Dawe, Henry Edward: His Royal Highness Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg (Leopold I. King of Belgium as Prince of Saxony-Coburg-Saalfeld)

It was thanks to his own diplomatic skills that Prince Leopold (1790–1865), the third son of the Coburg Duke Franz Friedrich Anton of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, won the heart and the hand of Charlotte, the heiress of the British throne. Although her father, the Prince of Wales and future King George IV, was opposed to this association with a princeling from a minor German ducal house, Charlotte succeeded in gaining her will. Leopold would have become prince consort at Charlotte’s ascension to the throne. After her death in 1817, he saw no future for himself in England. Twenty years later, however, Leopold, the uncle of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, was going to arrange the marriage between his niece and nephew. In Albert he found an appropriate Coburg successor to his own unsuccessful British plans. For Victoria, he was always a caring uncle and counsellor.

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