Within royal palaces : a brilliant and charmingly written inner view of emperors, kings, queens, princes and princesses ... . med the family circle ; they were carefully, simply andreligiously educated, and their kindly ways endeared them tothe handful of subjects who owned their fathers sway. In THE ROYAL FAMILY OF HOLLAND. 423 her girlhood Queen Emma was not strictly pretty, but shehad a winsome expression, soft eyes and an abundance ofhair. But few suitors had made their way to Arsolen to seekthe hand of that dowerless Princess, when one day therearrived at thecastle the eld-erly, widowedan
Within royal palaces : a brilliant and charmingly written inner view of emperors, kings, queens, princes and princesses ... . med the family circle ; they were carefully, simply andreligiously educated, and their kindly ways endeared them tothe handful of subjects who owned their fathers sway. In THE ROYAL FAMILY OF HOLLAND. 423 her girlhood Queen Emma was not strictly pretty, but shehad a winsome expression, soft eyes and an abundance ofhair. But few suitors had made their way to Arsolen to seekthe hand of that dowerless Princess, when one day therearrived at thecastle the eld-erly, widowedand next tochildless Kingof Holland toask the o-irl inmarriage. The offerwas dazzling,but there wasmuch in theconditions at-tending it torepel a younggirl. The Kingwas a widow-er, nearly threetimes her age :the unhappi-n e s s of hisfirst marriage was an open secret. Everybody knew that he and QueenSophia, a Princess of the Wurtemberg family, endowedwith fine qualities of head and heart, had lived a wretchedexistence, and that the blame of this unhappiness could notbe said to rest with Queen Sophia. She had, it is true, a. THE QUEEN REGENT. 424 WITHIN ROYAL PALACES. great love of letters, and had striven to make the Palaceof La Haye an intellectual centre. She had a keen inter-est in politics. The King, on the other hand, cared for nothing but his ownpleasure, and loathed everything connected with Court eti-quette or politics, as being unwelcome hindrances to hispurely pleasure-seeking existence. For ten long years thisill-sorted couple lived at daggers drawn, and when, in 1849,William succeeded to the throne of the Netherlands, thediscord which subsisted between William and Sophia dividedthe Court of The Hague into two separate camps, known as le parti du Roi and le parti de la Rei?te. In 1887, Queen Sophia died, leaving two sons, the eldest, Prince Citron, who was already at the time in a state of semi-imbecility, brought on by dissipation, and Prince Alexander,who was a crippl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectcourtsandcourtiers
