ABSTRACT
Until the wedding of Victoria and Albert, royal marriage had been the exemplar of marriage a la mode, the fashionable, free and easy marital relations of the aristocracy and gentry, and like theirs was much freer for the husbands than for their wives. The predicament of a royal bride married to an autocratic and inconsiderate husband is startlingly illustrated by the life of the German Princess Caroline, who married her cousin the Prince of Wales in 1795. In 1820 Britain was seething with unrest from many causes, among them high taxation and dear food, and the newly aroused working-class demand for Parliamentary Reform. The Prince’s treatment of his wife was an eye-opener to the women of Britain; it indicated that the situation of wives of men lower down in the social scale could also be one of great jeopardy. On 9 September 1863, the 18–year-old Danish Princess Alexandra married the 21–year-old heir to the English throne.
