July 21, 2020 • 32 mins
King George III's "criminal sister" was sent to marry the King of Denmark when she was a teenager. Her husband wanted very little to do with her, and so her attention wandered over to a charismatic doctor. That doctor slowly gathered power until he became all but an autocrat. But power, and love, are both risky gambles.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Even though it was a masquerade ball, the identities of
Queen Caroline Matilda and Doctor Strunz were immediately obvious to
anyone around them. The doctor was tall over six feet,
(00:24):
and Caroline Matilda hadn't leapt his side the entire evening.
They were flirting in public, and every tiny gesture, every glance,
every hand resting lightly on his arm unleashed a new
shock wave of whispers through the ball room at Christianburg Palace.
(00:46):
It was that sort of behavior that made people certain
that the new royal infant, a girl just over six
months old, was actually the doctor's daughter and not the
King's of course, and Christian wasn't at this party. He
hadn't attended a social event in weeks. His condition, which
(01:07):
historians sometimes characterized as schizophrenia, meant that there were periods
of highs and lows when it came to the King's cognition,
but for the winter of seventeen seventy two, it was
a low period. For the past ten months, the country
of Denmark had been ruled with almost full control, not
(01:29):
by the king but by Dr Struantz, a German Man
born as a commoner. But the nobles and the people
of Denmark wouldn't stand for it for much longer. Depending
on which broadsides you read, the doctor and his harlot,
the Queen had either kidnapped the King or already poisoned him,
(01:52):
and later that very night, the night of the masquerade ball,
the king's stepmother, the Dowager Queen, would give her go
ahead for Strudents and Queen Caroline Matilda to be arrested
in their beds, unforged evidence of an attempted assassination of
the king. Around the world, the late seventeen hundreds was
(02:17):
a time of social upheaval. Philosophers like Voltaire and Jean Jacques,
Rousseau and Montesquieu wrote widely read treatises arguing for what
they saw as more rational, more enlightened forms of government.
They argued for individual freedoms and against the powers of
absolute monarchy. Their ideas circulated like the smoke in the
(02:40):
drawing rooms of Paris. It was an intoxicating notion that
nations could achieve a perfectibility, that the brand new scientific
method could also inform a rational approach to governments. Over
the next decade, Enlightenment thinking would affect nations around the
world and lead to revolutions. There was one, first in
(03:03):
the United States and then in France, but something strange
happened in Denmark. In America and France, enlightened philosophy took
hold of and inspired the people who revolted in favor
of more democratic forms of government. But in Denmark there
(03:24):
was a revolution of only one man, Dr Johannes Strums.
Doctor Strunge was in a rare position as the King's
personal doctor. He had authority over the king, a medical
authority at first, but as the king's condition deteriorated, that
(03:45):
authority began to apply to everything. Exerting his control over
the incapacitated King, Strunge became well sort of an enlightened despot.
During his ten months as de facto leader of Denmark,
he enacted over a thousand reforms, including the abolition of torture,
(04:06):
freedom of the press, ban on the slave trade, and
limiting feudal titles. He singlehandedly decided he would be the
one to pull Denmark into the nineteenth century, even though
he never really had the authority to do it. The
country didn't respond well, but those students failed to win
(04:28):
over his adoptive nation. He did manage to seduce someone.
The Queen. Young Caroline Matilda, sister of the British King
George the Third, fell madly in love with the man
who was treating her infirm husband, and her love would
doom them both. I'm Danis Schwartz and this is noble blood.
(05:00):
Being the youngest of nine children, Caroline Matilda was used
to feeling like an afterthought. Her father, who had been
next in line to be the King of England, died
just a few months before Caroline Matilda was born, which
meant that her older brother, the future George the Third,
would become king upon the death of their grandfather. George
(05:22):
was twenty two when he became the King of England
in seventeen sixty. Caroline Matilda was nine. She would have
only a few brief years of childhood left before her
brother would use her for the purpose that princesses are
born for forging political alliances. It was actually Caroline Matilda's
(05:44):
older sister who was originally supposed to marry their first cousin,
Christian of Denmark. It was important that England solidify its
relationship with Denmark to make sure Denmark didn't drift too
far away into friendship with France. Heaven forbid. But Caroline
Matilda's older sister had what people in the eighteenth century
(06:07):
described as a weak constitution, and so, at age thirteen,
young Caroline was the one who became engaged to the
future King Christian of Denmark. Instead, she was told to
say good bye to England, her home, her mother, her friends,
and her siblings, and to prepare to spend the rest
(06:28):
of her life in a place she had never been before.
When she turned fifteen years old, Caroline was married to Christian, who,
since their engagement, had become the King of Denmark. He
was seventeen years old. That first marriage was by proxy
in England, but a few weeks later she arrived in
(06:49):
Copenhagen and they were married again, this time in person.
Two teenagers bound before God to spend their lives together
and rule a country side by side. Christian was tired
of Caroline Matilda within a week. Caroline Matilda was not unattractive.
(07:13):
She was a pretty girl with a round figure and
blue eyes, and she enjoyed talking about books in politics,
Christian didn't care. Unbeknownst to Caroline Matilda, before she arrived,
King Christian of Denmark was already showing troublesome symptoms of
mental illness that would only continue to worsen as he
(07:33):
grew older and was given more power. When his new
bride arrived, he was polite but entirely cold to her.
One of Caroline Matilda's new ladies in waiting advised her
that to get her husband to be more interested in
her sexually, she should play a little hard to get.
