The brief story of a royal heir, his wife and her lover: the scandal and theme of von Königsmarcks
We’ve talked before of our great-grandmother the Scandalous Pauline who ran off to San Francisco with a baritone trumpet player- she was 40 and he was 22- we wish we had a photo of what she looked like then! All we have is one in her old age.
And her hot love was a von Königsmarck- hers wasn’t the first.
The heir to the throne of Hannover, Georg, had a wife, Sophie Dorothea.
He had a Swedish count serving him: Phillip von Königsmarck. From whom we have love letters. To Georg’s wife.
Count Phillip tried to help her escape her cold husband Georg. He did not escape Georg either, and it seems he was disappeared, for he certainly was never seen again, to the alarm of several monarchs who cared about the lad.
And then Georg became king of Hannover.
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And since England was shopping around for a king in 1714,
he then became that King George I of England as well.
! Them von Königsmarcks!
(The Brits panned Georgie I, since he didn’t speak English, an awkward thing for a king of Great Britain, but he did pick it up with time. It was his grandson George III who lost the American colonies. I don’t know how- they were there just a minute ago!)
Images courtesy of wikipedia
PS: if von Königsmarck was Swedish, why was he sporting a German von in his name? Most Europeans stayed more or less put generation to generation, but even in the darkest Dark Ages, some people moved long distances. That included quite a few Germans in the Middle Ages and Renaissance settling in Scandinavia, and if they were a von, they took that with them.
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