HISTORY MEMEĀ | FASCINATING WOMEN [7/10}Ā āĀ
Caroline Mathilde of Great Britain-Denmark [1751-1775]
Caroline Mathilde became the Queen of Denmark in 1766, when she married Christian VII. She was the daughter of Prince Frederick Ludwig of Wales and a sister of King George III of Great Britain. Caroline Mathilde was the mother of Frederik VI and Princess Louise Augusta.
After the wedding Caroline found herself alone at a strange court, amongst courtiers who divided themselves into cliques. The young and eager men encouraged the king in his bouts of mania, and they would often wreak havoc upon the castles themselves and seek out prostitutes in the lower city, often those of sadomasochistic inclination. It is well-known that Christian VII sought the company of a prostitute aptly named Boots-Catherine in 1767 and he also famously declared that he could not love Caroline because āit was not fashionable to love oneās wife.ā As Caroline became pregnant with their first child he sunk even deeper into debauchery, paranoia and hallucinations the result of which being that he would often harm himself, or seek our Boots-Catherine to physically demean him.
Meanwhile, Caroline had only the head of her household, Countess Louise von Plessen, to turn to as her husbandās stepmother the Dowager Queen Juliane Marie, discouraged the other ladies of the court to be openly friendly with the lonely girl. Iām not trying to make Juliane Marie sound like a monster, since she surely had many trials in her own life what with giving birth to a physically and mentally disabled son and trying to overcome the Danish people and her husbandās love for his firste wife Louise of England.
In 1768, on the 28th of January, the now Queen gave birth to her first child, a son whom they named Frederik. It wasnāt long thereafter that Christian VII decided to go on a tour of Europe, leaving his wife at home alone with her infant child. He didnāt leave until after banishing Countess von Plessen from his court, and no amount of beggin on Carolineās part could persuade him to take her back. I believe he may have accused her of having a negative influence on his wife. Christian left a court inhabitated by women and perhaps gave his wife a welcome break from his loud and boisterous friends who enjoyed rubbing Carolineās nose in her husbandās affair with a prostitute. She and the Dowager Queen(s), as Christianās grandmother, Sophie Magdalene, was still alive. They retired to Frederiksborg Castle for the summer, and came back to Copenhagen in the autumn where Caroline Mathilde attracted a scandal by taking walks in Copenhagen, where noblewomen would only ride carriages.
In June 1771 the Queen moved to HĆørsholm castle, north of Copenhagen, and there Caroline spent an idyllic summer with her lover and her court. It is a large possibility that she also moved away from the King and the rest of the court because the 7th of July Caroline Mathilde gave birth to a girl. Her daughter was christened Louise Augusta, after Caroline and Christianās respective mothers, and although the King acknowledged the child as his Louise Augusta was often called āla Petite Struenseeā around the court. Most modern historians seem to agree that Louise Augusta was, in fact, Struenseeās child.
She never was to be re-united with either of her children. Caroline Mathilde, a Princess of the blood of England, and former Queen of Denmark, died suddenly on May 10th 1775. She had contracted scarlet fever. She was buried in the church of St. Marie in Celle, and hasnāt been moved to Roskilde Church, the final place of rest for all Danish Kings and Queens.Ā Although she was no longer Queen at her death, she would still call herself Caroline Mathilde of Denmark until the end.
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