Ruth Jordan (1)

Teenaged Sophie Dorothea was married to her first cousin George Louis, and although she bore him two children the marriage was far from happy. The Hanoverian court was predisposed to distrust and dislike her, and Sophie Dorothea found she had few allies or pleasures. After several miserable years of marriage, she and a young Swedish officer, Count Konigsmarck, fell desperately in love with each other. Their affair spanned years, and was marked by hilariously melodramatic letters (particularly from Konigsmarck, who at one point wrote that he had specially bought and trained a bear so that if Sophie ever stopped loving him, the bear would tear out his heart. Sensible!) and constant paranoia. Their wariness was warranted and in fact, insufficient. Eventually Sophie's father-in-law's-mistress (who had once taken Konigsmarck to bed and was jealous of his love for Sophie) had him killed. Shortly thereafter, Sophie was charged with desertion of her husband (to avoid questions raised about her children's parenthood she was never charged with adultery) and shut into her parents' castle for the remainder of her life, never free to have visitors, mail, or even venture beyond 6 miles from the castle (for most of her imprisonment, she was not allowed to go out of doors at all). She was only twenty-eight when she was imprisoned, and she lived under guard for the next thirty-two years, until she died. Her ex-husband and son became Kings of England, and her daughter became Queen of Prussia. And all the while, Sophie Dorothea was trapped, unable to communicate with the outside world, because her relatives feared she might speak about Konigsmarck's murder and her own mistreatment.

Well written, well researched. A good many letters between the lovers are presented, and truthfully I found them stultifying, but including them was a wise move; they provide excellent examples of the personalities of their authors.… (meer)