(07:53):
One night, when one of the king's men came to
her bed chamber to ask if she was ready for
a visit from her husband, Caroline Matilda's lady told him
that the queen was indisposed. A little rejection, the lady
told Caroline Matilda will make him want you more. It
turns out that that was bad advice. From that point on,
(08:16):
Christian baily seemed to regard his wife at all. He
also didn't seem to regard any notions of dignity or propriety.
He held elaborate orgies, drank obscenely, and coworted so openly
with mistresses that Caroline Matilda became able to identify each
one by the sound of her laughter as it echoed
(08:38):
through the Christianborg Palace all the way to her bed chamber.
The King and Queen spent one awkward night together not
too long after their marriage, and it led to Queen
Caroline giving birth to a son, Frederick. She had fulfilled
her purpose and King Christian had done his duty, which
(09:00):
meant that in his mind he had absolutely no more
use for his wife, and he would spend his evenings
partying without her as he saw fit. But Christians drinking
and womanizing provided a smoke screen for how unwell he
actually was. Modern scholars sometimes diagnosed him as schizophrenic. It's
(09:21):
not really possible to say with any certainty. What we
do know is that the king's grip on reality would
leave him. Christian would dip in and out of lucidity,
and when he was out, he was prone to bouts
of rage and violence during his worst moments. At better moments,
(09:42):
he would just humiliate himself and the crown, much to
the shame of Caroline, Matilda and christian stepmother, the dowager
Queen Julianne Marie, partly in order to hide the fact
that the king was mentally l and partly because a
change in scenery sometimes seemed to help him. The King
(10:05):
was taken on lengthy diplomatic tours of Europe far away
from Denmark. While he was gone, Caroline Matilda lived a lonely,
quiet life. She would visit the court of the dowager
Queen Julianne Marie, who was pleasant enough to her, even
though it was obvious to everyone that Julianne Marie would
(10:27):
rather that her son be the one on the throne.
Julianne Marie had been the second wife of Christian's father,
and she was the mother of Christians half brother, who
by this point was a surly teenager. Everyone in court
knew that Christian wasn't well, and though it would be
treason to admit it, well, should he really be the
(10:50):
one in charge? Julian Marie never said as much while
she sipped her tea across from Caroline Matilda, but Caroline
Matilda felt it in her sideways glances, her raised eyebrows,
her two long sighs. Caroline Matilda did cause a minor
scandal by leaving the palace and walking around Copenhagen on foot.
(11:14):
I don't understand, Caroline said, when the dowager Queen gave
her a stern reprimand I was just trying to see
the city. It simply isn't done, Julian and Marie replied.
Caroline Matilda apologized, and she spent the next few months
inside the palace grounds reading the few books that she
(11:36):
had brought with her from England, the ones that had
managed to make it through the rigorous Danish censorship of print. Meanwhile,
the king returned from his European tour with a new
member of court, a doctor named Johannes Strudents. The King's
behavior had become so unpredictable that two of his nobles
(11:59):
had found a local German doctor with a good reputation
for success. Although they were aware that he had written
some anonymous political pamphlets that were troublingly liberal, Doctor Struntz
advised lots of exercise for Christian, and the two began
to spend considerable time together. Christian wasn't cured, but he
(12:21):
seemed to be making an improvement, and so doctor Struntz
was invited first to finish the European tour and then
to return to Denmark as his personal physician. Caroline Matilda
dipped low into a curtesy to welcome her husband back
to the palace, and when she rose, she felt Struance's
(12:42):
eyes focused on her own. He was thirty three years old,
with blonde hair and lips that turned up at the
ends in an expression that most people saw as friendly,
but that Caroline Matilda knew was masking something more mischief obvious.
She saw trouble. She was right. The queen resented the
(13:14):
doctor at first. While he had been traveling with the king,
Strength had heard for months about what an unattractive bore
the queen was, But Strung still believed that being with
a woman would help the king's condition, and so he
casually steered Christian towards one of Christian's favorite mistresses. Of course,
(13:34):
Caroline Matilda presented him for it. She shot him icy
glances every time she caught him looking at her, which
was often. Strength couldn't figure it out. Why did the
queen seem to hate him so much? He racked his
brain and came up empty. When he finally overheard a
few ladies talking about it a few days later, he
(13:56):
was ashamed of his own stupidity. Of course, by this point,
the King was spending more time with Struds than with
anyone else. It had almost embarrassed Struands, how readily the
King acquiesced to his suggestions, medical or otherwise. For the
Queen's twentieth birthday, Strude suggested let the King throw her
(14:20):
an elaborate three day party. It was all Strungth's idea,
and he organized it completely, and the Queen knew it.
Caroline Matilda warmed to him. If King Christian noticed or
cared that his wife and his best friend seemed to
be spending a lot of time exchanging flirtatious glances, he
(14:42):
didn't show it. In fact, he encouraged them to spend
time together one on one, volunteering Struds to help treat
Caroline Matilda when she came down with a case of dropsy.
For the first time in her life, someone was paying
attention to Caroline Matilda, not just to the idea of
Caroline Matilda as a princess to be deployed to whichever
(15:05):
European country with a marriageable prince happened to be the
most convenient, but to Caroline Matilda as a person. She
and the doctor talked and rode together. He spoke to
her of philosophy and thinkers like Descartes and Rousseau. When
she was with him, she felt alive with potential, as
(15:25):
if her life might have meaning outside of those four
gilded walls. Maybe she could do more than just sit
and read and tend to her son and walk around
the palace aimlessly. Strudents's influence over the royal family would
(15:48):
be solidified a year later, when an outbreak of smallpox
ravaged Copenhagen. Outside of palace walls, Young Frederick, the heir
to the throne, was at a delicate at age. He
was vulnerable. Struns, with his more modern conceptions of medicine,
suggested to the King and Queen that Frederick be inoculated.
