King George III and his wife, Queen Charlotte, had no fewer than nine sons and six daughters. The eldest son became King George IV, who was predeceased by his only child. Princess Charlotte of Wales died in 1817, aged 21 – shortly after giving birth to a stillborn baby boy.
Throughout most of the reign of George IV, the heir presumptive was the eldest of his eight younger brothers – George and Charlotte's second son – Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. But Frederick died in 1827, a victim of dropsy (oedema) and apparent cardiovascular disease. Frederick's marriage, to his cousin Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia (the daughter of King Frederick William II of Prussia and Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick–Lüneburg) had not been a happy one; the couple lived separate lives, and had no children. Following Frederick's death, the heir presumptive was Prince William, Duke of Clarence and St. Andrews – the third son of George III and Queen Charlotte. William was approaching his 65th birthday when he succeeded to the throne on his elder brother's death in 1830.
William IV had fathered five sons and five daughters by his long–term mistress, the actress Dorothea Jordan; but of the four children of his marriage, to Adelaide of Saxe–Meiningen, none had survived infancy. Two were stillborn, one lived for only a few hours, and the other for less than three months. The next bloodline in the succession was that of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn – the fourth son of George III. Prince Edward himself had died in 1820, at the age of 52 – six days before his father; this meant that the heir presumptive to William IV was Edward's only child: Princess Victoria – born in 1819, just eight months before her father's death. In June 1837, when William's turn came, he was duly succeeded by his niece – who was barely 18 years old.
© Haydn Thompson 2021