Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Britain's Most Scandalous Queen

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

‘Who wants a girl with a personality?’ Historically, not the royals.Queen Caroline of Brunswick became Queen Consort of the United Kingdom in 1820, when her husband became King George IV. She was incredibly popular with the public, but unfortunately not so much with her husband, who had hated her from the start (the feeling was mutual).Today, Kate is joined by Ann Foster to tease apart all of the wild parties, pranks, adultery, accusations of adultery and actual mob violence involved in the life of this amazing woman.Ann is the author of 'Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Queen Without a Crown' and host of the podcast 'Vulgar History'.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click here to place your vote! Thank you! https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingThis episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click here to place your vote! Thank you! https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, betwixters, butwistee, twi, twixty, twi-twixters. Last year, you really pulled it out the bag for us. The bag, pockets, wherever you are storing the it, you pulled it out from there. We won the Listeners' Choice Awards at the British Podcast Awards last year. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? I certainly remember that. And I mostly remember that because none of us thought that that was ever, ever, ever going to actually happen. And it did.

And it was so fabulous because that, award came from you guys, but it also helped more people find us and it helped boost the show, and it just gave us top bragging rights around history hit. But what goes around, comes around, and the nominations are open once again. And now I'm feeling the pressure because it's ours to lose, isn't it? So we are hoping upon hope that you might just help us do this again. So if you have ever smirked, giggled, or even, God forbid, learnt something whilst listening to Betwicks the sheets, then you can vote for us for the Listeners Choice Awards at this year's British Podcast Awards. It'll take 30 seconds of your entire life at the most.

Just follow the link in the show notes, search for Betwixt and vote. And please remember to click on the confirmation email that I'll come through afterwards. Otherwise, it won't count. And who knows, maybe we could do it again. Maybe we could be a double winner. Wouldn't that be something right? I'll be the show. Hello, my lovely Betwixters.

It's me, Cade List. Welcome back once again to But Twix the Sheets. Fancy seeing you round here. To be honest, I'm fully expected you. I know what you're after. You dirty little historical pervert. Well, like I can talk, that's why I'm here too. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you,

this is an adult podcast, podcast by adults to other adults, but naughty things, an adulty way covering away, and all subjects, needs to be an adult too. Right, let's get on with it. It's July the 19th, 1821, and we are in. London Town. It's the party of the summer and we are on the guest list. Well, I mean, obviously we are. What party is complete without us? But more importantly than that, we are with the Queen herself. And we've all been primping and preening all morning, getting ready to show our best

selves off to the crowds. Oh, it's going to be a fabulous day. Only, it doesn't quite go the way that we think that it will go. You'd think that the Queen would get in, wouldn't you, to the King's coronation? Ha ha ha ha! ha! Ha! ha! No. No. No, you haven't been to a coronation of George IV before. And his poor Queen, Queen Caroline, our mate. Well, we're going to be telling what happened to her today. Hello and welcome back to Betwixte Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister.

Today we're talking about the marriage of George the 4th and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. It was not a happy pair of. He was unfaithful from the start, and he wanted a divorce almost instantly. So what better way to do that than to accuse her of cheating the absolute cheek of it? But why did they hate each other so much, and they really, really, really did? How did they even end up married? How much fun were Queen Caroline's Congo party lines?

And did she actually cheat? Did she really? I mean, I kind of hope that she did. But did she? Well, today I'm joined by the wonderful Anne Foster, author of Rueen. Rebel of the Regency, the scandalous saga of Brunswick, and she is going to tell all. Have you got your fans at the ready?

Well, then let's do this. Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Anne Foster. How are you doing? I'm so excited to be here. Well, fancy seeing you around these parts. Now, for anyone who doesn't know you, you are not only the host of the wonderful podcast,

cast vulgar history, but you have just written your very first book. How is it going? What's the title? So my book is called Rebel of the Regency, the scandalous saga of Carolina of Brunswick, Britain's Queen Without a Crown. And it's been so fun to have a book out in the world and get to talk to people about her. And everybody always says, well, I never knew this. And I thought, yeah, no, no one ever knew this. This is why I wrote a book about it. And now everybody knows about it. Caroline of Brunswick. I mean, there might be some people listening who are like, who? Pardon?

What? I'm not. There might be. There might be. There might be one or two people, yeah. So just for them, who's Caroline of Brunswick? So Caroline at Brunswick, she was the wife of George the fourth. I know you talked about him.

He needs a sound effect, but doesn't he? He needs. He does. He does. Some kind of shithead sound effect whenever. Some sort of like, yeah, some sort of like fart noise or something. Yeah, like a Darth Vader thing or like a George. theme tune, but not as cool. Right, we'll get to him. Continue. Who was currently? Yeah, no, you're

right. It's kind of like the Darth Vader song, but done in Kazooz or something like that. Just kind of like. That's perfect. Yes. Yeah. So George IV, he was the regent. Like the regency era, as it's known here, I think more often in Britain, you call it the Georgian era. But he was the regent from the regency era. And to my great delight, no one's ever really heard of him either. So fantastic. Oh, really? Interesting. I would say over here, there's so many King George's, people kind of mix up which is witch. Anyway, he was the crappy one. Anyway, so putting Carolina Brunswick sort of in history,

this is the era of like Jane Austen is out there writing books, Mary Shelley is writing books, Lord Byron is just terrorizing everybody. Like, that's the era in which she lives, and she's the Princess of Wales at this time, very briefly the Queen. And she's kind of the Princess Diana of her time in the sense of the public loved her. and the royal family hated her and it was a real

that was kind of the tension of her life was just the royal family hated her the public loved her and eventually it just all came to ahead with this sort of exciting trial

but we'll get to that so I don't know a huge amount about her I mean like you know I've said that there's lots of people who don't even know who she is but what I know of her is she's kind of wrapped up

and it's just a bit of a sad story it's just like oh she married a dickhead hated her. That's what I kind of know about it. But in your book, you're claiming back quite a lot of autonomy for Caroline, aren't you? Why did you feel the need to do that? I mean, is what we know about her all wrong? I think what you know about her, what you just said, is correct. I think that there's definitely a lot of sadness to her story. But I hope to do what I think I did with the book is to really just like sit there with her in the moment. Like you don't know how it's all going to end.