(16:11):
The suggestion outraged the other nobles. A common country doctor
pricking and infecting their crown prince. Think of the risk,
Think of the fear if something went wrong, Trust me,
strund said, and Caroline Matilda did. She gave her nod
of assent, and Struent successfully inoculated the crown prince. From
(16:37):
that point on the crown of Denmark more or less
belonged to Struns. As the king's condition deteriorated, Struns's influence grew.
He became a Privy Counselor and influenced the king into
firing his most senior conservative minister, the one who had
scoffed and shamed Struments for all of his liberal suggestions.
(17:01):
It was around this point that the flirtation between Caroline
Matilda and doctor Struns went from subtle to blatant. King
George the Third wrote from England telling his sister not
to make a scene. Julian Marie turned up her nose
at Caroline Matilda in court. Servants had begun dusting sand
(17:23):
along the corridor between Caroline Matilda's chambers and the doctors
so that they could check for footprints in the morning.
For his part, King Christian was too far gone in
his madness to have any stake in what or whom
his wife was doing. While Caroline Matilda was on tour
(17:44):
in the Hanover region, her mother, Princess Augusta, came to visit.
Caroline's mother had heard the rumors about her daughter's relationship
with the doctor, and she spent the entire visit waiting
to get Caroline alone so it could tell her that
her behavior was causing a scandal. Unfortunately, Princess Augusta never
(18:06):
got the chance for the entire weekend. Doctor Stearns never
left Caroline Matilda's side, and so Augusta had no opportunity
to speak to her daughter alone. All she could do
before she left was begging Advisor to pass along a
message to her daughter, telling her to be careful. It
(18:27):
wasn't until a much later visit that her mother, Princess Augusta,
was finally able to see her daughter one on one.
By this point, it was far too late. What are
you wearing, Augusta gasp as soon as she stepped out
of her carriage. Her daughter was wearing breeches like a man.
Do you like them? Caroline Matilda replied. Doctor Stearns says,
(18:51):
Queen Catherine in Russia wears men's clothing and rides a
horse in public, and her people adore her for it.
A Agusta took a deep breath, but she started before
faltering off. She was going to say, but you are
not Queen Catherine of Russia. Instead, she said, but Denmark
(19:13):
is not Russia. Caroline Matilda just laughed, but Augusta didn't.
She told her daughter that she was causing a scandal
by fraternizing so openly with that Doctor Strums and that
minister who had been dismissed, did she have anything to
do with that? Caroline Matilda's laugh fell from her face. Pray, Madam,
(19:36):
she said to her mother, Allow me to govern my
own kingdom as I please. It was the last time
Caroline Matilda would ever see her mother. From March seventeen
seventy one to January seventeen seventy two, Denmark entered a
(19:59):
period it known as the time of Strunds. The doctor,
once a common German Man not even Danish, had eliminated
his rivals from the cabinet, made himself account and passed
a statute that meant that his signature on documents would
have the same effect as the king's. For that ten
(20:19):
month period, doctor Strutz wielded basically unlimited power, signing one
thousand sixty nine cabinet orders, or the equivalent of more
than three per day. His reforms were sweeping and progressive.
Struns was committed to using his unusual opportunity to craft
(20:41):
Denmark into a nation that would embody the principles of
the French and English Enlightenment thinkers. He abolished torture, the
slave trade, and capital punishment. He ensured full freedom of
the press, and removed penalties for illegitimate children, reduced the army,
reorganized courts to prevent corruption, and reformed universities and medical institutions.
(21:08):
But perhaps his mistake was cracking down on the indulgences
of the nobles. He reduced their privileges, He criminalized bribery,
he taxed gambling, and taxed luxury horses to fund orphanages.
