Once a week – on Sundays – they took their places in the coach drawn by six horses and drove through the countryside with as much state as they were ever allowed, which merely meant that they were escorted by guards.

ONE DAY IN the year 1760, when she was sixteen years old, the Princess Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz wrote a letter which many believed set in motion those events which lifted her from a little German principality, where she would doubtless have spent her days in obscurity, to the throne of England.Ĭharlotte had been out driving in the company of her elder sister, the Princess Christina. Queen of this Realm: The Story of Elizabeth I Jean Plaidy’s novels had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide by the time of her death in 1993. Jean Plaidy, one of the preeminent authors of historical fiction for most of the twentieth century, is the pen name of the prolific English author Eleanor Hibbert, also know as Victoria Holt. The King’s sister was tried for treason and adultery, but the greatest scandal of all was created by his eldest son – the handsome, willful, pleasure-seeking Prince of Wales… Surrounded by the great and the notorious, the King was beset by political anxieties, humiliated by the loss of the American colonies, and distressed at the scandals in the royal family. But Charlotte was unexciting, and he could not help his heart beating faster every time he saw a beautiful woman. George III was certain that the shadowy charm of Hannah, the vital beauty of Sarah, would cease to torment him once he was married to Charlotte.

The Third George by Jean Plaidy