So she's a woman of great hopes and with great passion. You know, she didn't get married until she was 26 years old, which for that time period, and she was a princess. So she's from Braunschweig, aka Brunswick, which was a Dutchie in what is now Germany. She's from this really prestigious family, but she didn't get married for a long time. And that was partially because there were rumors that she was insane, which were largely because her parents kept her trapped away in my book. I compare her to like Rapunzel or something. Like they just didn't, her mother didn't want her to be interacting out in the world too much. Well, this doesn't sound good. Oh, exactly. So it's like the beginning of a very sad fairy tale.

So she's, and the reason her mother did this is because Caroline was so, for all these lovable reasons, honestly. She was so opinionated. She liked to have fun so much. Like she was very talkative. She was very energetic. And her mother just thought, oh, no, people aren't going to like this. They're not going to want to marry you if they see that you're this good time.

Sure. No, absolutely. Who wants a girl with a good personality? Hide away. Not me. Don't let anyone know about you. Yeah, exactly. So she's just such a fun.

loving person. And when I was researching my book, there's so many, you know, letters and diary entries and stuff showing how all she wanted to do is a teenager was just go to a ball, have a nice time. She was kind of boy crazy, but she wasn't really allowed to meet very many boys. So she wanted to have fun. And she was just pushing against this all the time. And her mother just hit her away when she was allowed to go to a ball. She had to sit in a corner and play cards with her governess. Like it was just relatable. She's somebody who's trapped away and all she wants to do is leave her small town and go off and have adventures. So this doesn't sound. sound like a very healthy childhood.

I mean, point me in the direction of a royal that had a healthy childhood for folks sake, do I mean? But this one sounds particularly controlling, nasty, dominated by the mother. And so she's kind of kept away. And then suddenly, miracle of miracles, when she's 26 years old, they get this letter from England saying, well, they were doing this until she was 26. 26. Yeah.

Just trapped away. And so what she's doing actually is she's just. reading novels because this is, you've talked about this in your podcast before. There's so many sexy novels coming out in this era, right? You've got like, Fannie Hill, all these things. And they were sexy for the time. I mean Fannie Hill, very, very sexy. But even like the, just your gothic fiction, ones that are now taught as like GCSE material in school. At the time, it was like, oh my God, oh my God, these are seriously racy books here. Yeah. And so I should mention one of the, actually, where I start my book and one of the more notorious things that she did is a teenager. At one

point she was fed up with not being allowed to go to the balls, not being able to do anything. And she hatches this scheme. I think that the sort of scheme you come up with when you're sort of a homeschool kid who reads a lot of novels where you think it's a good idea. So what she did is she pretends to be giving birth when she's 15 years old. She just, she gets she gets stage makeup. Like she puts makeup on. She had like a fake bump. And she just purchase like, oh, and she's screaming. And there's a ball happening at the time. And so the the servants go and get her mother from downstairs at the ball and she's just like I'm having a baby and her mother is thinking like but I never let you see anyone like what what is going on here can you join those dots up for me what

an earth is going on there what on earth is going on there is that she pretends she's having a baby and then at the final minute she's like ha ha I'm not having a baby and won't you think twice before keeping me from a ball mother oh so she made a scene yeah yeah so she's just kind of an oldie but a goody a kind of like if you won't let me go then I'm going to deliberately and publicly humiliate you and embarrass you. Exactly.

That's a move. No, it's a move and it really shows throughout her whole life what she likes to do and she's backed into a corner like she will make a scene that is what her number one weapon of choice is.

I like it. Exactly. She's got, this is the thing that people need to know it's like she's such a fun person. I loved reading about her and I love telling her story. There's so many just goofy things she does.

she's hilarious. Anyway, this does not work well. Her mother just doubles down her efforts to keep her trapped away. But eventually, she's 26 years old, and they suddenly, out of nowhere, seemingly get a letter from the Prince of Wales in England saying, like, oh, he's chosen you to be his wife. Can you come over to England and be Princess of Wales? Wow. I mean, that's a hell of a letter to arrive with just the normal circular, isn't it?

Yeah. Just surprise, we've chosen you. And I should mention that he is her cousin. but nobody's going to be surprised at that. No, the royal family at this time. Like, who are your options of wife? It's like, well, here's your family tree. Like, please choose from here.

And which one are you going to marry? So they're cousins. And because her mother, this like dominating force is the, is a princess of Great Britain. It's Princess Agusta. And so Caroline is just like, oh my God, I get to leave. I get to go to England. I get to leave not just to my hometown,

but leave this house I've been trapped in. I get to go there. George who? Who cares? Just get me out of here. Exactly. She's like, sounds great. Don't care anything about it. I'm like, let's go. Let's head over there. Let's go.

And so George sends sort of, he sends like an attache over to just kind of get her ready to travel. And she's been trained in English and things like that. But he chose her name pretty much at random. Basically looking at the family tree, he was told like, you need to marry a German princess. George Leigh, meaning mine mode it. He was hugely indebt. debt. He was famously he liked to. Yeah, let's have a talk about George Boy or Prinney, as you call him, in the book. Because you have to imagine like 26 year old Caroline who's just like chomping at the

bit to be out of this suffocating regime and she wants to party. She wants to have a good time. She's clearly quite a big personality. And so you can see why she'd be dead excited, but what she probably doesn't know is who the person behind the letter is. So give us a rundown on George IV. Okay, so yes, Prini, I call him in the book. First of all, whenever anyone, I think, this is what I recommend. If someone is writing a book about English history, if someone had a nickname in the time, go with it. Because everybody has the same name.