(21:28):
They were all well meaning and progressive, forward looking reforms,
but for some reason the other people in power in
Denmark didn't care for them, and they didn't care for
this doctor Strumps, who waltzed his way into a country
he didn't know and took over with absolutely no qualifications. Sure,
(21:50):
a king didn't really have qualifications, but a king was
anointed by God. Strunge was just treating the king, who
was Strums to be making all of these changes. He
had no idea what Denmark was or what it should be,
and the same one for that foreign queen who seemed
to love him so much. The two of them were
(22:12):
probably in on it together. The nobles knew that the
king actually was incapacitated, but that information had been protected
from the people for so long that most Danish people
didn't understand why this random doctor was now ruling in
place of King Christian. The king hadn't been sick before, right,
(22:36):
so maybe the doctor had been poisoning him. Maybe the
doctor and the queen were planning on murdering the king
so they could be together and take over Denmark. Meanwhile,
the queen during all of this, happily read philosophy and
spent her nights with the man she loved. They really
(22:58):
were another Catherine the Great and Tempken, she thought. That summer,
the pair left Copenhagen to live at her Shawn Palace
to enjoy a few months of lounging in the sun
in one another's company. In July, Caroline Matilda gave birth
to a daughter, Louise Augusta. Though everyone at court knew
that the daughter was almost certainly struns, the king still
(23:21):
accepted her as his official daughter, and the dowager Queen
Julianne Marie agreed to stand as godmother. But the idyllic
summer wouldn't last. The truth was, Caroline Matilda's mother had
been right about her being no Catherine the Great. Catherine
the Great had united a nation behind her and inspired
(23:43):
them the country resented Doctor Struns, and it had begun
to hate Caroline Matilda. Public sentiment was so vitriolic that
in October of sevent Struns had no choice but to
pull back on the freedom of the press in order
to prevent the waves of criticism being printed about him
(24:04):
and the Queen. The wind had changed in Denmark. Struent's
window of opportunity was closing. Sometime that winter, when the
streets of Copenhagen that Caroline had once walked as a
new queen turned slick and wet. Doctor Strunt asked her
for permission to flee. He needed to leave and get
(24:28):
to safety. She was taken aback, first that he would
want to leave their adoptive country, but second that he
was planning on leaving without her. Caroline Matilda paused and
sized up her lover. She refused, she simply loved him
too much. Any shred of hope she had for a
(24:51):
bright future as queen had come from him, and she
didn't want to let him go. In January, a group
of disgruntled nobles presented manufactured evidence to Julian Mrie implicating
students in Caroline Matilda in a plot to murder the
King of course, the claim was ridiculous. The pair had
(25:15):
absolutely no reason to murder the king. King Christian being
alive protected them. He was an ally and his holding
power was the one thing that afforded Caroline Matilda and
Struents their power and positions. But that didn't matter. The
night of January six, after a masquerade ball, Caroline Matilda,
(25:37):
doctor Struns, and one of Struent's closest allies were all
arrested in their beds. Because the queen had an infant
daughter that she was still breastfeeding, she was permitted to
take her with her, but otherwise she was brought to
her new chambers, where she would be kept under house arrest,
completely alone. The next morning, the conspirators paraded King Christian
(26:02):
around Denmark, showing him off, proving that the King had
been quote unquote rescued. He was as much upon as
he had ever been. Despite her arrest, Caroline Matilda refused
to confess or implicate her lover in any way. It
(26:22):
was only when they showed her the signed confession from
doctor Strund's that she relented. In his confession, he blamed
the queen for seducing him and gave her full power
and control. Over their entire relationship. Caroline Matilda finally relented
and agreed to co operate. She signed the paper they
(26:47):
put in front of her. While she was still imprisoned,
she learned that her mother died. After doctor Struande was
found guilty of usurpation of royalty and less majeste, his
right hand was cut off, then he was publicly beheaded
and drawn and quartered. Within a matter of weeks, two
(27:10):
people that Caroline Matilda loved most in the world were
both gone. The scandal of Queen Caroline Matilda's arrest meant
there was no end of the delighted gossip around Europe
about George the Third's criminal sister. Though her lawyer argued
during her trial that Caroline Matilda was completely innocent and
(27:34):
had only signed her confession to protect Struns, no one
really believed that, But as Great Britain attempted to negotiate
her release and casually threatened in attack at Sy, the
judge made what I think is a fairly generous ruling.
Caroline Matilda's marriage with Christian was dissolved, her dowry would
(27:56):
be returned to England. The Queen would retain her right
to a pension and her royal title, and she would
go off to live in Hanover quietly in one of
her family's holdings, cell Castle. In her exile, Caroline Matilda
lived a simple life. She was visited by relatives, She
(28:18):
built a small theater, and she filled a library with
books in both English and German. She spent most of
her days working at charities for poor children. As for
her own children, her son and her daughter, because they
were the official royal heirs of Denmark, she would never
be permitted to see them again. Back in Denmark, the
(28:40):
dowager Queen Julianne Marie took over as regent with her son,
King Christian's half brother. The pair eliminated every single progressive
cabinet order that Strength had signed in his time as
unofficial regent. There was a point when she was an
exile where a politician visited Caroline Matilda and tried to
(29:04):
convince her that he could rally enough power to overthrow
the regency and reinstate her as Queen. Caroline Matilda agreed
in the abstract, but she wanted her brother George the
Third support. The politician went to England, but while he
was waiting for an audience with the king he lost
his chance. Caroline Matilda died, maybe of scarlet fever, just
(29:29):
three years into her royal exile. She was twenty three
years old, just a few months away from turning twenty four.
For the duration of her short life, from princess to
queen to lover, there was only a brief window when
Caroline Matilda picture a beautiful vision of her future, one
(29:53):
where she was beside a man she loved, changing a
country for the better. That vision lasted ten mon The
infirm King Christian lived for another thirty three years, occasionally
expressing regret at having lost his friend Dr Strunz. Three
years after Struntz's brutal execution, the King doodled a little
(30:17):
drawing of him in profile in German. The king wrote underneath,
I would have liked to save him. But regret and
sorrow didn't last long for King Christian. His mood changed
and he continued on ruling a nation as king that
he never really ruled. That's the story of Caroline Matilda
(30:45):
and Dr Strunz. But stick around after a brief sponsor
break to hear about what happened to Denmark later. Eventually,
Prince Frederick, Caroline Matilda and King Christian's son came of age.
(31:08):
He wrestled the regency away from his step grandmother and
step uncle, a political battle that ultimately culminated in the
prince punching his step uncle in the face. As regent
and leader, King Frederick reinstalled the progressive ideology into Denmark
(31:30):
that he had learned from Doctor Strunds. He had grown
up for a few years under Struands and had come
to see him as almost a father figure. In the end,
when Prince Frederick took power and became King Frederick, he
was able to complete Strudents's vision. He was actually the
(31:50):
one who went one step further than Struns. He eliminated
serfdom from Denmark entirely for good. Noble Blood is a
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by Dana
Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
(32:14):
and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
M
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Even though it was a masquerade ball, the identities of
Queen Caroline Matilda and Doctor Strunz were immediately obvious to
anyone around them. The doctor was tall over six feet,
(00:24):
and Caroline Matilda hadn't leapt his side the entire evening.
