The fifth child and fourth son of King George III, it appears that,     
          with his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, he displayed symptoms     
          of porphyria. He went into the army but proved to be too severe a          
          disciplinarian, causing trouble wherever he was in command. After a        
          mutiny in Gibraltar, he was recalled but nevertheless was gazetted         
          field-marshal the following year.                                          
              He was the baldest of the whole family and Sheridan suggested that     
          this was because grass did not grow upon deserts. The Duke remarked        
          when he heard this joke, "If Sheridan means that I haven't genius, I       
          can tell him that such a gift would have been of small value to a          
          Prince, whose business it is to keep quiet. I am luckier in having,        
          like my country, a sound constitution."                                    
              Like his brothers he had trouble to live within his income. To         
          make ends meet he went to live in Brussels for several years,              
          accompanied by his mistress, Madame St.Laurent. When his brother's         
          daughter and heir died in 1817, he joined the scramble to provide an       
          heir for the nation. In 1818, after twenty-seven years together, he        
          broke with Madame St.Laurent. The Duke is recorded to have said, "You      
          may well imagine the pang it will occasion me to part with her".           
          Little is known about this Julie de St.Laurent other than she left         
          Marseille in 1790 to join Edward in Malaga and stayed with him until       
          1818; she was rumoured to have had children by him and even to be his      
          morganatic wife.                                                           
             However, the Duke of Kent married the widowed Princess Viktoria of      
          Leiningen and their daughter, the future Queen Victoria, was born in       
          1819. Edward wanted the names Alexandrina Georgina but his brother,        
          the Prince-Regent, vetoed Georgina, perhaps to embarrass the brother       
          he disliked as much as he disliked his brother's wife. And so the          
          Regent decided she would be named Alexandrina Victoria, Alexandrina in     
          honour of the Russian Emperor and Victoria after her mother.               
             Being married and the father of a child, he was still plagued with      
          financial worries. Again he decided to return to the continent to save     
          money, but first Christmas was to be spent in Sidmouth, Devon. Edward      
          visited the nearby Cathedral of Salisbury and caught a cold. When his      
          cold became worse he stayed in bed and soon it became clear he was not     
          going to recover. His wife, nursing him, was asked "Do not forget me".     
          The Duke of Kent died of pneumonia, January 23rd, 1820. His father,        
          dying six days later, was buried with him at the same time in the          
          family vault at Windsor. All he left was an enormous debt.     
 

Source: Leo van de Pas