Everybody has the same name. So thank God he was known as Prinney. So I call him that in the book. So he was a nightmare. He was spending so much money, just constant house renovations, gambling, going down to the brothel, just drinking, like just everything. you can imagine like a spoiled prince might be doing. Like the worst spoiled prince. When all those stuff went down, I was just like, oh, this is the air of Prinney.

So he's just the worst. He has a string of mistresses, all of whom he abandons horribly. He actually, crucially, he fell in love with his Catholic widow named Mariah Fitzherbert. And actually they kind of got married. Hello. How do you kind of get married? Well, because she's a Catholic and the heir to the throne. is not allowed to marry a Catholic.

So if he was going to marry her, he'd have to get permission from the king and all these dispensations. And he just didn't do any of that. He just kind of yoint a priest off the street into a bedroom and it was just like, hey, marry us. And so it's, this is what I mean. Oh, kind of married.

Right. Kind of married, but not, but kind of not married. Not married enough for people to be able to not dispute this. There's a lot of wiggle room there, isn't there? There is. And also it's a secret marriage. because if Parliament found out that he had married a Catholic, he would be disinherited. He wouldn't be the next king anymore.

So he mostly married Maria Fitzherbert because she was Catholic and this is how he could get her to sleep with him is pretty much what just happened. Oh, he sounds delightful. He is the worst person. If you've ever been to Brighton, there's the royal family. Yeah, that's his house. That was, if you see just sort of the lavishness, the sort of the decor. poor, like, this is just like his brain spewed out this kind of. But you can imagine how much he's spending on renovations if he's like,

my house has to have 450 gold dragons, which is what Brian has something like that. So he is spending money left for incender. He's so in debt, shocking amounts in my book. I did my best to sort of like take, you know, pounds from that time to US dollars today. And it's, you know, it's in the neighborhood. Millions. It's millions. Yeah.

It's like tens of millions of dollars. It's more money than any peasants like us could even dream of. It's that kind of money. Exactly. And the people of that time, speaking of peasants, like this is a horrific time in English history. Like you've got the worst crops ever. You've got these weird weather events are happening. You've got like the hot on the heels of the French Revolution, by the way, which is like very much within living memory.

It's like 20-ish years before that when they were lopping the heads off people for having too much. And there's this maniac spending like the national debt of Spain on his wardrobe. Yeah. And because that's what he spends it on, right? It's on houses, decor, his wardrobe, mistresses. And he's just generally wandering around being irritating to everybody. There's a point at which both he and he has various brothers who are also pretty awful. They're cut off from almost every money lender in Western Europe.

Like they're going to other countries to try and get people. People know that they're not good for it. I mean, how much do you have to be spending for like? Like, you know, as a member of the royal family to be cut off from every money lender. That's just an obscene amount of money. No, people need to understand how preposterous this is. And the only way he can see that he could get more money, I'm getting an increase in his allowance because he's obviously not going to get a job,

is if he gets married to a German princess, parliament will increase his allowance. So this is where he's just like, you know, throws a pin on a glow on a metal. Okay, this one, sure. So he chooses her fairly randomly. Why do they, why is this plan cooked? up of like, we'll pay off you debts if you marry a German princess. Like, how's that going to help anybody for him to do that? It's mostly because there's no heir to the throne. So George the 3rd and Queen Charlotte had a gazillion children. Like, you know, they kind of did what they were

supposed to do, but none of these sons have gotten married. And they need, they need to start having a new generation of children. And the reason none of these sins have gotten married is because of what I said before, the king has to give permission. And they're like, well, what if I just live comma law with this actress I just met. Yeah. And so they're just kind of getting their needs met without needing to be married. It's sort of a blackmail against Prenny just saying, like, please, for the love of God, just get married.

Like, if you do... I suppose it's like a... It's not just to get married. It's that will you please behave yourself? Yes. Calm down. Do the job that you're supposed to do. And if you remember as well, is dad still around at this point, right?

Like, his dad's unwell, but he's around. Exactly. Yeah. George the third is. He's kind of like his phases of... This is George the third from like... the madness of King George, et cetera. So he has periods where he's ill and periods where he's better.

But at this point, he's still basically with it. And he is such a frugal sort of person. Yeah. He just likes to tend his garden. You know, like he and Queen Charlotte, they don't even put sugar in their tea. Like they're so just kind of like in terms of royals. Like they're not spending money like Prenne is. And they just want to get him in line and he chooses a wife.

He's like, fine. I'll marry this random person. One of the reasons that he chose Caroline and he was assisted in his choice by his mistress of the time. And his mistress of the time, who's Lady Jersey, she is the sort of figure who she's so powerful. Prini loves a dominating woman in every respect of that. He loves sort of like a full-figured, like older woman who will absolutely dominate him. And so his mistress knows, she thinks, well, if he has to get married, it can't be somebody who's going to challenge me, the mistress. It has to be a very naive, sheltered young Princess Diana type.

And so they choose Caroline because she's been sequestered from the world. I think, oh, she'll be naive. She'll be easy to manipulate. Like she'll just kind of pop out some babies and that's it. Oh, God, she has no idea what she's wandering into at all, does she? Not at all. Not at all. Even though sort of tantalizingly, somebody sends her an anonymous letter while she's preparing,

where they just say, like, just so you know, Prinney's a piece of shit. He has this mistress. There's like, yeah, there's so many anonymous letters throughout. It was very thrilling to me. Every time one of those popped up. That sounds really modern, doesn't it? Of like, you know, like I had to send his new girlfriend a DM on social media just to let her know.

