Probably encouraged by his mother, King George III selected             
          Charlotte as his bride. Only seventeen years old, she set out for          
          England. On the journey she practised "God Save the King" on her           
          harpsichord while her attendants were seasick.                             
             Charlotte has been described as dim and formidably ugly. While          
          regretting her plainness, George III, a sensual man but with a high        
          moral sense, did his "duty", thereby producing fifteen children of         
          which only two boys died in childhood. Even though Charlotte was           
          interested only in domestic matters and exercised no political             
          influence, their marriage reduced George III's dependance on the Earl      
          of Bute.                                                                   
             George III was an affectionate but unwise father, not wanting his       
          six daughters to marry. However, if rather late, three escaped "the        
          nunnery". With the exception of the Duke of York, their sons were          
          reluctant to find suitable brides. It was only financial pressure          
          which made the Prince of Wales (George IV) accept his most unsuitable      
          first cousin, Caroline of Brunswick.                                       
             When the Duke of Cumberland proposed and, in 1815, married Queen        
          Charlotte's niece, the Queen was most upset. Friederike von                
          Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it was rumoured, had poisoned one husband,           
          Prince Ludwig of Prussia, rejected the offer of marriage from the Duke     
          of Cambridge (another son of George III and Charlotte) and was already     
          pregnant when she married her second husband, Prince Friedrich zu          
          Solms-Braunfels.                                                           
             After the onset of his illness, then misunderstood as madness,          
          George III was placed in the care of his wife, who could not bring         
          herself to visit him very often. Queen Charlotte had become the fond       
          grandmother of Princess Charlotte of Wales, and it was a great blow to     
          her when this granddaughter died in childbirth. It was this death that     
          started the undignified scramble of George III's middle-aged sons to       
          find wives. The Duke of Clarence (William IV), aged 53, married            
          Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, aged 27; the Duke of Kent, aged 50,            
          married the widowed Viktoria of Saxe-Saalfeld, aged 31; the Duke of        
          Cambridge, aged 44, married the 20-year-old Auguste of Hessen-Kassel.      
          A year after her granddaughter Charlotte's death, Queen Charlotte died     
          seated in a small armchair holding the hand of her eldest son.             
 

Source: Leo van de Pas