They were flirting in public, and every tiny gesture, every glance,
every hand resting lightly on his arm unleashed a new
shock wave of whispers through the ball room at Christianburg Palace.
(00:46):
It was that sort of behavior that made people certain
that the new royal infant, a girl just over six
months old, was actually the doctor's daughter and not the
King's of course, and Christian wasn't at this party. He
hadn't attended a social event in weeks. His condition, which
(01:07):
historians sometimes characterized as schizophrenia, meant that there were periods
of highs and lows when it came to the King's cognition,
but for the winter of seventeen seventy two, it was
a low period. For the past ten months, the country
of Denmark had been ruled with almost full control, not
(01:29):
by the king but by Dr Struantz, a German Man
born as a commoner. But the nobles and the people
of Denmark wouldn't stand for it for much longer. Depending
on which broadsides you read, the doctor and his harlot,
the Queen had either kidnapped the King or already poisoned him,
(01:52):
and later that very night, the night of the masquerade ball,
the king's stepmother, the Dowager Queen, would give her go
ahead for Strudents and Queen Caroline Matilda to be arrested
in their beds, unforged evidence of an attempted assassination of
the king. Around the world, the late seventeen hundreds was
(02:17):
a time of social upheaval. Philosophers like Voltaire and Jean Jacques,
Rousseau and Montesquieu wrote widely read treatises arguing for what
they saw as more rational, more enlightened forms of government.
They argued for individual freedoms and against the powers of
absolute monarchy. Their ideas circulated like the smoke in the
(02:40):
drawing rooms of Paris. It was an intoxicating notion that
nations could achieve a perfectibility, that the brand new scientific
method could also inform a rational approach to governments. Over
the next decade, Enlightenment thinking would affect nations around the
world and lead to revolutions. There was one, first in
(03:03):
the United States and then in France, but something strange
happened in Denmark. In America and France, enlightened philosophy took
hold of and inspired the people who revolted in favor
of more democratic forms of government. But in Denmark there
(03:24):
was a revolution of only one man, Dr Johannes Strums.
Doctor Strunge was in a rare position as the King's
personal doctor. He had authority over the king, a medical
authority at first, but as the king's condition deteriorated, that
(03:45):
authority began to apply to everything. Exerting his control over
the incapacitated King, Strunge became well sort of an enlightened despot.
During his ten months as de facto leader of Denmark,
he enacted over a thousand reforms, including the abolition of torture,
(04:06):
freedom of the press, ban on the slave trade, and
limiting feudal titles. He singlehandedly decided he would be the
one to pull Denmark into the nineteenth century, even though
he never really had the authority to do it. The
country didn't respond well, but those students failed to win
(04:28):
over his adoptive nation. He did manage to seduce someone.
The Queen. Young Caroline Matilda, sister of the British King
George the Third, fell madly in love with the man
who was treating her infirm husband, and her love would
doom them both. I'm Danis Schwartz and this is noble blood.
(05:00):
Being the youngest of nine children, Caroline Matilda was used
to feeling like an afterthought. Her father, who had been
next in line to be the King of England, died
just a few months before Caroline Matilda was born, which
meant that her older brother, the future George the Third,
would become king upon the death of their grandfather. George
(05:22):
was twenty two when he became the King of England
in seventeen sixty. Caroline Matilda was nine. She would have
only a few brief years of childhood left before her
brother would use her for the purpose that princesses are
born for forging political alliances. It was actually Caroline Matilda's
(05:44):
older sister who was originally supposed to marry their first cousin,
Christian of Denmark. It was important that England solidify its
relationship with Denmark to make sure Denmark didn't drift too
far away into friendship with France. Heaven forbid. But Caroline
Matilda's older sister had what people in the eighteenth century
(06:07):
described as a weak constitution, and so, at age thirteen,
young Caroline was the one who became engaged to the
future King Christian of Denmark. Instead, she was told to
say good bye to England, her home, her mother, her friends,
and her siblings, and to prepare to spend the rest
(06:28):
of her life in a place she had never been before.
When she turned fifteen years old, Caroline was married to Christian, who,
since their engagement, had become the King of Denmark. He
was seventeen years old. That first marriage was by proxy
in England, but a few weeks later she arrived in
(06:49):
Copenhagen and they were married again, this time in person.
Two teenagers bound before God to spend their lives together
and rule a country side by side. Christian was tired
of Caroline Matilda within a week. Caroline Matilda was not unattractive.
(07:13):
She was a pretty girl with a round figure and
blue eyes, and she enjoyed talking about books in politics,
Christian didn't care. Unbeknownst to Caroline Matilda, before she arrived,
King Christian of Denmark was already showing troublesome symptoms of
mental illness that would only continue to worsen as he
(07:33):
grew older and was given more power. When his new
bride arrived, he was polite but entirely cold to her.
One of Caroline Matilda's new ladies in waiting advised her
that to get her husband to be more interested in
her sexually, she should play a little hard to get.