That sounds very, very modern to me, like getting that notification. And as always, you probably go, oh, no, I'm sorry it's just somebody being horrible. And it's not. No, no. It was somebody looking out for her absolutely. Damn it. So of people who know about Carolina Brunswick from my research. one of the things it's known about her is there is still sort of a rumor that she did not bathe, that she was a smelly person.

I was going to move on to that one. Yeah. Where did that story come from? So this story comes from at this time where the attis she comes over to Brunswick to prepare her to, you know, become Princess of Wales. And he realizes that she's feral. Like she's been growing up, cut off from society. And like, no one has taught her basic hygiene because she's just been sort of like doing her. And also it's like, for me, you know, like during lockdown, it's like, was I washing my hair every day? No, it's like, who's going to see me? I'm just in my house all the time. So gently, this man explains to her, like, well, here's the expectation in England of how often you should wash. And she's like, great.

And from then on, she did. That's interesting. Okay. I suppose that all, like, again, speaks to this weird secluded childhood that she's had, right? They just basically locked her in a tower and then tried to prove. present her to somebody and then they're wondering like why she hasn't done her hair nicely. Yeah, exactly. It's like, of course she hasn't. But she does.

Yeah. What we're saying is like, you know, there was a moment where perhaps she wasn't as, you know, clean as she could have been and but she did change that pretty quick. Exactly. From then, from then on no one ever and a lot of people hated her throughout her life, no one ever again criticized her hygiene. So it was just this one. Interesting.

It was this one moment and then he, She was told about it and then everything's fine. Which what's interesting is if you're looking for evidence of Caroline now, there's not a lot if you're going around London. But what there is is she lived in the house for quite a while in Greenwich and the house like it's been demolished. But what is still there's one wall, like a brick wall from that house. And she had this outdoor bathing area because she loved baths. And what there is is this leftover plunge bath. It's sort of like a little steps down like below ground.

So it's like the one thing that she's left behind is a bathtub. Like if you want to know how often did this woman bathe? Yeah, she actually seems to bathe a lot. She loved a bath and good for her. She did actually one of the reasons she loved a bath. Everybody did then. You know, everyone's going to bath, you know, taking the waters. Yeah, it's very fashionable.

Yeah, yeah. So she took to it. So that's kind of these are the two things. If someone's heard of Carolina Brenzwick, they know that she maybe didn't take baths and she was maybe fat. Those are the two things people ever. heard both. Yeah. And she was and like, that's fine.

But in that time, if you're thinking about the Regency era, if you think about any Jane Austen film or adaptation, you see like Anya Taylor Joy or Gwyneth Paltrow in these kind of long, draping gowns, looking lovely, you know. But if you think about a more full-figured woman wearing those dresses, like it's going to cling, like the Empire waistline. Like it looks a lot sexier. if you've got a bust.

Was she a big girl then? Or is it because the thing is, it's like when you hear stuff like history and you hear sort of stories about how people are bigger, like I always think for myself, yeah, but that's like 18th century big. That's like, which to us would probably still be incredibly small. Is that like the thing of like, you know,

the early 2000s when we were supposed to believe that like Britney and Kate Winslet were overweight? And now we look at it. I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? So when I hear stuff like that of like Caroline Brunswick was like massive. I'm like, what? What does that mean? Like a UK size 10, probably? I would say she was like a short woman and she was a chesty woman.

So I'm thinking like Nicola Cochlin. Short and stacked. Okay, yeah. Is the vibe. I think this is the vibe. And if you picture Nicola Cochlin wearing a Jane Austen style dress, she would look absolutely gorgeous. But it would be a very, it would be a sexy. Well, her in Bridgeton, right?

Like it's a sexier look than like someone who's more thin. And this is like, oh my gosh, she has bosoms. People were shocked. Like, yeah, she is a human with a body. So she was fuller figured and she like. liked to show off her cleavage as a lot of people with great tits like to do. Okay, so she's got a good rack and she's not scared of it. And she also loved her ankles.

She liked to have a hemline that's just a little high enough to show off her little feet and ankles. And this is, in terms of the fashion of this era, the Georgian era, those were the trends. Like the it girls, like Emma Hamilton and people are dressing this way. But because she's the Princess of Wales, it's expected she'll dress so much more modestly. So she's dressed, she's trendy. And people are saying like, it's shocking, it's shocking. Like, well, every woman walking down the street looks like this. But because she's the Princess of Wales and because she's very chesty, it's extra scandalous.

I'll be bar with Anne after this short break. Tell me about when she actually meets George when this fated meeting takes place. Because like she's in Germany, getting all excited. Now she's, you know, like having baths and stuff. And God knows what he's doing in the UK, surrounded by his actual wife and various other mistresses and he can't have been excited about the prospect of this. So like what happens when they actually meet?

The meeting is, I call it in my book and I will say it again here, the worst first meeting between British royals since Henry VIII met Anne of Cleves. I'm just about to say worse than Henry the 8th of Anne of Cleaves? Like tell me what happened. I would say on par maybe with 108 me. Holy moly. Very similar.

So Caroline Brunswick, she arrives in London and everyone's psyched. Everyone's so happy because they've had George III and Queen Charlotte have been king and queen. You see it kind of today. Like people love the young royals because he'd had an elderly queen or an elderly king for so long. So Caroline comes to town. Everyone's excited. Like there's going to be a royal wedding. Like who's not excited about it?

