d’Orléans, of the annual sum paid by the bride’s dowry,

“without speaking of a pretty wife, who will find a match in my son George Louis, the most pigheaded, stubborn boy who ever lived, and who has round his brains such a thick crust that I defy any man or woman ever to discover what is in them. He does not care much for the match itself, but one hundred thousand thalers a year have tempted him as they would have tempted anybody else.”11

Upon hearing the sudden news that her bridegroom would not be the lovable admirer of Wolfenbüttel but her repulsive cousin, Sophia Dorothea screamed, took the diamond-framed miniature of George Louis that Duchess Sophia had brought for her, and threw it against the wall. “I will not marry the pig snout!” she cried.12 But her father angrily insisted, and her mother, though trembling at the thought of her daughter’s fu-ture with such a husband and such a mother-in-law, was forced to acquiesce. Taken downstairs to kiss the hand of her future mother-in-law, Sophia Dorothea fainted dead away in her mother’s arms.

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A few days later when, with a pale and tearstained face, she was presented to George Louis, she fainted again. Nor was George Louis pleased with the betrothal; he believed that Sophia Dorothea was a bastard and her mother little short of a prosti-tute. Indeed, the only thing the bride and groom had in com-mon was their disgust at the marriage, both having been raised to detest each other. The wedding was held on November 21, 1682, in the chapel of Celle Castle as a torrential downpour beat against the stained-glass windows. Pale and trembling, the sixteen-year-old bride looked as if she were walking to her execution. Distant and cold, George Louis looked as if he were her executioner.

The mother of the bride sobbed loudly, and the mother of the groom was philosophically resigned. Only the two fathers were beaming, happy at the thought of the property settlement.

Carting her dolls in a coffer behind her, Sophia Dorothea and her twenty-six-year-old maid of honor, Eleonore de Knese-beck, lumbered down the road to Hanover. Though her new home was only thirty miles away, Sophia Dorothea immediately found that Hanover was in fact a world away from her carefree childhood at Celle.

The court of Hanover was a tawdry imitation of Versailles.

Like Versailles, the Leine Palace boasted gilded rooms with tall mirrors and crystal chandeliers, carved marble hearths, and gleaming parquet floors, but on a lesser scale. Aping their French counterparts with a bit less aplomb, Hanoverian courtiers shone in silks and satins, sparkled in diamond buttons and shoe buckles. And like Versailles, Hanover prized horses far above cleanliness, which is evidenced by an inventory showing some six hundred carriage horses but only two washerwomen for the entire court.

Sophia Dorothea’s mother-in-law scolded her frequently for her lack of etiquette. Her own husband was coldly formal to her; sometimes she saw him looking at her as if he were repulsed. He may have become more concerned about his marriage when a famous French fortune-teller predicted that if he were in any way responsible for his wife’s death, he himself would die within the year.

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Sophia Dorothea’s bright spirit faded in this gloomy environ-ment of cold ceremony and constant criticism. Sometimes it re-vived over dinner when she would wax gay and witty, slicing and dicing her dull, plodding husband with her sharp repartee.

George Louis, highly sensitive to criticism, started to resent his quicker-witted wife. He placed spies among her servants who re-ported back to him her every utterance, and the two began to in-dulge in loud and bitter arguments.

After Sophia Dorothea had a son she named George in 1683, she sheathed her rapier wit and made efforts to please the father and grandparents of her child. Dressed beautifully for court events, smiling and ingratiating to all, she eventually found fa-vor with George Louis who, even if he did not love her, was po-lite and sexually faithful. In 1686 she had a daughter named after her.

Perhaps things would have gone well had it not been for Duke Ernst August’s mistress, Countess Clara Elizabeth Platen. The daughter of Count Philip von Meysenbug, a penniless adven-turer, as a girl Clara Elizabeth had been taken by her father to various courts in Europe to see if she could find a profitable place as royal mistress. She first stormed Versailles, but Louis XIV’s mistress Athénaïs de Montespan climbed the battlements and defended her position valiantly, hounding her retreating enemy from the field. Next she went to England to besiege Charles II, but his mistress Louise de Kéroualle spotted her ad-vance and used all the weapons in her well-stocked arsenal to vanquish the intruder. Luckless in capturing the big guns, the raven-haired beauty lowered her expectations and decided to in-vade the court of Ernst August, which offered less competition and a great preponderance of gentlemen. And here she gathered the laurels of victory at last.

The flirtatious young Clara Elizabeth soon married Herr Franz Ernst von Platen, a minor court official. But the woman who had set her sights on Louis XIV and Charles II was not satis-fied with such mediocre status. Her husband’s position at court served as an avenue to insinuate her way into the good graces of the ducal family. Within a short time Madame Platen took on 1 0 2

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twin responsibilities—lady-in-waiting to Duchess Sophia, and mistress to Duke Ernst August. If the duke ruled Hanover, the stormy Madame Platen ruled the duke, who named her com-pliant husband a baron, a count, and eventually prime minis-ter. To win the gentlemen at court to her side—including George Louis—in the evenings she turned her home into a tav-ern, gambling den, and bawdy house where even in the midst of prostitutes she could shine unrivaled as the only noble lady present.