Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, the only daughter of King George I of Britain, was born on 16 March 1687, a date that was changed to the 26 March after the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750.
She was treated dismissively by her father, and loathed by her brother, due to suspicions she was actually the biological daughter of Swedish count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, even though Sophia Dorothea of Celle’s affair with him (if she even had a physical one) didn’t begin until 1688 at the earliest.
When Sophia was 19 married her cousin, Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia, the heir apparent to the Prussian throne. She didn’t like him, but he wanted her, so she had no real choice in the matter. She was married to Frederick by proxy in Hanover on 28 November 1706, and sent to Berlin to as his bride.
The marriage was horrible for Sophia – not because her husband didn’t lover her, but because in his own twisted, obsessive way he did. He tried to control her, because of “his belief that women should be kept only for breeding, and kept submissive as they would otherwise dominate their husband.” Instead of wooing her, he tried to bully her into returning his affections, “and resented any sign of her living a life independently from his authority.” He threatened to divorce her the same year they married, accusing “her of not wanting to be married to him.”
Prince Frederick regarded Sophia’s interest in art, science, literature, fashion, theater, dancing, jewelry and music as “frivolous” and a sign of her propensity toward idleness and extravagance. To supposedly curb her extravagances on such silliness as music and books (but in reality, to dominate her) he dictated her household expenditures with such “horrible avarice” that, according to Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Pöllnitz, “the queen’s table was often so sparingly supplied that [Pöllnitz] had often given her money so that she could be able to have an omelette for supper.” (Pöllnitz was probably exaggerating for effect.)
Things got worse, rather than better, as time wore on and children filled the nursery. Her husband, now King Frederick William I, became increasingly violent. When Sophia gave birth unexpectedly in 1723, her husband refused to believe that she had been unaware of her pregnancy; he became convinced she had hidden her condition because she had been carrying a lover’s child. The king was only prevented from beating his recently delivered wife by the brave actions of her chief lady-in-waiting, Sophie de Kameke, who grabbed his arm and told him “if he had only come there to kill his wife, he had better have kept away.” The king consulted the royal physician, Georg Ernst Stahl, and questioned courtiers about the queen’s conduct, and when finally satisfied she had been faithful, he apologized.
His behavior toward the royal children was even worse than that toward his wife, and the poor things “were terrorized and frequently beaten by Frederick William, who … was often seized by fits of violence during which he hit people with his cane and threw things at his children. This was a difficult situation for his family, as he often forced them to attend him and refused them to leave between nine o’clock in the morning until bedtime.” Queen Sophia fought back with everything she had, trying to shield her children from their father’s cruelties, but her power to deflect the king’s whims was limited.
In retaliation for her interference in his domestic tyranny, King Frederick banned Sophia from seeing her children except when he was present. His demands increased until he refused to let her see her eldest children at all, but Sophia had them continue to visit her in secret. On at least one occasion, her visiting children “were forced to hide in the furniture in her rooms when Frederick William came to her room unexpectedly while they were there.”
The king was particularly vicious toward his eldest son, the future Frederick II of Prussia, who would become known as Frederick the Great. The boy was perspicacious, witty, well read, and everything his uncouth father was not, so the emperor called him effeminate and attempted to cane manliness into his son. When Sophia tried to protect the prince, she was forbidden from seeing him – or even writing him letters – by his irate father. She was forced to smuggled her son letters through her oldest daughter, Princess Wilhelmine.
Sophia hoped that her eldest children, Frederick and Wilhelmine, would marry their cousins, King George II’s children, Princess Amelia of Great Britain and Frederick, Prince of Wales. However, when Prussia had a falling out with Great Britain due to some double dealings by the king’s favorite, Friedrich von Grumbkow, the king forbid the match between Wilhelmine and the Prince of Wales. The emperor declared that his daughter could either marry whom he chose, or “she could consent or be imprisoned for life.” When Wilhelmine, who disliked her father’s choices of potential husband, suggested that she marry the prince of Bayreuth instead, the king beat his daughter in front of Queen Sophia, whom he blamed for his daughter’s reluctance to marry the Duke of Saxe Weissenfels or Frederick William, the Margrave of Schwedt. In order to get the emperor to stop beating his daughter, the queen promised to “give up on the marriage alliance with Great Britain, providing that Wilhelmine was married to the prince of Bayreuth” rather than a man she actively disliked.
Meanwhile, the 18 year old Prince Frederick began to plot with his mother to escape his father’s brutal treatment. Queen Sophia, Wilhelmine, Frederick, and Frederick’s best friend (perhaps lover), Hans Hermann von Katte, and some other junior army officers planned to help the prince escape to Great Britain, where he could marry Princess Amelia and remain safely beyond his father’s cruel reach. Alas, one of the co-conspirators had a change of heart, and “Frederick and Katte were subsequently arrested and imprisoned in Küstrin.”
Since the prince and von Katte were army officers who had tried to leave Prussia, the emperor accused them of treason and briefly threatened to murder his son. The king even told Queen Sophia “that her son was dead. She replied: “What! Have you murdered your son?”, and when given the reply: “He was not my son, he was only a miserable deserter”, she became hysterical and screamed repeatedly: “Mon Dieu, mon fils! mon Dieu, mon fils!” The king then started to beat Wilhelmine [who had colluded in her brother’s potential escape] and would possibly have killed her, had not her siblings and ladies-in-waiting intervened.”
Queen Sophia was able to save her son (it would have been hard for the king to justify his heir’s murder the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire) but there was nothing to stop the king from killing Katte. In a particularly malicious piece of spite, the king “forced Frederick to watch the decapitation of his confidant Katte at Küstrin on 6 November [1730], leaving the crown prince to faint right before the fatal blow was struck.” The king also forced the prince to marry Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, much to the young man’s despair.
The king’s health began to deteriorate toward the end of the 1730s, and “Sophia Dorothea was ordered to attend to him continuously.” In a final act of control and manipulation of the woman he theoretically loved, on the day of his death the gravely ill King Frederick demanded to be taken to the queen, and commanded her to, “Rise, I have but a few hours to live, and I would at least have the satisfaction of dying in your arms.” It was a relief to everyone, not just Queen Sophia, when King Frederick Wilhelm died on 31 May 1740 … but it must have been an utter joy for his wife to be freed from him.
Sophia’s life became considerably better after Prince Frederick became King Frederick II. The new king was devoted to his mother, “and never blamed her for the his traumatic childhood, which he instead blamed on his father, and never allowed anyone to criticize her … It was to his mother’s chamber the king paid the first visit on his return from campaigns, summoning the queen to meet him there; he regularly invited his mother to his personal residence at Potsdam, where his wife was never invited, and while he seldom visited his wife, he regularly attended his mother at Monbijou, where he took off his hat and remained standing until she gave him permission to sit.”
Dowager Queen Sophia of Prussia died on 28 June 28 1757 after a short illness. She was laid to rest with great ceremony and full honors in Berlin Cathedral, and her children were all grief-stricken by the loss of their beloved mother.
In spite of Sophia’s hopes (and spirited attempt by her great-grandson, William of Orange-Nassau, to marry HRH Charlotte Princess of Wales) her descendants never wed into the royal family of Great Britain.