this ain't a queen, it's an arms race

Or, the tale of Caroline of Brunswick, who was determined to have a fun and sexy time despite the world's worst husband.

Hello, friends!

This week’s dirtbag is a special one! We’re celebrating the almost-here-so-close-you-can-taste-it launch of my friend Ann Foster’s book Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. On sale in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia February 10!

look at her, she is STUNNING and she was featured in the WASHINGTON POST and we LOVE HER

Longtime Dirtbags readers may recognize Ann as the host of Vulgar History, AKA this publication’s sister podcast. Ann and I have extremely similar taste in historical weirdos, meaning I’m a frequent guest on the podcast and Ann is regularly crashing into my DMs to introduce me to some of our most celebrated dirtbags (think: Lola Montez, Catalina de Erauso, Elegabalus). So you know when Ann decides to commit a book’s worth of energy to somebody, that person is worth your time.

I’m giving you the Dirtbags treatment of Caroline of Brunswick this week as a preview, but there is so much more nonsense where this comes from. Which is why this issue also doubles as a BOOK GIVEAWAY!!

To win a copy of Rebel of the Regency, simply comment on this post. Make it a good one, because Ann will pick her favorite comment on Wednesday, and I’ll reach out to the lucky winner to get your mailing info. This is a worldwide-eligible giveaway, so best of luck to all of you!

Without further ado, let’s get into the highlights and lowlights of:

Caroline of Brunswick, the Regency-Era Disaster Whose Life Was Too Messy for Bridgerton

shonda rhimes really said “if I write this woman into my show no one will care about anything else, not even two hot young people having sex in a carriage to the sound of a string quartet covering Pitbull” and she was correct

Caroline was born in 1768 in Braunschweig (anglicized to Brunswick), a city in Not-Germany. Her father was the Duke of Brunswick, and her mother the Princess happened to be the older sister of England’s King George III. This is a fun fact that’s going to come back and ruin Caroline’s life very shortly.

Her parents hated each other, mostly because the Duke was having a series of increasingly transparent affairs, and Caroline was raised by a bunch of extremely strict governesses who never let her go to parties or have any fun at all. One time when she was 15, she was so mad her parents didn’t let her go to the ball happening downstairs that she started actively pretending to be in labor. Imagine, if you will:

Caroline: I’m having a BABY!!
Governess: have you had sex with anyone ever
Caroline: I fail to see how that is RELEVANT go get my MOM I am CROWNING
Governess: oh my god fine stop screaming
Caroline: [screaming louder]
Princess Augusta, bursting into the room five minutes later: darling what the fuck
Caroline: let me come to the party or I’ll come downstairs and pretend my water is breaking all over the dance floor
Duchess Augusta, pressing her hand to her forehead: I need to marry this girl to a husband who is as far away from me as possible

Not by the Hair on My Prinny Prin Prin

Meanwhile, over in England, the Prince of Wales was having a bad time. You might know this one, by the way: this Prince of Wales is the one who will soon become the Prince Regent, and eventually King George IV. His stupid nickname was Prinny, as in short for “Prince,” and I’m going to call him that because it sucks and so does he.

I searched long and hard for the goofiest picture of Prinny available and this is the one I settled on. know that there was fierce competition.

Anyway. Prinny had spent all his money, was in crazy debt, and pissed off Parliament. The only way the Whigs and Tories¹ would increase his allowance was if he married somebody. So Prinny, his parents, and his advisors scanned the general Hot European Woman Landscape and landed on—you guessed it—Caroline. She had several things going for her: she was a Protestant, she wasn’t French, and she was Prinny’s first cousin. You know, the 18th-century Big Three.

The engagement was formalized, and in 1795, Caroline arrived in England to meet her future husband. Prinny’s verdict: Caroline was loud, rude, and couldn’t spell. Caroline’s verdict: Prinny was fat, stupid, and ugly. They were married at St. James’s Palace two months later, because never let it be said the British royal family let profound personal hatred get in the way of a good match.

not a single person in this picture thinks this wedding is a good idea, especially not the priest, who looks like he’s currently being crucified.

Prinny was drunk off his ass for the wedding and could barely stand to make his vows. In the bedroom afterward, he fell asleep drunk on the floor with his head in the fireplace, and Caroline, according to her own report, laughed at him and left him there.

