Scandalous Love Life of George I | The Wife of George I | Messy Royal Marriages

From History Calling

GEORGE I’S MESSY LOVE LIFE meant that neither of the women he married (or supposedly married) actually became his official consort. His wife and cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle, was the woman who should have been Queen of England after the man she’d married came to the throne in 1714, but instead her story is one of the scandals of the House of Hanover. Though George had been constantly unfaithful to her, when her affair with Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck was discovered, her lover disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and his fate quickly became a Hanoverian royal murder mystery. Sophia Dorothea was divorced in 1694, imprisoned for the rest of her life and never saw her children again. When her ex-husband went on to become King of England, he took with him his long-term mistress, Ehrengard Melusina Von Der Schulenberg, whom he made the Duchess of Kendal and Munster and with whom he had several daughters. These children were passed off as the offspring of her sisters. It is unknown if he ever married Melusina (as she was known), or if she remained his mistress, but in many ways, she acted as though she was the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. In this German and English royal history documentary from History Calling, we look at these messy royal marriages and at a story which involves murder, adultery and the imprisoned princess who was the mother of George II. At the centre of it all was Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover and the future King of England; the first monarch of the House of Hanover.