Yeah, we did get excited about that. You know, there's crowds on the street watching her carriage, like arriving, like going to St. James Palace, which is where kind of all the everything was happening there. at that time. People are cheering her on the street. And it's crucial to know that everybody, Prini was so unpopular. He, like, the tabloids had just kind of, they were just kind of becoming a thing. And they were always drawn caricatures of him and making fun of him for understandable reasons. He was horrible. And doing all these things about, he, everyone hated him. So he arrived to meet her. Like, he saw that the crowds were cheering. And he's just like, wait a minute. She's going to be more

popular than me. I just want a little wife to like tuck away and have some babies. So he's, you know, his masculinity is threatened because people love her. He's also drunk constantly. Yeah. You can look up what you drank in a day and it's, it's deranged. It's like bottles of sherry before breakfast. It's just a crazy amount of alcohol. He loved cherry, cherry liqueur. So he's drunk, but just like whenever I mention him, like just know that he is. And he kind of staggers into the room. and he looks takes one look at her and then he just says like bring me a brandy and walks out of the room he doesn't even say hello wow that's not good that's that's the first meeting of them and caroline to her credit like whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do she always says what's on her

mind and she says like oh he's not he's not as handsome as he was in his paintings is he always like this and they have dinner together with a family and she just when she feels that she's being disrespected, like she will stand up for herself. And so she does that at this dinner. It's a real sort of like real housewives sort of vibe. Like she will just, she will say what's on her mind. She'll say what. So this dinner just cements in Prinney's mind, I hate this woman. And it summons in her mind like, I hate this man. But so marriage is happening. They can't call it off. They get married. Yeah. It's going to happen now. It's a juggernaut in motion, isn't it? And, but I mean, from this instant, they hate each other for the rest of their lives.

And the wedding itself is... So bad. It's horrible. The wedding is horrible. He, like, he's so drunk. He has to be carried down the aisle, basically, in the arms of two of his brothers. Like, drag in there. Brilliant.

He's weeping. He's weeping as the wedding, like, gazing off just behind Caroline as his mistress. And he's just like, oh, like, staring at her. Like... Jeez, man. Oh, that's bad. It's terrible. But Caroline, she's got this gorgeous silver dress.

There's a bunch of portraits of it. And then she goes and stands at the... the window. Everyone cheers. The public from minute one was just like, this is our girl. This is the people's princess and we will ride or die for her. She seems great. So they love her. They hate him. They consummate their marriage. Caroline writes later that their wedding night, he just collapsed in the fireplace. But they did manage to it at least once because they had a baby, right? Yeah. Yeah. So crucially, they consummate their marriage. They have a baby so you can't and knoll it, right?

Like, this marriage has happened. It's on the books now. But yeah, by the time she has the baby, like nine months later, they're living in separate, well, I mean, living in separate households, a lot of royals did that anyway. But these two almost never see each other again. They're complete living, completely separate lives. She has his daughter, Princess Charlotte. And she also, she's got such good instincts.

She knows that the royal family hates her. Like Prini hates her. Queen Charlotte hates her. Why do the rest of the royal family hate her? because I can like Prinney is just a lot unto himself. He's just a prick. He didn't like anybody. And he's just going to resent her because he's being made to do this.

He wants to be with his actresses and aristocrats. Why did the royal family hate her? I do want to mention that King George III loved her. He thought she was a great time. He was right. The other is, well, Prinney was so powerful. The thing is that he was the Prince of Wales. The king was elderly and having health problems.

It's the sort of thing where Prinney hated her. everybody wanted to be in Prenny's Good Book, so they just kind of followed his lead and also ostracized her. So he was kind of not the king of the castle, but the most popular guy. Like everyone just kind of did what he wanted, which was to just isolate her psychologically. Like she had,

she later wrote like the time period, the like postpartum time period. She's like this, I would never wish that upon anybody. Like if someone said, you can live your life again, she said, I wouldn't because that time period was so devastating for her.

It was so awful. But at the same time, she just had this instinct she knew the royal family hates her but she goes outside and she's cheered people love her and so some part of her

clearly realizes like that's the power she has the royal family at this point doesn't realize they need to court public opinion they're still stuck in as kind of like Henry the 8th

like sort of vibe It's starting to see the Diana comparisons very much so the royal family is just kind of like well we're the king and queen like we don't need to care

what people think but these newspapers have relentlessly been making fun of them Caroline takes out her pram baby Princess Charlotte. She goes for a walk and people go nuts. People love her. And she realizes, and she's even more sympathetic now that she's a mother. And people know that she's being mistreated because just like now, like courtiers and servants are like leaking stories to the newspaper.

So everybody knows she's being treated horribly. Everybody is on her side. And the royal family is like, well, we're the royal family. We don't need to have PR. We don't need to give her aside. We're the royals. Like everyone is going to respect. No one does.

And like you said, the front. Revolution so recently happened, working class people, poor people are set up and they want somebody to rally behind and they see the royals hate her, so we're going to love her. She's going to become our figurehead because that will piss up the royals, basically. Is it true that Prinney banned her from his coronation? On what grounds? We're going to get to that. Okay.

But the coronation is quite a way off because they get married towards the late 1700s, and he is the regent for at least a decade after that. You know what? That'll be the grand finale. He's the regent for quite a while. The king is not doing well. Brinney kind of takes over. He gets this control.

And as soon as he gets this control, he has more power and he isolates Caroline. Even more treats her, even more cruelly. But this is where I feel like I want people to know, like, yes, she's in this terrible situation, but she is relentless. She is just like, wants to have a good time. She finagle.

She's able to get. at her own household. So this is where she goes to live in Greenwich in the remains of this house where there's a wall and a bathtub. And she's just throwing parties. She starts almost her own alternate, and I mean alternate like alt, like cool royal court where she's inviting all the like writer like Lord Byron is coming over Sir Walter Scott. Like people are going over to her house because it's a good time. She throws the best parties. There's stories of effective like conga lines breaking out. Like she's just like, it's the place to be. She's having such a good time separate from Prinney. So she's living this beautiful life in Greenwich. She starts growing vegetables. She sells them

at market. Like she's, for the first time in her life, she's, if you say like ADHD coded, there's a lot of evidence for that in this like she takes up so many hobbies. She starts doing like carving busts. She starts doing like decoupage basically. She's just like she loves a hobby. But She's having a nice time, like separate from Prinney, doing her own thing. But then when he becomes a regent, he starts cracking down on how much fun she's having. So it's just vindictive and nasty, isn't it? He's, all he does is he sees this fun-loving, sweet women who all of her friends adore her. Like when I was researching, you find just writing from time after time, people meet her.

