Princess Palace: A Matriarch without Descendants

By William Beechey via Wikimedia Commons

If fate had been kinder to her, Queen Adelaide might be the 19th Century royal matriarch we remember today instead of Victoria. Her daughter might have been Queen Elizabeth II and the entire line of Windsors might never have existed. Alas, tragedy launched a different trajectory for the pale young woman from Meinengen who married a future king more than twice her age.

In fact, tragedy seems to have often guided the course of Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen's life. When she was just 11, a fever carried away her father, but his death placed her mother in the role of regent and taught her that women could be leaders. At 25, the tragic death in childbirth of King George III's only legitimate grandchild and her infant (read my post A Double Royal Tragedy), brought the penniless Duke of Clarence to her doorstep looking for a fertile wife. And, alas the tragic death of her only living child left her without a dynastic role in history.

But, in 1818, her potential for motherhood made her a bridal candidate for Prince William Duke of Clarence. As the third of George III's nine sons, William had felt far enough from the crown to eschew matrimony for decades. Instead, he set up house with an actress and produced 10 rowdy but well-loved children before casting her aside in 1811. (Read my post on Dorothy Jordan.) His navy career was hardly lucrative enough to pay for so many offspring or so many parties and, in the way of Hanoverian princes, William built up quite a bit of debt. The death of his niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, opened the door of opportunity. To get more money from Parliament all he and his younger brothers had to do was find a suitable bride. He and brother number 4, Edward Duke of Kent, found their new wives and saved some cash by having a double wedding.

William married Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen while Edward married the widowed Victoria of Saxe-Coburg on July 11, 1818 in their mother's drawing room at Kew Palace. Then, both couples raced off to Hanover, where they could live less expensively, to try to beget heirs.

In addition to becoming a royal duchess of Clarence, 25-year-old Adelaide became a stepmother to William's brood, who went by the surname Fitzclarence. They ranged in age from 11 to 24. The always kind Adelaide accepted her husband's illegitmate children (and the grandchildren who started arriving in 1820 with the first one named Adelaide!) and welcomed them with warmth. Still, she hoped for a child of her own and those hope were well-founded when she fell pregnant just a few months after the wedding. Late in the pregnancy, however, Adelaide became ill with pleuriscy and delivered a little princess two months early in March 1819. They named her Charlotte but she died within a few hours. Two months later, Edward and Victoria's own daughter, Victoria, was born.

Within a few months, Adelaide had recovered enough to become pregnant again. This time, William decided to use a ploy Edward and Victoria had used back in the spring: he would rush his pregnant wife to England so the potential could be born on English soil. Alas, the journey did not go as planned and Adelaide miscarried her second pregnancy before they crossed the English Channel. The saddened couple continued on to London and took up residence in Clarence House at St. James's Palace. Their daughter Princess Elizabeth Georgiana Adelaide was born there on December 10, 1820. The infant princess was third in line to the throne after her childless uncle Frederick Duke of York and her father.

Adelaide rejoiced in her baby daughter. Like her older sister, Elizabeth was born prematurely, causing her parents to christen her on the day she was born. However, it was quickly clear that Elizabeth was stronger. She seemed a picture of health throughout that wet, cold winter toward the end of a period we now call "the little ice age." As March roared in with more intemperate weather, Elizabeth remained well until suddenly she was not. But it was not the weather that carried her away. On March 1, the baby began to suffer convulsions and high fever. The doctors could do nothing to save her from a strangulated bowel or intussusception.

Sculpture by William Scoular, photo by James Calford via Wikimedia Commons

Once again, a healthy young heir had been tragically ripped away from the Hanoverian dynasty. William and Adelaide were devastated. They immediately commissioned a death mask and a memorial sculpture of their daughter in her cradle. They kept the sculpture always near them and Adelaide eventually willed it to their niece, Queen Victoria, to have it permanently displayed at Windsor Castle.

The couple tried once again to give the nation an heir. By the end of the year, Adelaide was pregnant once again. As with her earlier pregnancies, she went into labor early. At about 30 weeks, she was delivered of stillborn twin boys. It was her last recorded pregnancy. She was 29 years old.