Sidebar: Prinny was already fully married to another person by now, a woman named Maria Fitzherbert who was too good for him. But she was a Catholic, so it didn’t count, so don’t worry about it.

Austen Translation

Marriage did nothing to improve Caroline and Prinny’s feelings about each other. They had sex exactly thrice, conceived a daughter named Charlotte, and then kept as far away from each other as they could for the rest of forever while radiating pure hatred. After Charlotte’s birth, Prinny rewrote his will to leave his entire fortune to Maria Fitzherbert and one shilling to Caroline, which is:

1. a dick move, and

2. IMO an invitation for Caroline and Maria to team up and murder him in a Knives Out-style heist, which is a movie I would watch if you know anyone in Hollywood who wants to work on it.

also an apt description of Prinny

All of Prinny’s friends spread shit about Caroline in the press, and their feud got louder and more public. The people of England found themselves invited to pick a side. And it brings me great joy to inform you that almost universally, England was on Caroline’s side. Why? Because everybody in the country hated Prinny so much. Jane Austen herself openly spoke out in favor of Caroline, writing: “Poor woman! I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a woman and because I hate her husband.”

We don’t have time to get into all the reasons why Prinny sucks. I wrote a whole newsletter about it a few years ago. If you want, go read it, then finish reading this with the appropriate amount of hatred for this man in your heart. He collected the pubic hair of the women he slept with, if that helps paint the picture.

mighty morphin power regent

Prinny and Caroline couldn’t get a divorce because of Royal Family PR Reasons, but they functionally separated almost immediately. Caroline set up her own house in 1797 and basically hosted her own shadow royal court, inviting over all her friends and fucking as many of them as she felt like. Everyone knew she was doing this, and good for her.

(Steal That) Baby One More Time

Now, say what you want about Caroline’s overall moral compass, but one thing this woman loved was being a mother. We know this for two reasons. One, because she spent as much time as she could with Princess Charlotte. And two, because she compulsively collected babies.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “She—”

Yes. She collected babies. Between 1797 and 1802, Caroline adopted nine entire children. From whom? For why? Doesn’t matter. I picture Caroline during this era wandering around London with a basket like a nun from an illuminated manuscript picking penises off trees, except instead of penises they are strangers’ babies who have been left unattended for five metric seconds.

I don’t know, guys, this image jumped into my mind so immediately it feels dishonest not to include it.

In 1805, this child-collecting behavior came back to bite Caroline. She’d pissed off her neighbors for one reason or another, and they decided to get back at her by claiming that one of these Lost-and-Found Babies, a little boy named William, was actually Caroline’s biological child. In 1806, four influential British politicians formed a commission called the Delicate Investigation, which was charged with figuring out whether William was actually Caroline’s son and how many other men she’d had sex with.

Eventually, William’s real mother came forward and said “that’s my baby, Caroline collected him, it’s fine,” and the matter was dismissed. But not before the entire country had spent months speculating just how hard Prinny had been cucked. Which he loved.

Caroline, daydreaming about stealing another baby (presumably)

Shortly after the Delicate Investigation concluded, King George III was declared unfit to rule due to mental illness, and Prinny officially became the Prince Regent in 1811. This functionally gave him the powers of a king, which was not good news for Caroline. As one of Prinny’s first acts as Regent, he restricted Caroline’s access to Princess Charlotte, but even Charlotte knew her dad was a bag of dicks and ran away to live with Caroline. Shows great judgement on the kid’s part.

Unfortunately, Prinny made Charlotte come back, and then he ramped up the negative press calling Caroline a slut fourteen ways to Sunday. Caroline was exhausted and didn’t want to be anywhere near her shit of a husband, so in 1814, Caroline agreed to leave Britain in exchange for an annual salary of £35,000.

Now, we enter a period in Caroline’s life I refer to as:

Where in the World Is Caroline of Brunswick?

you would never guess how long this took me from the shitty quality you’re beholding with your eyes right now

Caroline packed up and wasted absolutely no time embarking on one hell of an Eat Pray Love adventure. She made a quick visit back to Brunswick before hitting Switzerland and Italy, soon in the company of an extremely tall, extremely hot², extremely mustached man named Bartolomeo Pergami.

I say “mustache” but admittedly it’s hard to tell where the mustache ends and the sideburns begin.