And a lot of them are initially startled. The same way you might be startled if you met, like, Dolly Parton, where you just, oh, oh, this person is serving up a lot of look. This is like, what is happening? And then he realized, like, this is the sweetest person I've ever met. I will go to war for her. This happens time and time again. People just love her.

But some of the people who love her are men. And she, like in her child, she is boy crazy. So she flirts a lot. She loves to flirt with every man she meets. And then pretty thinks, ooh, this is evidence. Maybe I can divorce her on adultery grounds. So he tries to find evidence. Pot calling kettle black, I think.

I mean. He's literally. already married to someone else. Ridiculous thing to say. It's preposterous, yeah, because this is like there's not no fault divorce. So for him to get rid of her, he would need to prove that she was adulterous. And so he has like he puts spies in her household. He's paying off servants to try and get evidence.

He never gets any evidence that she's having an affair with anybody. But she is behaving. She's wearing these dresses. She likes to show off her great tits. She's like flirting with men. She runs off with them privately into rooms. What's happening there? we don't know.

But I kind of hope she was having an affair. I kind of hope she was. I really hope she was. But the evidence he eventually has is she likes to collect children. She likes to take in wards. Prini is keeping her from her daughter. This is like the one weapon he has. And she's so maternal.

She's so loving. She just starts taking an unfortunate children. Like she sort of, I do call it a child collection and people did at the time, which a lot of people found strange. Like, why is she collecting? children, but she kind of started to school. And then Prini thought, oh, well, maybe these are her illegitimate children. And the thing is she did make jokes, like, oh, this is, like, she would say this is my child. And so she had this kind of dry sense of humor where she would say things

sarcastically. And then the spies would write like, oh, she just said that she, she had this child. It's like, she's making a joke. She's come up. Anyway, so he does an investigation to try to prove that she had given birth to one of these children. It's called the delicate investigation. eventually the public finds out about it. And it all ends when the mother of this child shows up to say, actually, I'm the mother of this child. And here's the birth certificate. Right. Okay. Well, there we go, then. There we go. Shut up. Case closed. Next. Basically, so at this point, things are so unpleasant for her. All she wants to do is just get away.

And eventually she's able to. And this is, this is for me, my favorite part of her life story, where she just gets to fuck off to the Mediterranean and just have a nice time. She's paid off by the government to just leave England. And she's like, fine. I will leave and, well, actually, they give her permission to go back to Bronschweig. She stays there for two weeks. And then she's just like, going to Italy, see you chums. Like she just heads off. And this is where she, she hooks up with this extremely handsome Italian. I'm called Pergammy, who people describe his mustache was so elegant. He's like six foot something tall. She's this little, little tiny woman. There's caricatures of them both where it's just he's handsome and he just does everything for her he kind of like

runs her household they go on the i call it sort of like a cruise around the mediterranean she's visiting archaeological sites that was such a trendy thing at the time you know pompe had just been discovered and things like that so she's just visiting site after sight with this man who was probably her lover and just like having the time of her life because if you remember this little girl and woman trapped in this house in germany alchance who was travel and have adventures and finally she gets to and she's just like prunny's paying for it all and she's just like loving life was she having an affair with the italian almost definitely i can't definitely good excellent i can't think that she wouldn't have been

there's so many examples of like they they travel together like they stay in the same room like when they're on a ship they like put a tent on the deck and they're staying in the tent together like yeah yeah they're having an affair yeah definitely i'm good for her quite frank Honestly, yes. Please, like she's married to Prinney for all this time. Like, I want her to get sexual satisfaction from somewhere. Yeah, get laid properly at least once, we hope. Please, please. So she's having this amazing time in Italy. She's really obsessed with, this is around just after Napoleon died. And so he'd been on the aisle of Elba. And so she goes on a trip to Elba to like see Napoleon's house. And because she's a hilarious person, she runs inside and she wants to take a souvenir. She takes his billiards queue just as a, Napoleon. is Billy U.S. Q. She's just a good time. Time of her life, honestly. Does the coronation happen when she's in Italy getting stuffed by an Italian? The coronation, so while she's in Italy, she gets word that the king has died. Prinney is now the king. And the way that succession works is that the instant that the previous monarch dies, the new person is the monarch. And she is therefore

the queen because she's his wife. He didn't manage to get rid of her. And so this is where he he is determined that she will not be recognized as queen. She will not be queen. She will not get a crown. So he puts off the coronation just to make sure that she won't be at it. Wow. And she hears about this. And he says the minute she steps foot back on British soil, he's like, I'm going to proceed with divorce hearing against her.

And she's like, want to bet? Great. And so she comes back because she's like, I'm the queen. This is this is happening. You can't stop me. This is I'm your wife, much as we both hate it. So she comes back to England and he proceeds with, it's called a bill of pains and penalties. It's the sort of thing where a rich person wants to do something, but there's not a law that lets him do that. So he just kind of finds a lot. We're going to make it up. Kind of lets him do that. So she's going to be tried in the House of Lords. Again, it's for adultery. Prenny is hoping that this will end the marriage, so she won't be queen. And then he can marry someone younger at the. At this point, their daughter, Princess Charlotte, has tragically died. She got married. She died in childbirth.