(07:53):
One night, when one of the king's men came to
her bed chamber to ask if she was ready for
a visit from her husband, Caroline Matilda's lady told him
that the queen was indisposed. A little rejection, the lady
told Caroline Matilda will make him want you more. It
turns out that that was bad advice. From that point on,
(08:16):
Christian baily seemed to regard his wife at all. He
also didn't seem to regard any notions of dignity or propriety.
He held elaborate orgies, drank obscenely, and coworted so openly
with mistresses that Caroline Matilda became able to identify each
one by the sound of her laughter as it echoed
(08:38):
through the Christianborg Palace all the way to her bed chamber.
The King and Queen spent one awkward night together not
too long after their marriage, and it led to Queen
Caroline giving birth to a son, Frederick. She had fulfilled
her purpose and King Christian had done his duty, which
(09:00):
meant that in his mind he had absolutely no more
use for his wife, and he would spend his evenings
partying without her as he saw fit. But Christians drinking
and womanizing provided a smoke screen for how unwell he
actually was. Modern scholars sometimes diagnosed him as schizophrenic. It's
(09:21):
not really possible to say with any certainty. What we
do know is that the king's grip on reality would
leave him. Christian would dip in and out of lucidity,
and when he was out, he was prone to bouts
of rage and violence during his worst moments. At better moments,
(09:42):
he would just humiliate himself and the crown, much to
the shame of Caroline, Matilda and christian stepmother, the dowager
Queen Julianne Marie, partly in order to hide the fact
that the king was mentally l and partly because a
change in scenery sometimes seemed to help him. The King
(10:05):
was taken on lengthy diplomatic tours of Europe far away
from Denmark. While he was gone, Caroline Matilda lived a lonely,
quiet life. She would visit the court of the dowager
Queen Julianne Marie, who was pleasant enough to her, even
though it was obvious to everyone that Julianne Marie would
(10:27):
rather that her son be the one on the throne.
Julianne Marie had been the second wife of Christian's father,
and she was the mother of Christians half brother, who
by this point was a surly teenager. Everyone in court
knew that Christian wasn't well, and though it would be
treason to admit it, well, should he really be the
(10:50):
one in charge? Julian Marie never said as much while
she sipped her tea across from Caroline Matilda, but Caroline
Matilda felt it in her sideways glances, her raised eyebrows,
her two long sighs. Caroline Matilda did cause a minor
scandal by leaving the palace and walking around Copenhagen on foot.
(11:14):
I don't understand, Caroline said, when the dowager Queen gave
her a stern reprimand I was just trying to see
the city. It simply isn't done, Julian and Marie replied.
Caroline Matilda apologized, and she spent the next few months
inside the palace grounds reading the few books that she
(11:36):
had brought with her from England, the ones that had
managed to make it through the rigorous Danish censorship of print. Meanwhile,
the king returned from his European tour with a new
member of court, a doctor named Johannes Strudents. The King's
behavior had become so unpredictable that two of his nobles
(11:59):
had found a local German doctor with a good reputation
for success. Although they were aware that he had written
some anonymous political pamphlets that were troublingly liberal, Doctor Struntz
advised lots of exercise for Christian, and the two began
to spend considerable time together. Christian wasn't cured, but he
(12:21):
seemed to be making an improvement, and so doctor Struntz
was invited first to finish the European tour and then
to return to Denmark as his personal physician. Caroline Matilda
dipped low into a curtesy to welcome her husband back
to the palace, and when she rose, she felt Struance's
(12:42):
eyes focused on her own. He was thirty three years old,
with blonde hair and lips that turned up at the
ends in an expression that most people saw as friendly,
but that Caroline Matilda knew was masking something more mischief obvious.
She saw trouble. She was right. The queen resented the
(13:14):
doctor at first. While he had been traveling with the king,
Strength had heard for months about what an unattractive bore
the queen was, But Strung still believed that being with
a woman would help the king's condition, and so he
casually steered Christian towards one of Christian's favorite mistresses. Of course,
(13:34):
Caroline Matilda presented him for it. She shot him icy
glances every time she caught him looking at her, which
was often. Strength couldn't figure it out. Why did the
queen seem to hate him so much? He racked his
brain and came up empty. When he finally overheard a
few ladies talking about it a few days later, he
(13:56):
was ashamed of his own stupidity. Of course, by this point,
the King was spending more time with Struds than with
anyone else. It had almost embarrassed Struands, how readily the
King acquiesced to his suggestions, medical or otherwise. For the
Queen's twentieth birthday, Strude suggested let the King throw her
(14:20):
an elaborate three day party. It was all Strungth's idea,
and he organized it completely, and the Queen knew it.
Caroline Matilda warmed to him. If King Christian noticed or
cared that his wife and his best friend seemed to
be spending a lot of time exchanging flirtatious glances, he
(14:42):
didn't show it. In fact, he encouraged them to spend
time together one on one, volunteering Struds to help treat
Caroline Matilda when she came down with a case of dropsy.
For the first time in her life, someone was paying
attention to Caroline Matilda, not just to the idea of
Caroline Matilda as a princess to be deployed to whichever
(15:05):
European country with a marriageable prince happened to be the
most convenient, but to Caroline Matilda as a person. She
and the doctor talked and rode together. He spoke to
her of philosophy and thinkers like Descartes and Rousseau. When
she was with him, she felt alive with potential, as
(15:25):
if her life might have meaning outside of those four
gilded walls. Maybe she could do more than just sit
and read and tend to her son and walk around
the palace aimlessly. Strudents's influence over the royal family would
(15:48):
be solidified a year later, when an outbreak of smallpox
ravaged Copenhagen. Outside of palace walls, Young Frederick, the heir
to the throne, was at a delicate at age. He
was vulnerable. Struns, with his more modern conceptions of medicine,
suggested to the King and Queen that Frederick be inoculated.