Adelaide continued to focus on her husband and his family and, when she was permitted by the widowed Duchess of Kent, on their niece Princess Victoria, who was in blooming health. Adelaide was renowned for her charity and her gentleness. Many were impressed with how she had tamed the garrulous and somewhat rude-mannered Duke of Clarence. He seemed to become a calmer, kinder person thanks to her influence. Of course, she could not prevent all of his outbursts.

The couple was particularly troubled by the Duchess of Kent. Adelaide had sought to befriend her and the young Princess Victoria, assuring the Dowager Duchess of her true affection. "My children are dead," she wrote to her sister-in-law with whom she had shared a wedding, "but your child lives and she is mine, too."

Tensions only continued to grow after William became King William IV in 1830. By this time, Victoria was entering adolescence and the King and Queen Adelaide longed to have her with them more often. The Duchess of Kent, however, jealously guarded her daughter seeking both to physically protect her and to ensure her own control over the future monarch. At his 71st birthday party, when the Duchess had offered just one too many signs of disrespect to the King--including taking over 17 rooms at Kensington Palace that the King had denied her, William roared within everyone's hearing that he hoped he would live until Victoria was at least 18. "I should then have the satisfactin of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of theat young lady, the heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the situation in which she is now placed."

Princess Victoria burst into tears. The Duchess received the rebuke in stony silence. Adelaide was absolutely mortified but maintained her composure as Queen and hostess with more than 100 guests in attendance. She also continued thereafter to provide little respites for young Victoria from the strict confines of her mother. Adelaide called Victoria "my dear little heart". She consistently invited her to court and made her comfortable when she was allowed to come. She also created an environment where Victoria did not have to feel torn between her mother and her aunt.

The following year, William's lifestyle caught up to him. The combined impact of heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, and pneumonia dogged his final weeks. He struggled to remain alive to fulfill his vengeance against the Duchess of Kent. Queen Adelaide stayed ever vigilant by his side, nursing him an comforting him, refusing to rest for the final 10 days and welcoming his children to keep vigil with her. He died less than a month after Victoria's 18th birthday. Although heartbroken and exhausted, Adelaide immediately wrote to the new Queen, assuring her of her "most affectionate devotion" and signing herself as "your Majesty's most affectionate Friend, Aunt, and Subject."

Queen Victoria repaid Adelaide's kindness immediately. As the first Queen Dowager in more than a century and because she was not the mother of the new monarch, Adelaide might easily have been denied the perquisites of her station. Instead, Victoria showered her with affection, even embracing her at her coronation. She let Adelaide take any personal mementos she wanted fromthe King's estate, gave her an income of £100,000 per year, and let her stay at Windsor Castle, where her daughter Elizabeth was buried, whenever she wished. A few years later, when Victoria's first child was born, she christened her Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa and asked Queen Adelaide to stand as godmother.

During her widowhood, Adelaide continued to act as materfamilias to the ever-growing Fitzclarence family. She regularly welcomed them to her home at Bushy Park, where she served as Ranger of Bushy Park, a position her husband had granted her in the first year of his reign. She also traveled frequently. She returned to her German homeland and also went to warmer climates like Madeira, Malta, and Gibraltar in service to her chronically worsening health. Wherever she went, she is known to have supported churches, hospitals, and the poor.

Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert, whose own mother had been banished from his life when he was very young and died when he was still a child, also embraced Queen Adelaide's maternal spirit as well as her sterling moral reputation. When she died in 1849 at age 57, Albert served as chief mourner joined by the seven surviving Fitzclarences and their offspring. Victoria writing that it was a "great and irreparable loss to both of us."

In addition to bequests to the Queen, including some jewels still in use by royal ladies today, she left cash, jewels, and family treasures to the Fitzclarence grandchildren, several of whom had been named Adelaide in honor of her.

Although she insisted on a quiet and unassuming funeral in keeping with her character and personality, her most famous namesake has her relaxed vibe but also knows how to throw a great festival. Adelaide, Australia was named in her honor in 1836 while King William was still alive. Queen Victoria's second son Prince Alfred was the first royal to visit Adelaide in 1867.

In 2026, Victoria's great-great-great granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, named her daughter Adelaide, reviving a royal name that had reigned two centuries ago.

Princess Palace

17 August 2026

A Matriarch without Descendants

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