Caroline and Pergami bought a villa on Lake Cuomo and then set off on a cruise of the Mediterranean, where Caroline both rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and visited Napoleon’s former palace on Elba to steal his pool cue.³ Everyone immediately assumed that Caroline and Pergami were lovers, because obviously they were. Lord Byron himself wrote letters saying “so…those two are fucking, right?” Like, say what you want about Byron, and I have, but he wasn’t stupid.

Unfortunately, in 1817, Princess Charlotte got married and suffered the classic Regency-era fate of dying in childbirth. You may remember this from Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, when Queen Charlotte comforts Prinny about the death of his daughter with this iconic moment:

Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte is 8,000% cooler than history’s Queen Charlotte, just for the record

Prinny refused to write to Caroline to tell her the news, because he was a shit. But he did write to the Pope to tell him, and Caroline was vaguely near the Vatican, so she found out. Caroline was devastated, of course. But she didn’t come back to England, because that would mean being in the same country as her husband, who was becoming increasingly feral about getting a divorce.

And then! In 1820! King George III passed away, meaning that Prinny was now officially King George IV of England. And Caroline, following basic logic, was now Queen of England.

Know who did not follow basic logic? Prinny. Obviously. He refused to refer to Caroline as anything but the Duchess of Brunswick and promised to increase her salary if she would stay away from England forever.

Coronation Street (Feat. a Real Hit-or-Miss Performance by My Favorite Character in This Story, the London Mob)

But our girl Caroline would not stay away from England forever! If she had to put up with this asshole continually ruining her life, at the very least she was going to be queen about it. She returned to England in June 1820, and riots immediately broke out in the streets of London in support of her.

Pissed off, Prinny put Caroline on trial for adultery with Bartolomeo Pergami, submitting giant bags of evidence full of salacious details about all the times Caroline fucked her hot Italian boyfriend. He tried to pass a bill in Parliament barring her from being queen, but the House of Commons said “fuck no, that’s our girl,” so nothing came of it.

George IV’s coronation was scheduled for July 1821 at Westminster Abbey, and Caroline was—surprise, surprise—not invited. Obviously, she showed up anyway. I imagine she wanted to kick down the door like Aragorn arriving at Helm’s Deep, stun all of London with her sexiness, and demand the crown right then and there.

“I am Caroline, lord of Gondor, and I will have your allegiance”

Unfortunately, Prinny was ready for her, and had the doors to Westminster Abbey locked by the time she got there ready to cause a scene. She ran around the church to the side door to try and get in the back way, but the Lord Chamberlain beat her there and slammed the door in her face. Humiliated and rejected, Caroline retreated to the jeers of the crowd.

Sidebar: fuck this crowd. Where is the loyal London mob who rioted the second she set foot in England? Have a backbone, mob.

Caroline took a heavy dose of laudanum that evening, and her health rapidly deteriorated afterward. Was she poisoned by the British royal family??? Is this a murder???? Listen, we don’t know, probably not, but if you think I’m going to see a chance to blame Prinny for something and not take it, you haven’t been paying attention.

Whether from murder-reasons or not-murder-reasons, Caroline of Brunswick died in August 1821 at the age of 53, to the joy of Prinny and the sadness of me and everyone else with taste. Prinny tried to block her funeral procession from going through the main streets of London, and the mob—back in my good books!!—rioted and beat up soldiers until they could get through. Caroline was buried in Brunswick Cathedral back in her hometown, under a plaque that reads, iconically, “Caroline of Brunswick, the Injured Queen of England.”

she ran out of room to add “wife of an absolute dick biscuit who should have been kicked in the head by a horse at age 5 to put the country out of its misery” but I assume if the plaque were only bigger

So ends the scandalous saga of Caroline of Brunswick, my queen and yours. Don’t forget to comment by Wednesday 2/4 to enter for a free copy of Rebel of the Regency and get all the details that couldn’t fit in a single newsletter!

Until next time, be well, and if you see a baby do not steal it, I don’t care how eminently stealable it looks, I need you to do what Caroline never could and exercise a single modicum of control in the domain of baby-stealing,

-Allison

1. Whoever they were. I don’t care and you can’t make me.

2. Regency-era standards.

3. Not an innuendo, oddly enough.