(16:11):
The suggestion outraged the other nobles. A common country doctor
pricking and infecting their crown prince. Think of the risk,
Think of the fear if something went wrong, Trust me,
strund said, and Caroline Matilda did. She gave her nod
of assent, and Struent successfully inoculated the crown prince. From
(16:37):
that point on the crown of Denmark more or less
belonged to Struns. As the king's condition deteriorated, Struns's influence grew.
He became a Privy Counselor and influenced the king into
firing his most senior conservative minister, the one who had
scoffed and shamed Struments for all of his liberal suggestions.
(17:01):
It was around this point that the flirtation between Caroline
Matilda and doctor Struns went from subtle to blatant. King
George the Third wrote from England telling his sister not
to make a scene. Julian Marie turned up her nose
at Caroline Matilda in court. Servants had begun dusting sand
(17:23):
along the corridor between Caroline Matilda's chambers and the doctors
so that they could check for footprints in the morning.
For his part, King Christian was too far gone in
his madness to have any stake in what or whom
his wife was doing. While Caroline Matilda was on tour
(17:44):
in the Hanover region, her mother, Princess Augusta, came to visit.
Caroline's mother had heard the rumors about her daughter's relationship
with the doctor, and she spent the entire visit waiting
to get Caroline alone so it could tell her that
her behavior was causing a scandal. Unfortunately, Princess Augusta never
(18:06):
got the chance for the entire weekend. Doctor Stearns never
left Caroline Matilda's side, and so Augusta had no opportunity
to speak to her daughter alone. All she could do
before she left was begging Advisor to pass along a
message to her daughter, telling her to be careful. It
(18:27):
wasn't until a much later visit that her mother, Princess Augusta,
was finally able to see her daughter one on one.
By this point, it was far too late. What are
you wearing, Augusta gasp as soon as she stepped out
of her carriage. Her daughter was wearing breeches like a man.
Do you like them? Caroline Matilda replied. Doctor Stearns says,
(18:51):
Queen Catherine in Russia wears men's clothing and rides a
horse in public, and her people adore her for it.
A Agusta took a deep breath, but she started before
faltering off. She was going to say, but you are
not Queen Catherine of Russia. Instead, she said, but Denmark
(19:13):
is not Russia. Caroline Matilda just laughed, but Augusta didn't.
She told her daughter that she was causing a scandal
by fraternizing so openly with that Doctor Strums and that
minister who had been dismissed, did she have anything to
do with that? Caroline Matilda's laugh fell from her face. Pray, Madam,
(19:36):
she said to her mother, Allow me to govern my
own kingdom as I please. It was the last time
Caroline Matilda would ever see her mother. From March seventeen
seventy one to January seventeen seventy two, Denmark entered a
(19:59):
period it known as the time of Strunds. The doctor,
once a common German Man not even Danish, had eliminated
his rivals from the cabinet, made himself account and passed
a statute that meant that his signature on documents would
have the same effect as the king's. For that ten
(20:19):
month period, doctor Strutz wielded basically unlimited power, signing one
thousand sixty nine cabinet orders, or the equivalent of more
than three per day. His reforms were sweeping and progressive.
Struns was committed to using his unusual opportunity to craft
(20:41):
Denmark into a nation that would embody the principles of
the French and English Enlightenment thinkers. He abolished torture, the
slave trade, and capital punishment. He ensured full freedom of
the press, and removed penalties for illegitimate children, reduced the army,
reorganized courts to prevent corruption, and reformed universities and medical institutions.
(21:08):
But perhaps his mistake was cracking down on the indulgences
of the nobles. He reduced their privileges, He criminalized bribery,
he taxed gambling, and taxed luxury horses to fund orphanages.
