Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (18 page)

Consequently, as Sophia Dorothea remained behind the moated walls of Castle Ahlden, there was no queen of England during the reign of George I. He never remarried. Instead, his Hanoverian mistresses, primarily Melusine, acted as his hostesses.

On November 13, 1726, at the age of sixty, Sophia Dorothea died of a fever as a complication of liver failure and an accumulation of sixty gallstones. In her extremis she had scrawled a letter to George, cursing him from the grave. At the news of her death, the court of Hanover went into mourning, but George sent word to Germany that no one was to wear black, and he celebrated her demise by attending the London theater that night.

George destroyed her will, in which she had left all her property to their children, appropriating it for himself, and commanded all of her personal effects at Ahlden to be burned. He still despised Sophia Dorothea so much that he refused to allow her coffin to be interred,
and it sat around in a dank chamber for two months until his mistress, the superstitious Melusine, claimed to see the princess’s unfettered spirit flying about in the guise of a bird. Finally, George commanded Sophia Dorothea’s body to be buried in the family crypt at Celle.

On June 19, 1727, George was making one of his return visits to Hanover when he received a mail delivery. Upon reading his late wife’s ghostly missive he turned pale, recalling the prediction made decades earlier by a fortune-teller: that if he were in any way responsible for his wife’s demise, he would expire within the year. Collapsing with the words,
“C’est fait de moi
”—I am done for—he was dead within three days.

The new king of England (and elector of Hanover), George and Sophia Dorothea’s son, ordered Hanover’s records unsealed. He discovered 1,399 pages of love letters (representing only a fraction of those exchanged) between his mother and Count von Königsmark. George II opposed the ill treatment and emotional torture his father had inflicted upon his mother. Had Sophia Dorothea not predeceased her husband, her son would likely have liberated her from Ahlden and installed her as the dowager queen of England.

In any event, the Georgian apple didn’t fall far from the paternal tree. George II also took mistresses, although at first he did his best to respect the feelings of his wife by not flaunting his liaisons.

Few mourned the passing of George I, but Sophia Dorothea’s grave became a cult destination. Visitors still leave floral tributes and pity the soul who endured such a weighty punishment for her royal romance.

S
OPHIA
D
OROTHEA
OF
C
ELLE
AND
P
HILIPP
C
HRISTOPH
VON
K
ÖNIGSMARK
(1665–1694)

On March 1, 1688, a sophisticated Swedish mercenary, Philipp Christoph, Count von Westerwyk and Steghorn as well as Count von Königsmark, swaggered into Hanover’s Leine Palace. He made a low bow to the twenty-one-year-old, chestnut-haired, cherry-lipped Sophia
Dorothea and inquired, “Does Your Serene Highness remember that I was her page at the Court of Celle?” She was metaphorically swept off her feet.

Flooded with nostalgia for her lost and happy youth, Sophia Dorothea said nothing. But she smiled. They had indeed met before—years earlier, at her father’s court, where the count’s father, a war hero, had brought him for military training. Back then, the sixteen-year-old Philipp and fifteen-year-old Sophia Dorothea had enjoyed a puppy-love crush. The steamiest it had gotten at the time was when the pair spelled the words “forget me not” in the condensation on the palace’s 383 windows.

The Duke of Hanover, Ernst Augustus, offered the twenty-two-year-old count a job as a colonel of the guard, which landed him in the third rank of court hierarchy. Sophia Dorothea’s young brothers-in-law thought he was a totally cool guy—a soldier-courtier-adventurer who had traveled the world! With ample opportunity to excel in his two favorite skills—fighting and flirting—Königsmark was in his element, the very embodiment of a seventeenth-century gallant.

Soon after his arrival at court, he and Sophia Dorothea excited both admiration and envy at a costume ball. She was gowned as Flora, the goddess of spring. Königsmark was the ultimate Rosenkavalier in a suit of pink-and-silver brocade. All eyes were upon them as they danced the minuet, and, save one opinion, everyone was charmed by their elegance. What a lovely couple they made, with their clouds of dark hair, delicate features, and divine grace on the parquet. The lone dissenter was the blowsy Clara Elisabeth von Meysenburg, Baroness von Platen, the mistress of Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law, the Duke of Hanover.

