Sex with the Queen (46 page)

“He is now impatient for the accomplishment of this marriage,”

the ambassador continued.63 But in fact the king dreaded the ac-complishment of the marriage. Christian’s “application was equal to his capacity,” George III was told. This last was, in fact, true. Both were at zero.64

In an effort to make a man out of the delicate prince, Chris-tian’s tutors had beaten and tortured him until he turned eleven, when he was given a kindhearted Swiss tutor named Elie Salomon François Reverdil. But by then, the damage had been done. The little prince had learned to escape from his tutors’

brutality into a fantasy world of strange dreams spiced by para-noia and sexual degradations. All of Reverdil’s patience and compassion could not coax Christian back out into the real world. When Christian was informed that his father had died and he was the new king, he eagerly inquired if that meant he would never be beaten again.

The new monarch was unbearably bored by his royal respon-sibilities. No national business could be transacted without his signature, and his signature on a decree made it law immedi-ately. In contrast to other European nations where parliaments and constitutions limited royal power, the Lex Regia of 1665 de-clared that Denmark was the personal property of its monarch, who held absolute unquestioned power and was accountable only to God. The Danish council was an advisory board which the 2 1 0

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king could dismiss at will. Christian VII of Denmark, idiot, whoremonger, alcoholic, had more power than any other eighteenth-century European monarch.

The king would leave piles of state papers unread for days while he crawled around on the floor with his companions play-ing practical jokes. When he encountered ladies drinking tea, he would invariably push the raised cups into their faces, sometimes burning them badly. One day he dropped pastries out of his window onto the head of a visiting bishop. Another time, when his aunt was sedately sipping coffee, Christian jumped out from beneath her table, his face blackened with soot, howling like a wolf. The terrified matron tipped backward in her chair which crashed to the floor, her diamond-buckled feet waving in the air.

This was to be the husband of England’s fairest flower. But it mattered little to the power brokers of Britain and Denmark if the groom was an alcoholic imbecile. The princess was sold off to firm up traditional ties between the two nations, to check the power of France and strengthen the Protestant religion. It was rumored that someone would have to rule Denmark through Christian, and George III hoped that his sister would be that person, pushing the dazed king firmly toward a British alliance instead of a French one.

But Matilda had been kept far from the intriguing court of her grandfather George II. Raised in the seclusion of Kew Palace with her widowed mother and seven brothers and sisters, she had learned to raise vegetables in her little garden, to dance and em-broider and speak French. This wide-eyed girl, with no political education whatsoever, was expected to rule a nation.

When Matilda was introduced to her husband, she found a tiny boy whose head barely reached her shoulder. On the surface Christian had learned to charm. Slender and perfectly propor-tioned, he was like a white-wigged doll in silk stockings. His face was long and narrow with slightly protruding blue eyes. He had a long aquiline nose, a finely molded mouth, and a chiseled jaw.

His high forehead gave him, ironically, a look of superior intel-ligence. His flaxen hair was so pale it required no white hair powder. This tiny puppet of a king, mercurial, sometimes e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 1 1

violent, offered occasional flashes of brilliance. When calm, he was good-hearted, though often confused. He danced gracefully and could talk prettily enough, reciting poetry and theatrical speeches in between violent temper tantrums.

Entranced by the appearance of his blushing bride, the king, in a fit of exuberance, rushed forward to embrace her. The min-isters responsible for the marriage heaved a collective sigh of re-lief. The marriage would be a great success.

After meeting her husband, Matilda was introduced to Dowa-ger Queen Juliana Maria, Christian’s stepmother. The stiff ma-tron, caked with piety, had one goal in life—that her son Prince Frederick, Christian’s younger half brother, would inherit the throne. Because Prince Frederick clearly suffered from even greater mental aberrations than his brother, Juliana would rule the country in his name. As queen, Juliana had reportedly tried to poison Christian in his nursery, but a faithful maid, seeing the queen mix something into the prince’s breakfast, threw away the noxious brew and warned the king. Juliana shrieked in protest at the accusation, but a watch was kept on Christian’s food.

Ambition pulsated relentlessly behind Juliana’s soft smile, beneath her deceptively feminine pink silk gowns. Adept at con-cealing her ambition, she manifested it only in her eyes, hard sharp eyes, quick to shift from right to left to focus unblinkingly on new prey. And when Matilda arrived, Juliana saw new prey.

