vickievictoriana:

tiny-librarian:

Princess Charlotte Augusta, Princess of Wales, was the only child of George IV and Caroline of Brunswick.

She tragically died at the age of 21, just after delivering a stillborn son. Had she lived, she would have become Queen of England upon the death of her father and there never would have been a Queen Victoria.

Yes, the poor dear was victim to the practices of an an idiot obstetrician who didn’t monitor her labor properly, thus rendering her beautiful boy dead upon arrival. She died a few days later from post-partum complications caused by the doctor & his malpractice in incorrectly delivering both stillborn and placenta. Prince Leopold, Victoria’s maternal uncle, lost his wife & son in one fell swoop thanks to a moron doctor. He mourned their deaths remarkably, but eventually remarried and became King of Brussels.

It should be noted that George III had nine children, and yet only the Prince of Wales (later George IV) had managed to produce a single legitimate heir by way of Princess Charlotte. Once Princess Charlotte was dead, the race was on between the other brothers to see who could produce a legitimate heir fastest (King George’s daughters were already past child bearing age, giving the royal family no lineage thanks to the madness of their father, who had failed to arrange or approve of husbands for his daughters).

King George III’s fourth son, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent & Governor of Gibraltar, was first to win the baby-making race, when (at the age of 50) he took Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld as his wife, and she gave him a daughter. Sadly, Prince Edward, died when his baby daughter wasn’t yet a year old. Yet, she went on to become Britain’s longest reigning monarch to date.

Thus, you never know who might end up on the throne. Just because William is the planned heir, doesn’t mean that’s how it will play out. No one ever expected the line of the monarch to come thru the Duke of Kent, not when he was the 4th son and 5th child of George III. That’s as far away from the throne as Beatrice or Eugenie. And yet, his daughter (that he didn’t even have until he was over 50) ended up being queen. And the longest reigning monarch ever.

The wild thing is that Princess Beatrice is the spitting image of young Victoria…I’m just sayin’ that you never know how things will turn out. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld would be the first to agree.