Count von Königsmark remained in Hanover for two years. While there is no evidence to indicate that he and Sophia Dorothea were doing anything more serious than flirting, it was clear that they were captivated by each other. The count wrote romantic letters to Sophia Dorothea recalling their shared childhood memories—his having promised as a youth to serve her, body and soul, reminding her about all those moist “forget me nots” on the frosty windowpanes. Königsmark had never forgotten Sophia Dorothea, and he
wanted to be her hero, avenging the cruel mistreatment she suffered at her philandering husband’s hands. With characteristic recklessness, he wrote about challenging George Ludwig to a duel.

The count’s military appointment afforded the would-be lovers the proximity required to act upon their desires. But Sophia Dorothea was fearful of violating her marriage vows and tried to keep her old crush at arm’s length. And Baroness von Platen, monstrous in every way, coveted the dashing Swedish mercenary and detested Sophia Dorothea for having ensnared his fancy.

It was easy to understand what women saw in Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmark. His dark curly wig framed the face of a true sensualist. His manners were courtly and refined, which, for a career military man, was saying something. And his international reputation as a lothario may have been something of a titillation as well.

Baroness von Platen seduced Königsmark, even though it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, for the rakish Swede was ambitious—and the baroness, being the Duke of Hanover’s lover as well, had inside access to the corridors of power. But Königsmark’s true, albeit unrequited, passion was Sophia Dorothea. Denied the woman he really wanted and unable to evade the clutches of the one he didn’t, he was trapped in a romantic purgatory. In order to escape it, in January 1690 the count asked to join the expedition to the Pelopponese, under the leadership of the duke’s twenty-one-year-old son, Charles.

Around this time, Sophia Dorothea and her handsome mercenary began to correspond. Königsmark became ill in the Balkans and, in a letter from April 1690, begged Sophia Dorothea to cure him by sending a few encouraging lines. “I am on the verge of death now, and the only thing that can save me is a word from the incomparable princess.” He declared himself her slave.

The campaign was a disaster. The Hanoverians, including the young prince, were sliced to ribbons by the Turks. Of the eleven thousand men who sallied forth, Königsmark was one of the 130 who returned. By then, he had begun to fall genuinely in love with the princess. Developing an attack of the faithfuls, he dropped the Baroness von Platen cold. She swore to avenge her wounded ego.

After Königsmark decided to devote himself entirely to Sophia
Dorothea, the pair embarked on a full-blown romance, complete with clandestine trysts and secret signals. For example, a letter from Königsmark to Sophia Dorothea written in December 1692, reads, “I am shaved. I look fine, and one could sing ‘The knight is a conqueror.’ We will recognize each other by the usual signal, I shall whistle ‘The Spanish Follies’ [an aria by Corelli] from a distance.”

They employed a loyal confidante, the count’s sister Aurora, as a go-between. Every morning from Celle, the princess would entrust her precious correspondence to a faithful postilion or lackey, or to a traveler who had no idea he was carrying such incendiary material. Copious numbers of passionate letters were exchanged, nearly fourteen hundred of which still survive. The lovers wrote in code, ascribing nicknames or numbers to the principal players. But the correspondence was eventually intercepted by Baroness von Platen’s spies, who had little difficulty decoding the cipher. Sophia Dorothea’s mother, the Duchess of Celle, was “the Pedagogue,” whose sage advice was never heeded; her father was “the Scold.” George Ludwig, Sophia Dorothea’s husband, was “the Reformer.” Baroness von Platen was “the Fat Girl.” Königsmark was “Thyrsis,” a shepherd out of classical poetry, and Sophia Dorothea called herself the “Clumsy Heart,” which encapsulated her naive, reckless abandon. Another encryption technique the lovers used was the insertion of a prearranged group of letters before each syllable, similar to Pig Latin.

As a brief overview, insofar as historians have been able to piece together, their epistolary romance began with a note from Königsmark to Sophia Dorothea dated July 1, 1690, and ended at the close of 1693. Not all of the letters that have survived are dated. The correspondence began with a respectful tone, but after the affair was consummated, the tenor became much more florid. Both count and princess wrote as if they were characters from an epic romance of the era. Their early letters were sealed with the image of a heart on an altar lit by a ray of sunlight, emblazoned with the motto “Nothing impure can set me on fire.” But the later letters threw purity to the four winds, with a new, highly suggestive motto on the seal that read,
“Cosi fosse il vostro dentro il mio”
—“Thus might yours be inside mine”—accompanied by the image of two hearts, one enclosed inside the other.

