Queen Anne's Danish husband wanted a quiet life and got a revolution
Prince George of Denmark married the future Queen Anne to help contain Dutch sea power, which made William of Orange loathe him. He longed for domestic calm, yet deserted his father-in-law James II in 1688, served as a mostly ceremonial Lord High Admiral, and shared a marriage marked by seventeen pregnancies.
George was born at Copenhagen Castle on 2 April 1653, a younger son of Frederick III of Denmark and Norway. He trained as a soldier, toured Europe, and in 1674 was proposed for the elective Polish crown with Louis XIV's backing, but his firm Lutheranism counted against him in Catholic Poland and John Sobieski won. In 1677 he fought with credit beside his brother Christian V against Sweden in the Scanian War.
The match with Lady Anne, niece of Charles II, was negotiated secretly so the Dutch would not hear of it. The two were distant cousins who had never met. Their wedding took place at St James's Palace on 28 July 1683 and set up home in the Cockpit at Whitehall, near today's Downing Street. George confessed to a friend that sitting still all summer was the peak of his ambition. Their household became a focus for Protestant opposition to the Catholic James II, known as the Cockpit Circle.
When William invaded in November 1688, George rode with James's army to Salisbury, reportedly greeting each noble defection with 'Est-il possible?' before slipping away himself on 24 November. James later mocked the loss as trivial. Rewarded with the dukedom of Cumberland, George was nonetheless frozen out by William, barred from command in Ireland and even from travelling in the king's coach, and a mortgage debt William had promised to repay went unsettled until 1700.
Grief shadowed the marriage. Anne was pregnant at least seventeen times, and only Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, outlived infancy, dying at 11 in July 1700; his death prompted the Act of Settlement 1701 naming the House of Hanover as successors. When Anne became queen in 1702 she made George generalissimo and Lord High Admiral, though George Churchill held the real naval power. George died in 1708, aged 55, of a chronic lung illness, leaving Anne devastated, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Source: Prince George of Denmark
