The Unruly Queen

by Flora Fraser

At the tawdry, extravagant heart of England's Regency period - 1811 to 1820 - the bitter mismatch between the Prince and Princess of Wales. When the Prince Regent (later King George IV) separated privately from Princess Caroline in 1796, they had been together for less than a year. Their disastrous (and probably bigamous) marriage - mercilessly ridiculed by the satirists and caricaturists of the day - had profound political consequences and eventually led to the greatest scandal in British royal history: the trial of Queen Caroline for adultery. Caroline of Brunswick was a curious mixture of gravity and exuberance, wit and vulgarity, whose impact on society and public opinion was enormous. Barred from the Regent's court, she travelled through Europe with a small court of her own, her outrageous behavior leading to the flight of her English ladies-in-waiting and chamberlains and her employment of highly questionable Italian servants to replace them. The tragic death of her daughter - he