Rarely was there a more neurotic pair of lovers. Sophia Dorothea’s passion became all-consuming, barely sparing a thought for anyone else, even for her two children, the only other people in the world for whom she may have had any affection.

Much of the time, the count was at war, posted to a front, whether near or distant. From her silken boudoir Sophia Dorothea fretted over the firing of every cannonball and fusillade. “Can it be that you think that I love someone other than you?” Königsmark wrote from Berlin on April 23, 1691. “No, I swear to you that after you I will never love again. It will not be very difficult to keep my word, for after having adored you, how could one find another pretty woman?…And how could it be that after having loved a Goddess, one could wish to look upon Mortals? No, in truth I have too good taste, and I am not one of those who would like to become a scoundrel. I adore you charming brunette, and I will die with these feelings, if you do not forget me, I swear to you that I will love you all my life. I expect no letters from you because I hope to be soon near you, and my only occupation will then be to show you that I love you madly, and that nothing is dearer to me than your favors….”

Two weeks earlier, the count had told Sophia Dorothea that he had a new roommate: a bear he had trained to tear his heart out if she should prove faithless. No pressure there. Needless to say, the intensity of Königsmark’s ardor for Sophia Dorothea was overwhelming. In April or May of 1691, he composed a poem to her, in which he confessed his “own perdition, [b]ecause I have dared to love what I should only have worshiped.”

There were two themes that the princess reiterated as she constantly reassured Königsmark of his place in her heart, averring, “I was born to love you.” More than once she penned some version of “…I have a passion which creates all the pleasure and all the misfortune of my life. It is the only one I can say I have ever felt and it will die with me.” One day she wrote, “Without you life would be intolerable and four high walls would give me more pleasure than to remain in the world.”

In this, she would eventually get her wish.

Each of the paramours was consumed by jealousy and fear.
Königsmark blamed Sophia Dorothea for his suffering, because he doubted her attachment to him, working himself into a lather at the idea of another man in her box at the theater, or the French ambassador gallantly offering his arm as she descended a staircase. Of course, he had no right to demand or expect her fidelity to him: She was a married woman. Nevertheless, envious even of her husband, Königsmark wrote Sophia Dorothea from his camp during the summer of 1692, “[W]henever I think that you might ever caress anyone but me, my blood curdles in my veins…. Oh God, if ever I saw you kiss anyone with as much passion as you have kissed me, and ride astride with the same desire, I never want to see God if it would not drive me mad.”

He had no reason to reproach Sophia Dorothea, but saw threats everywhere, asking her to send him a detailed account of her routine every day. She complied, foolishly ignoring the enormous risk posed by revealing such information.

Their romance was conducted against a backdrop of war, including Louis XIV’s expansionist incursions into Flanders and Germany. Königsmark fought for members of the allied forces intent on stopping him. The stakes were as high as they could be: life and death, if the lovers were to be discovered. Sophia Dorothea’s indiscretion would not be overlooked by either her husband or her in-laws, despite George Ludwig’s own infidelity. And the penalty for Königsmark could be dire. Additionally, posted at the front, the count faced the threat of death at the end of each salvo of artillery fire, in the curve of every saber. In one letter, Sophia Dorothea pleaded with her lover, “I beseech you not to expose me in the future to worries like this. Never leave me again, I beg of you, and if it is true that you love me, do yourself a favor and spend the rest of your life with me. How I hate King William [William III of England], who is the cause of all this. He gives me mortal pain by endangering all that I adore.”

The night before his men prepared to attack the French at Enghien, Königsmark wrote, “[W]hat makes me a coward is the fear of never seeing you again.” Sophia Dorothea replied, “I am charmed by everything you tell me. Rest assured that whatever accident might befall you, you would not be loved the less. My affection is equal to
any test, and even if only your head were left, I would always love you to distraction, and would count it a real pleasure to renounce the world in order to live with you wherever you please. However, I am very happy that you came back in one piece. Every bit of you is so handsome and so charming that none of it must be lost. Look after yourself, I beg you.”