And this means there's no air to the throne. Because they didn't have any of the children. They all have a lot of illegitimate children, but there's no heir to the throne. So Prinney wants to dump Caroline, marry some young, fertile, new German princess and have a child. So this trial, he refuses to have the coronation until after this trial has happened because he hopes it will go his way. And he's putting her on trial for adultery, which, I'm very pleased she was doing it, but she was definitely doing it. I think she was probably doing it.

But like what evidence do you have? But prove it. Prove it. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And so they have this trial. And this is where the people, this is the closest, I think, that England ever came to a French Revolution type moment.

Because the people are showing up for her. Like they've loved her this whole time. They see that she's being wrong. They're like, she is our queen. If you go to the VNA, they have a souvenir jug there that's like, Queen Caroline, like people. There's merch, like everybody was supporting her. And one of the mean avenues of support at this time is the first time in British history that women, working class women, rallied together to do political action. Wow.

And this was they got together. They all were white as a sign of her innocence, which I feel like is kind of a precursor to the suffragettes a few decades later. But they took to the streets, they were, when she came back to town, people climbing onto roofs of houses, like people with carriages. just would pay so the people could sit on top of the carriage to watch her go by. Like we're talking like 20,000 people are just cheering her coming into the city. Like the public who've always loved her, suddenly this is where the royal family realized it's like, oh, this is actually a powerful weapon that she's been cultivating all these years. So she has the trial.

It's a farce. Prini has paid off all these Italian people to lie about what they saw because he paid them. Right. Yeah. Yeah. whatever. The people are rioting every night. Like it's just, it's absolute chaos. There's wow, like actual riots. Actual riots. There's the, there's not police that doesn't, that wasn't invented yet, but they bring the military. Some of those, there's one military, like,

some of them are like, there's mutinies happening because they support her instead of him. And you love this detail. And wow. You love this detail. There's, there's evidence I found of sex workers. We're saying, like, if you don't support Caroline, we will not fuck you. Oh, yes. Well done. Oh, I love that. They're on her side. Like, everyone is on her side. And this is the thing. This is where I was researching it. And I'm just like, this is, oh my gosh, like, like literal riots. Like people are like trying to burn down Prunny's house. Like it's everywhere. And this is where how close this gets to a full revolution type moment is evidence because eventually the House of Lords does this vote. and the vote, it's close.

Like there's not enough of a majority to pass or for it to fail. But the prime minister sees, like, if they annul this marriage, they will probably, there will be a French Revolution moment. The public has been so cultivated. And this is, I should mention, a few years earlier, the prime minister, Spencer Percival, had been assassinated. Like, there's, this is in the air. Yeah, they're not fucking about.

No, this is like, they're not. Like, these are people who are prepared for violence. And so actually, although Pruny's, like the Bill of Pains and Penalties could have passed, he could have ended this marriage. The Prime Minister knew, like, the country will devolve into civil war because people love her so much. And so they just kind of tuck it away and they say, inconclusive, no result. She's still the queen. Don't worry about it. And then people, can you imagine the celebration when effectively she's declared innocent?

Like, not just in London, but like you hear about, like, in Glasgow, like all these places, people are just like, firewerewage. effigies. Wow. They go to the newspapers that supported her. They're cheering. They go to the newspapers that didn't support her. They try to burn them down. Like, people are just, I love the mob of this time

are my favorite supporting characters in this book because they give no shit. They're really wild up about this. This is the thing. I'm just like, wow, people don't know this story, but like this was a serious, like, almost civil war. Like, they love her. And I love the fact that she was definitely getting laid.

that she was just best out there just like, no, totally, totally innocent. Go ahead, mob. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, totally. I'll be back with Anne after this short break. So this L.N. She's still the queen.

Strenees, disgust. And eventually he's been king for at least a year now. And he's like, okay, I'm going to have a coronation. His whole thing is he's like, I want my coronation to be bigger than Napoleon's. I'm going to, he's spent, well, he's been spending all this money his whole life. He's like, this is going to be a blowout. You're never going to see.

He gets this like velvet, like robe with a train and it's got like gold stars on it. Like he's just like you've never spent more money in a coronation in your life. And Caroline, not invited. So she, she sends various letters saying like, okay, so what time should I be there? Okay, so what's the dress code? I was thinking of wearing this dress. What's the vibe? Yeah, exactly.

Just like, is there valet? parking or what do we do? And she keeps getting letters back just being like, no, like, you're done about you can't come. But at this point, like, she's got some of Prini's friends even, like, are on her side now and they're saying, well, I have a ticket. Do you want me to give you my ticket? And she's like, no, like, I don't think you. But I'm going to go as the queen. I don't want to sit in the stand. I'm not a plus one. So then Prini hired, he knows she's going to try to crash this coronation. He hires, like, knuckle boxers to be bouncer. at the doors.

She gets, just because he knows she's going to come. Which she does in grand style. I believe she shows up. She's wearing purple. Making a scene. She, yes, this is the thing. Every time she is back in a corner, she's going to make a scene. So she shows up, she walks right to the, and there's crowds, you know.

And she goes to the door and she is not let in. So then, it's Westminster Abbey, right? There's like a thousand doors. So she goes to the one door. She's not let in. So then she kind of like runs over to the next door, not let in. She gets in a carriage, goes around to the, and then it looks so pathetic. Like it looks sad that she's not being let in.

Eventually she just kind of goes back home in shame. Fuck, wow. Oof, dear. So this is, and Prini has this coronation, and it's a huge hit. All the, it's a huge hit. It's the same way people would watch a royal wedding, or I don't know, Charles's coronation. People would watch it and rewatch it. There's not TV yet.

So every theater in London is putting on a play that's just reenacting his coronation. Not her, but the actual coronation. And so she's just at this point, she's had various health problems her whole life. This is part of where she takes the water. She's bathing a lot for therapeutic reason. She's got, we don't know. Some sort of autoimmune condition, clearly, like she has sort of like, when she came back from Italy to England in the first place, there's a lot of times they had to stop and pause because you're going in a carriage over the Alps.

