What did he see in her?

When King George I came over from Hanover in 1714 to claim the crown he had inherited from his distant cousin Queen Anne, he was accompanied by his mistress of more than 20 years, Melusine von der Schulenberg. George’s wife Sophia Dorothea was left behind in Germany. She had made the mistake of taking a lover of her own not long after George had embarked on his affair with Melusine, forgetting that by the double standard that then prevailed in courts, it was acceptable for a man to have mistresses, ‘but shameful indeed to be a cuckold’.

Sophia Dorothea had flaunted her infatuation with the glamorous adventurer, Count Konigsmark, and wildly compromising letters between the pair were intercepted. In July 1694 Konigsmark had disappeared on his way to an assignation with Sophia Dorothea, having almost certainly been murdered on the orders of George’s father. Soon afterwards George had divorced his wife and imprisoned her for life in a remote castle.

On his arrival in England, George’s domestic arrangements naturally became the focus of much interest. Melusine brought with her the three daughters she had borne him, although to preserve appearances George never admitted having fathered them, and instead they were styled Melusine’s ‘nieces’. Ill-disposed persons professed outrage at George’s maltreatment of his ‘beautiful and innocent wife’, while few could understand what he saw in the scrawny Melusine.

There was also a widespread misconception that George had brought a second mistress to England, Sophia Charlotte von Kielmansegg, and that the King divided his affections between the two women. In fact Sophia Charlotte was his illegitimate half-sister, and it is probably untrue that George had an incestuous relationship with her, but the ladies’ strong dislike for one another reinforced the idea that they were rivals.