Princesses Behaving Badly (17 page)

Though everyone knew about the affair, no one quite knew what to do about it. Despite measures taken by Sophia Dorothea’s in-laws and her parents to keep the lovebirds apart (including sending Königsmarck to the front—this being Europe in the 1690s, a war was always handy), the lovers still managed to sneak letters back and forth. Königsmarck even signed some in his own blood as a testament to his burning ardor. As the infatuation grew more intense, Sophia Dorothea’s brittle, fragile marriage crumbled. An episode from 1693 highlights just how bad it was. While walking one night on the grounds of the Hanoverian palace, Sophia Dorothea came upon a small outlying building. She opened the door to
find her husband holding hands with his mistress and gazing adoringly at his newborn daughter, his second child by Melusine. Affronted by this clandestine scene of domestic bliss, the princess began screaming at her wayward husband. George Louis responded by trying to strangle her once again and had to be pulled off by her ladies-in-waiting.

Unsurprisingly, Sophia Dorothea was now actively looking for a way to escape with Königsmarck. But upon reviewing her marriage contract, she was shocked to find that she had no money of her own—her father had signed over her entire dowry when she wed. She refused to live under the same roof as George, fleeing to her parents and demanding to live with them or be given her own household. But again her father failed her, refusing to allow her to stay longer than a few months.

Back at court in June 1694, a desperate Sophia Dorothea and her lover worked out a plan: they’d make for the German principality of Wolfenbüttel, where they could seek sanctuary with the sympathetic Duke Anthony Ulric. On July 1, Königsmarck found a letter in his rooms from Sophia Dorothea, asking him to come to her private apartment at 10 that night. A disguised Königsmarck snuck onto palace grounds and made his way to her room, where he gave their old signal (whispering “The Spanish Follies” at the door). She let him in, happy to see him, but was surprised—she hadn’t sent any letter. Despite this ill omen, the couple agreed to skip town the next morning so that she could say goodbye to her children before leaving. They parted, elated and excited. Sophia Dorothea never saw Königsmarck again.

In fact, the meeting was a trap set by Countess Clara Elizabeth von Platen, the mistress of Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law and rumored to be an ex-lover of Königsmarck who was looking for an opportunity to remove Sophia Dorothea from court. When Königsmarck arrived at the princess’s apartments, the countess ran to tell the elector, Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law, that the brazen couple was in the very act of making love. She could catch them, she said, and arrest them. The elector agreed.

When Königsmarck left Sophia Dorothea’s apartments, the countess and her four accomplices were waiting for him. The men set upon him, swords drawn. Though Königsmarck managed to wound three of them before his sword broke in half, they soon overpowered him. As he lay
bleeding to death, he gurgled his last words: “Spare the princess; save the innocent princess!” The countess reportedly then kicked him in the face with her diamond-buckled shoe.

Only then did she realize what she’d done. The elector had agreed to let her arrest Königsmarck, not to kill him. He was a nobleman, and a widely known one; people were bound to come looking for him. Panicked, the countess ran back to the elector and told him what had happened; he authorized her to do whatever was necessary to get rid of the problem. And so the countess had her courtiers stuff Königsmarck’s body in a sack, weigh it down with stones, and dump it in the river. Those in court who knew about the murder now needed to cover it up.

The next morning, Sophia Dorothea, her bags packed, waited for her children to pay their usual morning call. Instead she was visited by a palace official, who came to inform her that she was confined to her rooms until further notice. Her belongings were searched; the incriminating letters were found. Three days later, her lady-in-waiting told her that Königsmarck was dead.

Sophia Dorothea was now in custody while her father and father-in-law argued over what to do. A divorce was clearly necessary, but they also knew that pressing the adultery angle would produce uncomfortable questions all around. Already people were wondering what happened to the dashing young count. The only viable solution was to claim desertion on her part. Thus on December 28, 1694, the marriage was dissolved; as the guilty party, Sophia Dorothea would not be permitted to remarry. But at least she’d be free.

Wrong. Yet again, her father betrayed her: Part of his agreement stipulated that Sophia Dorothea would remain a state prisoner at the castle of Ahlden, an estate protected by a river on one side and a moat on the other. The concern was that Sophia Dorothea might make a tempting hostage for George Louis’s political rivals, notably France and those Britons who resisted the imposition of a German royal on the English throne. The 28-year-old princess simply could not be at liberty for the rest of her life.

It wasn’t until she was locked away that Sophia Dorothea understood the full horror of what was happening: She was cut off completely from her two young children. Her father refused ever to see her again and would not allow her mother to visit. All her servants were forced to take an oath of loyalty to the elector and encouraged to report anything suspicious. Sophia Dorothea was allowed outside only after her doctors told her jailers that she needed fresh air. Even then, she was permitted nothing more than a short walk in the back garden, under guard. Entire areas of the castle were off-limits. Once, a fire started near her wing, but escape would have taken her through a gallery that was forbidden to her. Trapped, she waited at the threshold, clutching her jewelry box, for someone to escort her to safety.

The German public and nobility were shocked by Sophia Dorothea’s unjust imprisonment, but the several attempts to rescue her failed. Now called the Duchess of Ahlden, she spent the last 33 years of her life at the castle. She died on November 13, 1726, at the age of 60.

The day he heard the news, George, now King of England, went to the theater to see a comedy with his two mistresses. He forbade his son, the future king George II, from making any public demonstration of grief. Only Sophia Dorothea’s daughter, now the queen of Prussia, was able to mourn her mother publicly. George had Sophia Dorothea buried at the ducal vaults in Celle, at night and without ceremony, her grave marked only with her name and the dates of her birth and death.

