UNFORTUNATE ROYAL MARRIAGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11872, 25 January 1902, Page 2 (Supplement)

UNFORTUNATE ROYAL MARRIAGES.

Apropos of the recently reported unhappy relations between Queen Wilhelmina and her Consort, history provides several examples where domestic happiness has not reigned supreme amongst Royal personages. English history has three prominent cases of this kind—Henry VIII.'s marriages with Catherine of Aragon and Anno Boleyn, George I.'s union with his cousin, Sophia, and George IV.'s alliance with Caroline of Brunswick. There is no touch of tragic romance in the story of George IV. 's marriage. When he married Caroline it was solely because the King had made marriage a condition of paying his graceless son's debts. , With George reckless, spendthrift, and a roue, and Caroline frivolous and lacking in reserve, it is not surprising that the marriage was most unhappy. The Prince separated from his wife shortly after the birth of the Princess Charlotte, who, had she lived, would have been Queen of England. Naturally, the country sided with Caroline, and it is recorded that, as a mark of practical sympathy with her, a. London mob broke" the windows of the Prince Regent's carriage when he was on his way to Parliament. When George became King, and ordered that no prayer for Queen Caroline should be admitted into the book of Common Prayer, it precipitated the famous trial, which broke down. Two incidents stand out in the marriage of Georgo with Caroline. For the first time in English history a Princess of Wales sent a long memorial of grievances against her husband, to be published in a daily newspaper, -and for the first time the world was scandalised by the spectacle of a Queen of England vainly knocking at the doors of Westminster Abbey, seeking to take her place in the ceremony of the coronation of her- husband.

"Perhaps the unhappiest Royal houseold of the last 20 years was undoubtedly that of the late Crown Prince of Austria. Married to one of the most charming and beautiful women in Europe simply for State reasons he met Baroness Vetsera and fell madly in love with her. His loveless marriage led to many bitter scenes with his wife, and if it had not been for the Emperor Franz Josef he would have separated from her. The long series of quarrels came to an end on January 30, 1889, when the baroness poisoned herself, and the Crown Prince blew out his brains on her dead body. The most dramatic Royal quarrel is that of Napoleon with Josephine, the charming widow of Vicomte Beauharnais, who was married to the great Emperor when she was 33 years old and Napoleon was 27. In. the beginning the Emperor passionately loved his wife, but he soon tired of her; and " les chroniques .scandaleuses" assure us that Bonaparte's conquests in the realms of Cupid were as numerous as his successes on the battlefield. The jealousy of the Empress led her to create many scenes with her unfaithful lord, and when the doctors informed him that his marriage would be fruitless he determined to put an end to the tears, repining, and upbraiding which had made his marriage so distasteful. ■■> Novelists and dramatists have often pictured the dramatic scene where the rejected Empress; hearing of the impending divorce, fell at her husband's feet and besought him to abandon his idea, only ;to get , the •.> grandiloquent reply, " France demands it, and my destiny wills