Caroline Matilda of Great Britain

Caroline Matilda was the youngest child of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha and a sister of George III. In 1766, at the age of fifteen, she married her first cousin Christian VII of Denmark and Norway. The marriage was politically arranged and quickly became unhappy as the young king’s behaviour and the restrictive etiquette of the Danish court left the queen isolated.

During the late 1760s Caroline Matilda became close to the royal physician Johann Friedrich Struensee, who gained extraordinary influence over Christian VII and government. Their relationship was widely believed to be sexual. After a court coup in January 1772, Struensee was arrested and executed, Caroline Matilda’s marriage was dissolved and she was sent to Celle in Hanover, where she died in 1775 aged twenty-three.

In Norah Lofts’s The Lost Queen, Caroline Matilda is the central figure. The novel follows her marriage to Christian VII, her attachment to Struensee, the reforming court regime and the political collapse that ended in exile.