In the end, however, Sophia Dorothea may have had her revenge, at least according to legend. Several years before her death, a French fortuneteller told superstitious George I that if he were at all responsible for Sophia Dorothea’s demise, he’d die too within the year. (She’d been paid to say that by Sophia Dorothea’s mother,
shh
.) The pronouncement spooked him, though not enough to free his poor ex-wife. But that wasn’t all—on her deathbed, Sophia Dorothea supposedly cursed his name and wrote him a letter reproaching him for his cruelty. The letter reached him on June 21, 1727. Reading her last words calling him to appear before God and account for his crimes, George supposedly had a stroke and died.

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, was a cruel monarch and an even worse father. His wife, a woman who seemed to prefer her horses to her children, wasn’t much better. Not surprisingly, then, the couple’s eldest daughter, Princess Louise Marie Amélie, channeled her anger and frustration into making the many shopkeepers, dressmakers, and jewelry stores in Europe rich.

Born in 1858, Princess Louise was acutely aware that she was not the longed-for male heir her father wanted. She grew up in a household marked by coldness, indifferent cruelty, and austerity. At age 15, she married her second cousin, Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a heavily whiskered man 14 years her senior. She had absolutely no idea what to expect from their wedding night—no one had ever told her—and she ran away when she got an inkling of what was up. She was later found in her nightdress hiding in the greenhouses.

The newlyweds moved to Vienna, where the cosmopolitan lifestyle of the Austrian court soothed Louise’s fears. She threw herself into flirtations, scandalous love affairs, pretty dresses, and buying lots and lots of stuff. Two children later, the princess still hadn’t slowed down. Then, in 1895, after 20 years of marriage, she fell in love with Geza Mattachich, who was a Croatian count and dashing officer in the Austrian army who was 10 years her junior; the attraction, she’d later claim, was like an electric shock. Two years later, it was her turn to shock when she ran away with him. “You are taking big risks for a few passing successes of nice dresses, compliments or love declarations,” her mother wrote in a pleading letter. “They won’t last longer than bubbles of soap! Stop the stories that are circulating, dry the tears of your mother.” Her father refused to allow her to divorce, but Louise was not to
be dissuaded. She moved to France, settling in Nice, where she could live with her lover unimpeded by the court.

But Louise’s profligate ways soon caught up with her. After spending everything on hotels, clothing, and jewelry, the broke royal was forced to sell it all off, right down to her underwear, in what sounds like a big, glittery yard sale. The proceeds still didn’t cover the millions she owed. Both King Leopold and her estranged husband refused to cover her debts, leading creditors to break through her door and take everything that wasn’t nailed down.

So Louise and Mattachich allegedly turned criminal, forging promissory notes in the name of her sister. (Some claimed that the charges were trumped up by her father and husband.) After a short time on the lam, Mattachich was arrested for fraud and thrown in jail. Louise, meanwhile, was given an ultimatum by her father: return to your husband or be committed to an insane asylum. She chose the latter and was interned at a hospital run by an Austrian court physician. In 1902 the
New York Times
reported that the princess, held “practically a prisoner” at a “retreat” for the past two years, had been declared “hopelessly insane.”

Louise spent six years as an inmate until Mattachich broke her out. The couple escaped to Paris, where they lived in poverty. Even after Louise finally obtained a divorce in 1907, she and Mattachich were no better off. Louise’s father disowned her, and the rest of her life was spent wandering Europe with Mattachich by her side, hounded by creditors. In 1921 Louise penned her memoirs, both in an effort to repair her tattered reputation and to earn some much-needed money. Though she dedicated the book to her father, “the great man” and “great king,” she wrote, “I owe nothing but misfortune to my royal origin. Ever since I was born, I have suffered and been deceived.”

Ever-faithful Mattachich died in Paris in October 1923; Louise would last less than a year, dying with his portrait clutched to her chest in March 1924.

Sarah Winnemucca

C
A
. 1844–O
CTOBER
17, 1891
T
HE NORTHERN
P
AIUTE NATION AND THE
A
MERICAN FRONTIER

T
he headline in the Washington, D.C.,
National Tribune
read, “Princess Winnemucca: No Longer the Wild Indian Girl But a Lady of Culture From Boston.” It was January 29, 1885, and Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, popularly known as Princess Winnemucca or Princess Sally of the Northern Paiute people, was on a lecture tour in the Northeast.

Sarah, whose original name was Thocmetony (meaning “shell
flower”), was lecturing about the appalling conditions her people were subjected to while living on reservations, but you wouldn’t know that from the article. In a mocking tone typical of writings about Native Americans during this era, the reporter noted that since Sarah had abandoned her heathen ways, her people regarded her with suspicion. “They know that she has adopted the garb of the white sisters and it is even suspected that she uses soap and comb occasionally. To the genuine Piute, these things are inconsistent with the traditions of the race.” The conclusion: “She was regarded as a little queer by everybody.”

The reporter got at least one thing right: Sarah
was
regarded as a little odd by just about everybody. Though they might champion her cause, most white Americans didn’t think of the “Indian princess” as one of them, and the Paiutes sometimes saw her as a collaborator on the payroll of the U.S. government—a government that seemed to think the solution to the “Indian problem” was starvation and disease. Sarah just couldn’t win.

Sarah is best known for her 1883 autobiography,
Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Their Claims
, the first memoir written and published by a Native American woman. Her story begins: “I was born somewhere near 1844, but am not sure of the precise time. I was a very small child when the first white people came to our country. They came like a lion, yes, like a roaring lion, and have continued to do so ever since, and I have never forgotten their first coming.”