Queen Anne, the last Stuart, and the long road to Britain's throne
Anne was raised a Protestant on her uncle Charles II's orders, even though her father James was Catholic. When James had a son in 1688, she hinted in letters that the baby might be an impostor, then sided with the invasion that toppled her father. In 1702 she became queen herself.
She was born at St James's Palace in February 1665, the second daughter of the future James II and Anne Hyde. An eye complaint that made her eyes stream sent her to France as a small child, where she lived with her grandmother Henrietta Maria and then an aunt. Back in England she and her sister Mary were brought up at Richmond, apart from their father, and schooled in Anglican teaching, music, languages and drawing. Around 1671 she met Sarah Jennings, who would marry John Churchill, later the Duke of Marlborough, and become her closest confidante.
Her marriage in 1683 to Prince George of Denmark was a diplomatic match, pleasing to both Protestant subjects and Louis XIV, yet the couple proved loyal and devoted to each other. Their family life was marked by grief: in early 1687, within days, Anne miscarried, George caught smallpox and both their small daughters died of it. Over her life she had 17 pregnancies but left no surviving child.
When James's Catholic queen gave birth to a son in June 1688, Anne was away in Bath, and her absence fed doubts about the birth. After William of Orange landed that November, she wrote to him backing the invasion. William and Mary took the throne, relations between the sisters soured, and after William's death in 1702 Anne succeeded.
Her reign saw England and Scotland joined as Great Britain by the Acts of Union of 1707. She preferred moderate Tories, removed many Whigs in 1710, and fell out with Sarah Churchill, whose hostile memoirs shaped her reputation until historians reassessed her late in the 20th century. When she died in 1714, the crown passed under the Act of Settlement to George I of Hanover, ending Stuart rule.
Source: Anne, Queen of Great Britain
