A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings

The British monarch who viewed America's Revolutionary War as a rebellion of ungrateful children against their father had a fatherly relation to his five younger siblings who brought him abundant heartache, as Tillyard relates in a gifted, prodigiously researched history. Headstrong Princess Augusta made no secret of her misery with Karl, duke of Brunswick, who spurned her for other women, his illegitimate children, regional politics and warfare. With no public role allotted to Edward, duke of York, the charming rake and gambler roamed the world seeking amusement and novelty with a coterie of restless aristocrats until he died, at 28, of malaria in Monaco. And when George's favorite brother, William, duke of Gloucester, flouted George's authority with a secret marriage, the wounded king refused to acknowledge his ambitious sister-in-law. The worst offenders were Prince Henry, duke of Cumberland, who was a third party in a sensational divorce trial, and Caroline Mathilde, who cheated on her husband, the mad Danish King Christian, with his German physician and ruled Denmark with her lover until she was exiled and her lover executed in a coup that almost provoked war with Britain. As Tillyard (Aristocrats ) spotlights lesser-known royals, she keenly demonstrates how the private and public lives of monarchs are often intertwined. (Dec. 5)