(21:28):
They were all well meaning and progressive, forward looking reforms,
but for some reason the other people in power in
Denmark didn't care for them, and they didn't care for
this doctor Strumps, who waltzed his way into a country
he didn't know and took over with absolutely no qualifications. Sure,
(21:50):
a king didn't really have qualifications, but a king was
anointed by God. Strunge was just treating the king, who
was Strums to be making all of these changes. He
had no idea what Denmark was or what it should be,
and the same one for that foreign queen who seemed
to love him so much. The two of them were
(22:12):
probably in on it together. The nobles knew that the
king actually was incapacitated, but that information had been protected
from the people for so long that most Danish people
didn't understand why this random doctor was now ruling in
place of King Christian. The king hadn't been sick before, right,
(22:36):
so maybe the doctor had been poisoning him. Maybe the
doctor and the queen were planning on murdering the king
so they could be together and take over Denmark. Meanwhile,
the queen during all of this, happily read philosophy and
spent her nights with the man she loved. They really
(22:58):
were another Catherine the Great and Tempken, she thought. That summer,
the pair left Copenhagen to live at her Shawn Palace
to enjoy a few months of lounging in the sun
in one another's company. In July, Caroline Matilda gave birth
to a daughter, Louise Augusta. Though everyone at court knew
that the daughter was almost certainly struns, the king still
(23:21):
accepted her as his official daughter, and the dowager Queen
Julianne Marie agreed to stand as godmother. But the idyllic
summer wouldn't last. The truth was, Caroline Matilda's mother had
been right about her being no Catherine the Great. Catherine
the Great had united a nation behind her and inspired
(23:43):
them the country resented Doctor Struns, and it had begun
to hate Caroline Matilda. Public sentiment was so vitriolic that
in October of sevent Struns had no choice but to
pull back on the freedom of the press in order
to prevent the waves of criticism being printed about him
(24:04):
and the Queen. The wind had changed in Denmark. Struent's
window of opportunity was closing. Sometime that winter, when the
streets of Copenhagen that Caroline had once walked as a
new queen turned slick and wet. Doctor Strunt asked her
for permission to flee. He needed to leave and get
(24:28):
to safety. She was taken aback, first that he would
want to leave their adoptive country, but second that he
was planning on leaving without her. Caroline Matilda paused and
sized up her lover. She refused, she simply loved him
too much. Any shred of hope she had for a
(24:51):
bright future as queen had come from him, and she
didn't want to let him go. In January, a group
of disgruntled nobles presented manufactured evidence to Julian Mrie implicating
students in Caroline Matilda in a plot to murder the
King of course, the claim was ridiculous. The pair had
(25:15):
absolutely no reason to murder the king. King Christian being
alive protected them. He was an ally and his holding
power was the one thing that afforded Caroline Matilda and
Struents their power and positions. But that didn't matter. The
night of January six, after a masquerade ball, Caroline Matilda,
(25:37):
doctor Struns, and one of Struent's closest allies were all
arrested in their beds. Because the queen had an infant
daughter that she was still breastfeeding, she was permitted to
take her with her, but otherwise she was brought to
her new chambers, where she would be kept under house arrest,
completely alone. The next morning, the conspirators paraded King Christian
(26:02):
around Denmark, showing him off, proving that the King had
been quote unquote rescued. He was as much upon as
he had ever been. Despite her arrest, Caroline Matilda refused
to confess or implicate her lover in any way. It
(26:22):
was only when they showed her the signed confession from
doctor Strund's that she relented. In his confession, he blamed
the queen for seducing him and gave her full power
and control. Over their entire relationship. Caroline Matilda finally relented
and agreed to co operate. She signed the paper they
(26:47):
put in front of her. While she was still imprisoned,
she learned that her mother died. After doctor Struande was
found guilty of usurpation of royalty and less majeste, his
right hand was cut off, then he was publicly beheaded
and drawn and quartered. Within a matter of weeks, two
(27:10):
people that Caroline Matilda loved most in the world were
both gone. The scandal of Queen Caroline Matilda's arrest meant
there was no end of the delighted gossip around Europe
about George the Third's criminal sister. Though her lawyer argued
during her trial that Caroline Matilda was completely innocent and
(27:34):
had only signed her confession to protect Struns, no one
really believed that, But as Great Britain attempted to negotiate
her release and casually threatened in attack at Sy, the
judge made what I think is a fairly generous ruling.
Caroline Matilda's marriage with Christian was dissolved, her dowry would
(27:56):
be returned to England. The Queen would retain her right
to a pension and her royal title, and she would
go off to live in Hanover quietly in one of
her family's holdings, cell Castle. In her exile, Caroline Matilda
lived a simple life. She was visited by relatives, She
(28:18):
built a small theater, and she filled a library with
books in both English and German. She spent most of
her days working at charities for poor children. As for
her own children, her son and her daughter, because they
were the official royal heirs of Denmark, she would never
be permitted to see them again. Back in Denmark, the
(28:40):
dowager Queen Julianne Marie took over as regent with her son,
King Christian's half brother. The pair eliminated every single progressive
cabinet order that Strength had signed in his time as
unofficial regent. There was a point when she was an
exile where a politician visited Caroline Matilda and tried to
(29:04):
convince her that he could rally enough power to overthrow
the regency and reinstate her as Queen. Caroline Matilda agreed
in the abstract, but she wanted her brother George the
Third support. The politician went to England, but while he
was waiting for an audience with the king he lost
his chance. Caroline Matilda died, maybe of scarlet fever, just
(29:29):
three years into her royal exile. She was twenty three
years old, just a few months away from turning twenty four.
For the duration of her short life, from princess to
queen to lover, there was only a brief window when
Caroline Matilda picture a beautiful vision of her future, one
(29:53):
where she was beside a man she loved, changing a
country for the better. That vision lasted ten mon The
infirm King Christian lived for another thirty three years, occasionally
expressing regret at having lost his friend Dr Strunz. Three
years after Struntz's brutal execution, the King doodled a little
(30:17):
drawing of him in profile in German. The king wrote underneath,
I would have liked to save him. But regret and
sorrow didn't last long for King Christian. His mood changed
and he continued on ruling a nation as king that
he never really ruled. That's the story of Caroline Matilda
(30:45):
and Dr Strunz. But stick around after a brief sponsor
break to hear about what happened to Denmark later. Eventually,
Prince Frederick, Caroline Matilda and King Christian's son came of age.
(31:08):
He wrestled the regency away from his step grandmother and
step uncle, a political battle that ultimately culminated in the
prince punching his step uncle in the face. As regent
and leader, King Frederick reinstalled the progressive ideology into Denmark
(31:30):
that he had learned from Doctor Strunds. He had grown
up for a few years under Struands and had come
to see him as almost a father figure. In the end,
when Prince Frederick took power and became King Frederick, he
was able to complete Strudents's vision. He was actually the
(31:50):
one who went one step further than Struns. He eliminated
serfdom from Denmark entirely for good. Noble Blood is a
production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from
Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by Dana
Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
(32:14):
and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart radio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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