Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Queen Charlotte married George III six hours after meeting him, bore fifteen children, and spent her last decades managing a husband the country had declared mad. She came from a small north German duchy, was chosen partly because she was thought unlikely to meddle in politics, and arrived in England in September 1761 speaking no English; the wedding was that evening and the coronation a fortnight later. The marriage was by the standards of the period a close one and produced fifteen children, thirteen of whom reached adulthood, including two future kings. She was a serious patron: she brought Johann Christian Bach to London as her music master, the eight-year-old Mozart played for her and dedicated six sonatas to her, and she employed Thomas Gainsborough and collected botanical drawings. Kew was largely her creation as a garden, and the bird of paradise flower, Strelitzia reginae, was named for her. She founded a general lying-in hospital that still carries her name and supported the education of women, keeping Frances Burney as Keeper of the Robes for five years - an appointment Burney could not refuse and recorded as misery. From 1788 her husband's recurrent illness fell on her; she was made his legal guardian in 1811 when the regency began, and the strain permanently damaged their relationship, since he could be violent toward her during episodes. She died at Kew in 1818 with her eldest son holding her hand, two years before the king, who was never told. She was painted by Gainsborough, Ramsay and Lawrence, and Zoffany painted her with her sons. She corresponded with Marie Antoinette and prepared apartments for her that were never used. Charlotte in North Carolina and Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island are named for her.

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