Duc_et_Pair
Imperial Majesty
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- Mar 30, 2014
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Yes, that's the story i've read too; the marriage was arranged by the fathers and Sophie's opinion (which wasn't positive from the start) was not taken into account...
Quite possibly one of the worst matched royal marriages in history
Dik van der Meulen, the royal biographer, supported by letters, notes, memorandums and other documents concerning the marriage came to the conclusion that Princess Sophie had a choice. Her own father wrote in letters, documented in the biography, that the ultimate choice was hers. He urged her to listen to her heart and mind. (!) Proof for this is that Sophie's elder sister Princess Marie married Alfred, Count von Neipperg, a non-equal marriage which was nevertheless made dynastic and with continuation of the royal style and the HRH for Princess Marie.
Through the whole biography (more than 700 pages!) it became clear, chapter after chapter, that many of the letters, notes, and especially the "memoirs" of Queen Sophie (written 25 years after the wedding) often shed an untrue image and clashed with other facts found in archives in The Hague, Stuttgart and Berlin. Not only the relationship with her husband was poor. The relationship with her mother-in-law and also aunt Queen Anna Pavlovna was disastrous. In the end Princess Sophie said yes. Had she said no, her cousin Prince Willem just would have went on, to another possible royal partner. The idea that she was "enforced" by the parents was a myth. The Prince of Orange (later King Willem II) had no interest in the Württemberg connection. He had more interesting liaisons in his mind but let his son free. I think it is mainly self-pity by Queen Sophie: "Buhuhuuuu.... oh pity me, the pour soul I am... enforced into a marriage with a brute!" It was the worst choice of her life. But her choice.
Note that -on her turn- Queen Sophie for once, really a rarity, agreed with her husband in his opposition to the idea of the eldest son, Prince Willem, to marry Anna Mathilde Countess van Limburg-Stirum. She fully agreed with the King that it was a grave mésalliance, "unworthy a future King and Grand-Duke". The Queen, never too tired to use everything to frustrate her spouse and to use the children as ammunition in her Holy War against Willem III, was remarkably disaproving of her son's choice. So the "Buhuhuuuu.... oh pity me, the pour soul I am..."-tone of Queen Sophie was pretty selective. The self-pity she felt for herself, she did not feel for her son. The result was a total desillusionment of her son but Queen Sophie had little understanding. Remarkably she herself begged for the same understanding for the marriage she had "to endure"....
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