User:Tocharianne/Succession crisis

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This is a draft article to discuss the succession crisis in England in the early 1800's, particularly the details leading to Victoria's accession to the throne.

[edit] The succession crisis

Charlotte Augusta of Wales was the only daughter and heir of the Prince Regent (later King George IV). Her death in childbirth in 1817 set off a battle between the Prince Regent's brothers to see who could father a legitimate heir. Some of the brothers had been previously involved in scandals. Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second in line to the throne, was estranged from his wife, Frederica Charlotte of Prussia. The sixth son, Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, had contracted two marriages in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act (as had the Prince Regent before his marriage to Charlotte Augusta's mother). Three brothers, the third, fourth and seventh in line to the throne, William Henry, Duke of Clarence, Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn and Adolph Frederick, Duke of Cambridge all married in 1818. The fifth son, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was already married.

The Duke of Clarence had married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Though ironically he had been able to father ten illegitimate children, none of his children by his wife survived childhood. The second daughter, Elizabeth, lived the longest, being born on 10 December 1820 and dying on 4 March 1821. The next son to produce an heir was the Duke of Cambridge, whose son George was born on 26 March 1819. He would be displaced two months later by the birth of a daughter to the Duke of Kent and his wife, Viktoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Their first and only child was called Alexandrina Victoria but was known to her family as "Drina". She was born on 24 May 1819, just three days before the son of the Duke of Cumberland, also called George, who consequently was never more than seventh in line to the throne. Both George III and the Duke of Kent died in January of 1820, making the Prince Regent George IV and Drina third in line to the throne after her uncles, the Duke of York and Duke of Clarence (the future William IV). She would ultimately take the throne as Queen Victoria in 1837. (In memory of her short-lived cousin Elizabeth, the Queen kept a bust of her in her private appartments in Kensington Palace.)[1]