A look at the tragically short life of the only daughter of Britain’s King George IV who won the heart of a nation.

As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents’ marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to restore the good name of the monarchy. When she broke off her engagement to a Dutch prince, her father put her under virtual imprisonment, and she endured a period of profound unhappiness. But she held out for the freedom to choose her husband, and when she married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, she finally achieved contentment. Her happiness was cruelly cut short when she died in childbirth at the age of twenty-one, only eighteen months later. A shocked nation went into mourning for its “people’s princess,” the queen who never was.

“This perspicacious study of Charlotte’s short life is superb. Anne Stott is an accomplished and highly readable biographer whose earlier subjects have included William Wilberforce and Hannah More. She wears her research lightly—which is not to say that the book is anything less than scholastic (quite the opposite). Highly recommended.” —Naomi Clifford, author of The Murder of Mary Ashford