Version Francais
(Massie, Finestone: The Last courts of Europe)
Charlotte was her grandparents' (King Wilhelm I and Queen Augusta) favourite granddaughter. They judged her pretty only becuase of her strong resemblance to them. They spoiled the girl and turned her into a trouble child who would eventually grow into a trouble woman. She was constantly showing she knew everything better than anyone. Charlotte and her brothers, Wilhelm and Henry, formed an antagonist group to their parents and their younger sisters, beimg much attached to their grandparents, King Wilhelm and Queen Augusta.
In 1876 Charlotte became engaged to Prince Bernhard of Saxe Meiningen, an intelligent but weak-willed army officer. Bernhard was closely related to Charlote's family. His father was Georg II, Duke of Saxe Meiningen and his mother was Princess Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of King Wilhelm I's younger brother Albert; so Bernahrd and Charlotte came out to be second cousins. Besides, Bernhard's stepmother was the daughter of Queen Victoria's half sister Feodora. It is said that the voluble Charlotte had fallen in love with Bernhard while riding on a private railway on an island in the Havel River. The railway suddenly sped up and Charlotte grabbed form Bernhard, instantly fallig in love with him. Bernhard was an amateur arquelogist, an interest that Charlotte did not share.
Vicky took the task of assembling Charlotte's wedding trousseau. It was not easy since the Princess was oddly proportioned; she had long wait and neck, long arms, inmense breats and short legs. She was awkward and completely lacking of grace.
Charlotte and Bernhard married on February 1878 in Berlin. On May 12, 1879 she gave birth to her only child, a girl that was named Feodora and was Queen Victoria's first great-grandchild. After Feodora's birth, Charlotte declared she would not have any more children and returned to her society life, riding, skating ando gossiping with other high-society ladies of Berlin. Together with her grandmother, Queen Augusta, she severely critisized her paretns ; she was agaisnt their liberal political ideas and followed Chancellor Bismark's.
In 1885 Chartlotte strongly supported her grandfather Wilhelm I and her brother, the future Wilhelm II, who were against the engagement between her younger sister Moretta and Prince Alexander of Battenberg, the ruling prince of Bulgaria.
Wilhelm I died in1888 and Charlotte's father, Crown Prince Frederick, acceded to the throne as Kaiser Frederiuk III. His reign would only last three months, because he died of a cancer on the throat. When Wilhelm II succeded his father , Charlotte as ever, strongly supported him against her own mother. She even accused Vicky of not having given Wilhelm his right place at Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee the year before.
Charlotte and Bernhard gave their daughter Feodora a very poor family life. They were rarely at home; Charlotte was busy with her social and gossiping life and Bernhard with his own occupations. Feodora grew with a lack of paternal guidance which her grandmother Vicky tried to compensate herself. Feodora was a frequent guest at Vicky's estate, Friedrichshof. Her grandmother said of her: "She is really a good child and easier to manage than her Mama. Feodora was not more interested in studies than Cahrlotte had been; she only cared about dresses and gossiping about what people weared and looked like. She married on September 24, 1898 to Prince Heinrich XXX of Reuss. The Princely family of Reuss had the strange custom of naming all its male members Heinrich, in honour of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VI, form whom they recieved their lands in the 13th century. A complicated systems of numbering was developed into two different forms: the Elder line followed a sequence from 1 to 100 and then returned to 1.; the Younger line, to which Feodora's husband belonged, numbered as number 1 the first Heinrich to be born in the century and followed the sequence till the end of the century, and begin again with the new one. So Feodora's husband was the 30th Heinrich to be born i the 19th century. Their marrigae was childless. If Feodora had had a child, she would have made Queen Victoria a great-great-grandmother before the Queen's death in 1901.
In 1899 a cancer was detected on Vicky. She wanted to kept her disease a secret, but anyway she informed her children, except Charlotte, whom she considered incapable of keeping it. On a visit Charlotte paid to her mother at Friedrichshof, Vicky finally told her about her disease, begging her to keep the secret. Charlotte promised to do it but she broke her promise within a few months. Vicky died on August 5, 1901, six months and a half after her mother Queen Victoria.
In 1914 Bernhard inherited his father's dukedom becoming Duke Bernhard II of Saxe-Meiningen. He abdicated after World War I on November 10, 1918.
Charlotte, whose health had always been poor, suffering constant stomach pains, rashes and urinary problems, died on October 1st. 1919, when she was 59 years old. Her husband survived her 10 years, dying on January 16 1928.
Because of this health problems and the nervous agitation Charlotte suffered during her life, it has recently been deduced that she suffered from porphhyria, a genetically dominant disorder, caused by a defect in the synthesis of porphyrine, a component of all cells and particularly of the blood pigment haemoglobin. Some scientist obtained permission to exhume the bodies of both Charlotte and her daughter Feodora and to practice some studies in bones samples to determine if there were any traces of porphyria. Some mutations were discovered that demonstrate that both Princesses had the disease, much probably inherited from Queen Victoria's grandfather, King George III whose madness was casued by the same illness.
Pakula. Hannah: An uncommon woman
Massie, Robert K. & Finnestone, Jeffrey: The Last Courts of Europe
Packard, Jerrold M.: Victoria's Daughters