This healthy buxom princess would, no doubt, ruin all Juliana’s plans by having children. The pious dowager queen declared she was simply delighted with Matilda, but beneath her parchment skin, her blood boiled.

Within a few days of the wedding, Christian decided he didn’t like being married and that it was, in fact, unfashionable for a man to love his wife. He returned to the brothels of Copenhagen with his debauched friends, ripping up taverns and attacking cit-izens on the streets. Matilda was pointedly neglected by her new husband, the courtiers following his lead. She had not been per-mitted to bring a single friend from Britain into Denmark and had been forced to bid a tearful farewell to those ladies who had accompanied her from London to the Danish border. Now, all 2 1 2

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alone, the bride sat mute and dejected for days on end. Casting her glance about her magnificent rooms, she longed for the wet vegetable garden where she had cheerfully rooted and dug with her brothers and sisters.

The French, who had initially been alarmed that Christian had married an English princess, were delighted that the mar-riage was off to such a bad start. “The Princess has made little impression on the King’s heart,” wrote the French ambassador gleefully to Louis XV, “and had she been even more charming, she would have met with the same fate. For how can she please a man who quite seriously believes that it does not look well for a husband to love his wife?”65

Christian’s ministers, looking on in despair at Matilda going to bed alone each night, informed His Majesty that the lack of an heir would convince his people he was not so much fashionable as impotent. Boasting platinum blond hair, a dazzling complex-ion, lovely features, and “a bosom such as few men could look on without emotion,” Matilda inspired the sexual fantasies of every man at court except her husband.66 When his friend Reverdil begged the king to treat Matilda as a wife deserved, Christian replied, “A person of royal blood seems to me—when one is in bed with her—rather worthy of respect than of love.”67

Once, at least, the king rose to the occasion, for in April 1767

Matilda became pregnant. But Christian’s mental health was de-teriorating so rapidly that Reverdil suggested a pleasant distrac-tion, a tour of the Danish duchies, an idea which the king embraced with delight. During the royal progress, Christian met a German doctor named Johann Struensee who had been inves-tigating mental disorders. Tall, well spoken, with a soothing and modest address, Struensee made an immediate impression on the king. Christian insisted on taking him along for the rest of the tour and, finding his company indispensable, promised him a minor post at court.

At thirty, Struensee was a large man who carried his weight well. His well-shaped head perched solidly on broad shoulders with no sign of a neck. His was a broad face made up of refined angles, a high wide forehead, powerful cheekbones, a strong jaw e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 1 3

and chin. His aquiline nose, far too long to be considered hand-some, gave his appearance a hawkish strength. Only his lips, full and fleshy, betrayed his sensuality. He left his thick light brown hair unpowdered. Cautious, and discreet, he was graceful for his bulk, dancing and fencing well, stepping silently on agile feet.

Struensee had stewed in the town of Altona for over a decade, tending to the poor, seducing women, and dreaming of adven-ture. “If my lady patronesses will only contrive to get me to Copenhagen, then I will carry all before me,” he once pro-claimed.68

Settled into the Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Stru-ensee mixed potions to cure Christian’s hangovers, a surefire way of winning his devotion. His sensible conversation had a calming effect on the king’s nervous excitement. Modest and humble, Struensee won over courtiers who saw him as no threat to the existing power structure. Those who chose to look more deeply, however, would have seen that his quiet demeanor curbed a fierce raw power waiting to explode.

When the king sank into a weeping depression, too incapaci-tated to leave his bed, even the birth of Matilda’s healthy son, Prince Frederick, could not rouse him. Christian’s official doc-tors were helpless, and his ministers feared that if the populace discovered the king’s mental state, the result would be rebellion, possibly civil war. As a last resort, a courtier suggested that Dr.

Struensee, who had stayed quietly in the background at the palace, try to effect a cure. And the German’s ministrations—fresh air and exercise, less alcohol, a healthful diet combined with his own calming manner—worked wonders. But Struensee knew the improvement was temporary and that Christian would swing wildly between excitable good spirits and black despon-dency until he descended into irrevocable madness.

In October 1769 Matilda came down with an alarming illness which was probably venereal disease, bestowed upon her by her husband from a syphilis-riddled whore. She sank into a deep de-pression and wished for death. Given the delicate nature of her ailment, the queen was unwilling to undergo a physical examina-tion. Bedridden, she moaned pitifully in her pain. Weeks passed 2 1 4