Book
The Lost Queen
First published 1969
Caroline Matilda of Great Britain is sent to Denmark as a teenage bride for Christian VII, a king whose erratic behaviour and unstable court make the marriage increasingly isolating. The arrival of the German physician Johann Friedrich Struensee changes the balance around the throne. As Struensee gains the king’s confidence and becomes the dominant force in government, Caroline Matilda finds in him both an ally and, in Lofts’s telling, a lover.
The relationship unfolds during an extraordinary burst of reform in which Struensee uses royal authority to reshape censorship, administration and court privilege. His enemies turn scandal and resentment into a successful coup in 1772. Struensee is executed, Caroline Matilda’s marriage is dissolved and she is sent into exile, making the novel a tragedy of private attachment caught inside a struggle over who could exercise power in the Danish monarchy.
More by the author
Other books by Norah Lofts