Like this is a pretty major. And if you have problems with, you know, arthritis and digestion and stuff. So she's had various health concerns. And shortly after the coronation, like a couple weeks later, she takes to her bed. She's dying. She of these various clinicians. Do we have any idea what of? It was probably some sort of stomach cancer, probably.

It was some sort of intestinal thing. Although it didn't help that at the time medicine was crap. Like, it's just kind of like, well, the leeches aren't helping. will take this like laudanum, which is, you know, like opium. Yeah. Which, and one of the side effects of any sort of opiate is that is constipation. So if you have already sort of digestive trouble and you're just taking constant opium, it's just adding to that. So when does she, when does she pass away and how old was she?

She was 53 when she passed away. And it was just a few weeks after the coronation. And she was, okay, as her biographer, devastating to me personally, but this is such a boss move. she knew she was dying. The doctors came and told her she was dying and she was just like, okay, and she tells her trusted servants, burn my papers. No one, no one can read these.

It's too scandalous. This is where it gets me a time machine. I know. How often do we hear that as historians? The family came in and burnt the letters. They burnt the letters because they were too scandalous. Like, I totally understand it. Like, if I knew I was dying,

I would wipe my internet history like immediately. But give it 300 years, people would be like, no. And what's funny about Caroline? Mine too is for a lot of her life a weapon that she kind of had against Britney, which she claimed that she had written her memoirs, and she probably did. She had so many friends who were writers, and she was always getting advice from them about how to write. She traveled around with a trunk that sat on it, like the memoirs of the Princess of Wales.

So her life and her own words, I would kill to see. Probably just started page one. Ha, ha, ha. I did shag the Italian. Yeah, yeah, list of my lovers. All those guys back in Greenwich, I was fucking them too. I was fucking, absolutely having sex with them. of that baby. Yeah, exactly. So she's all of her papers are destroyed. And then, and then just sort of like is the perfect ending to this story of this woman who was adored her funeral. At this time, I don't know if you still do this. When somebody very major passes away, there's sort of a procession through the city. And at this time, like, it's just on the heels of this trial where this, the rife were happening, people who are dying. So the prime minister decides, like, we can't have a procession through town. Bekins.

there will be a riot. The riot. Yeah. So they're like, okay, well, let's process kind of around the town because you have to get from her house and you have to get to the Thames. You have to get like to a barge because her remains are being sent back to Germany. And so they decide they're going to do this circuitous route, but people find out about it. And then they, the people, this mob, they find where the carriage is and they force them like to go back through the town. Like they. Wow.

The funeral procession does evolve into a riot. Two people die. Jesus, that is a riot. My God. The two people die because it's not the National Guard, but it's something like that of the time. So the soldiers come and they're squaring off against these working class people because that's who her fans are. And they want to celebrate her life. They want to see this procession. There's this face off, gosh, what's it called? What's the park that's like right by Buckingham Palace?

Hyde Park? Hyde Park. Yes. So the procession is forced to go through Hyde Park and there's a big face off between kind of her supporters and the army. Shots are fired and two men do in fact die in this. So it's just kind of like, of course, of course her life. Like it's a scene. She's dead and she's still causing a scene. And the people are just rioting. They love her. So they follow her coffin all the way down to and then it sails down to Branche. I can honestly even there, the people in Germany have been told like prepare. there might be riots. So they kind of enter her at like midnight because they're hoping that maybe it'll be too late for people there to write. But they still do.

The crowds show up there for her as well. They snuck a riot and she is. Loved her. And this is what's really interesting to me is because she was the main character like break the internet of her time and then completely forgotten. Well, there's a final question then

and just to wrap this up. Why has she been forgotten? because this is a hell of a story. Yeah. No, I feel really fortunate to have been able to be a person to write this story and to bring it to people. And the way, I mean, why was she forgotten? I mean, the short answer is Queen Victoria.

So after all this happens, Queen Victoria eventually becomes the queen. And she comes in after these decades of just chaos of all the various King Georges and just like the American Revolution, losing the colonies, all these things that happened. I think for a lot of people, the time period of like between George the First,

George the 4th. It's kind of what happened there really? I don't really know. And that's because Queen Victoria came in and she's like, let's pretend like the monarch has always been. Exactly. It's always been just like absolutely like moral role model type monarchs. And that's how it's always been. And let's just like talk the Georgian period away and kind of not talk about it. And she was like she doesn't, Victoria didn't want people to remember Prinney. And if you remember Prini, then you're going to remember Caroline. And if you remember Caroline, then you're going to remember these anti-monarchist riots. And that's the last thing Victoria ones, people are thinking about.

So she really kind of whitewashed a lot of their recent royal history. And then that really set the tone for how people remembered history after that because Victoria was around for so long. And so Caroline just kind of got, just swept away with all the rest of it, really. Well, thank God you've written your book then. You have been an absolute treat to talk to. Give us the full title of the book again so people can go and find it. Absolutely.

says Rebel of the Regency, the scandalous saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain's Queen without a crown. And if people want to find you on social media, what's your handle? So on social media, I do have a podcast called Vulgar History, and that's where all my social media is under.

So it's under Vulgar History Pod on Instagram and threads and blue sky and all the places. Well, thank you for coming. And thank you for telling us this amazing story. What an absolute hero Caroline was. Absolutely. I feel like, especially I'm like, you, your people.

The British, you need to know about it. This is your history. We need to know. Yeah. Thank you so much. You've been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Anne for joining me. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

Coming up, we have got a complicated love story, the medieval drama of Eloise and Abelard. And we're going to be finding out if the rumors were true was Coco Chanel a Nazi. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at Betwixtat HistoryHit.com. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society, a podcast by History Hit.

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