The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I Read Free

Bedchamber, had been arranged. The remaining children were very young. Anna Elisabeth was six years her junior and in 1690 her half-brother Frederick William was ten and her half-sister Johanna August only three. It was time for Melusine to fly the nest.
    Why did she remain unmarried? It is likely that no one sufficiently distinguished asked for her hand in marriage. To her father’s delight, he managed to obtain a position for Melusine as a maid of honour to the universally admired Sophia, Duchess of Hanover, wife of Ernst August of Hanover. Gustav probably hoped that this position would attract a glittering marriage. But the romance that Melusine embarked on when she arrived in Hanover was not what her father had envisaged. The year was 1690, although the exact date, as with so much of her life, is unrecorded. She was twenty-two.

3.
Venice of the North
. . . one of the most agreeable places in the world.
    – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
    Hanover was a walled town spanning two sides of the river Leine, with fortified towers, only one of which – the Beginenturm – now survives. It was filled with half-timbered dwellings in the Saxon style, or brick patrician houses with distinctive red-gabled roofs. Broad streets ran parallel to the river and out through the city walls to the countryside beyond. There was a paved market square, a windmill, and four churches – amongst them the strange and glorious Market Church, towering above the square and proudly displaying its pentagon alongside the Star of David.
    The Market Church stands next to the gorgeous mass of red-brick gables that was the Town Hall. Hanover’s churches, most of which had become Lutheran during the Reformation, reflected the religious tolerance of the principality, which allowed for freedom of worship. Religion played an important part in the lives of most of the population, despite the beginnings of the Enlightenment and the enthusiasm with which the ruling family embraced its principles. The city was less than a kilometre from city gate to city gate. Its population barely topped ten thousand.
    Appearances are deceptive. By 1690 the ambitions of Hanover’s rulers, Sophia and Ernst August, had turned a city-state that was previously a footnote on the international stage into a dynamic entity with aspirations to greatness. It was Ernst August’s and Sophia’s determination to create a royal dynasty that would ensure that Melusine would not become the mistress of a minor princeling, but of an elector of the Holy Roman Emperor. Elector was the highest rank in the Holy Roman Empire below the Emperor himself. The chosen few – there were only seven until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – were empowered to choose theemperors. To secure the honour, the ruler had to ensure that his dominion was large and wealthy enough to provide the Emperor (at the time Leopold I) with troops and finance for his wars, and ostentatious enough to advertise it.
    It was a gamble. The Treaty of Westphalia, which brought an end to the Thirty Years War, allowed for the creation of another elector, and the Hanoverian princes, fuelled by a wild ambition, craved the glory this would bring to their house. Melusine entered a court that was feverish in the pursuit of this single aim. All were expected to act in the service of the rulers’ ambitions. The dazzling possibility of the electoral cap overshadowed everything.
    The ducal family – Ernst August, Sophia and their children – lived in splendour. Their two main residences were the Leineschloss, a small castle on the river Leine in the centre of the city, and the pretty summer palace of Herrenhausen two kilometres away. The family divided their time equally between the two houses, and moved their enormous household between them. The Hanoverian stable boasted six hundred horses and accompanying coachmen, horse-doctors, grooms and ostlers. Dancing and fencing masters taught the ducal family; twenty cooks fed them; musicians and