Duke Ferdinand Of Brunswick Wolfenbüttel Puns

[For context, Caroline and her husband, the future King George IV, hated each other and George was constantly looking for a scandal large enough that he could legally divorce his wife.]

>For a while it was just talk, but then Caroline gave the prince almost the scandal he needed to divorce her.

>Caroline had a weird habit of collecting babies. To her credit, she seemed chiefly concerned with finding good homes for the foundlings. But in 1802, she adopted a baby boy named William Austin, known thereafter as Willikin, and bizarrely pretended that he was her own. Why she thought it would be funny to say so is unclear, but it’s likely she just wanted to cause a fuss. Her allies, including her father-in-law, King George III, dismissed the stories of a bastard child as idle talk, and her foes could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove.

>But by 1806, Caroline had committed a critical error: she made enemies of the Douglases, her former friends and neighbors. It was to Lady Douglas that Caroline first pretended that Willikin was her child. After a few months of close friendship, however, Caroline grew bored with the couple and was rude when Lady Douglas came to call. When Lady Douglas wrote to Caroline implying that she had secrets about the princess she was willing to spill, Caroline reacted in a spectacularly ill-considered fashion. She sent her former friend obscene and harassing “anonymous” letters featuring poorly drawn pictures of Lady D performing a sex act. The Douglases were quite sure the letters were from Caroline – at least one bore her royal seal.

>The offended Douglases (who, it should be noted, were also perpetually broke) marched straight to the prince and made it clear they would swear that Willikin was Caroline’s bastard child. For good measure, Lady Douglas even accused the princess of trying to touch and kiss her inappropriately. Armed with such evidence, the prince demanded an investigation into his estranged wife’s supposed infidelity. The ensuing “Delicate Investigation,” as it was called, was conducted by a secret government committee. Witnesses included everyone from Caroline’s footman to her portrait painter, Thomas Lawrence. Ultimately, Willikin’s real mother testified that she’d indeed given h

My understanding is that the early stages of Spanish colonization were heavily male-dominated. Did high-status Spanish women play an important role in the establishment of the first Spanish settlements in the Caribbean or was María de Toledo more of an exception?

Would undertaking such a journey have been seen as prestigious? It seems that her marriage likely involved more personal risk (from the journey, disease and war) and significantly less material comfort (living in a fledgling settlement thousands of miles from home) than her sisters' marriages to European noblemen.

Henry belongs to the storied and prestigious line of the Welfs, a family who at one point held the duchies of Saxony and Bavaria, and even the emperorship in the past. Nowadays, the Welfs are relegated to the remains of their old realm in the Northern Holy Roman Empire. Their realm has been subdivided, united, and divided once again throughout the years as the various family lines jockey for power.

Currently, Henry's reign is stable, having ruled for a decade and a half. Historically, Henry would keep one eye open for a chance to expand his realm, overplay his hand, and land himself in hot water with a new Emperor. I hope to competently guide Brunswick-Luneburg as Henry did, while avoiding his disasterous end.