Sophia Dorothea of Celle
1666 – 1726 · Generation XXVIII · House of Hanover
Sophia Dorothea of Celle (1666–1726). Married George I in 1682; the marriage was dissolved in 1694. 2 of their children are recorded in this archive. After the marriage was dissolved she lived out her life confined at Ahlden House. The only surviving daughter of George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, by the French Huguenot noblewoman Éléonore Desmier d’Olbreuse, she became legitimate only when her father formally married her mother, and her match with her first cousin George Louis went ahead over her objections. Her husband and his mother, Electress Sophia, held her birth and manners in contempt, and he soon took a mistress. Around 1690 she renewed a childhood acquaintance with the Swedish Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, and hundreds of their love letters survive. In July 1694, as the pair planned to flee, Königsmarck vanished — apparently murdered on Hanoverian orders. Divorced as the guilty party, she was forbidden to remarry or ever see her children again. At Ahlden she gave generously to rebuild the town after a fire in 1715. She died in 1726 and, months later, was buried secretly, at night, beside her parents in Celle.
Place in the family
- Sophia Dorothea of Celle was a great-great-great-grandmother of Queen Victoria.
- The archive records 94 of her descendants, across 12 generations.
One of 35 people of House of Hanover (from 1700) in this archive. Called from Germany by the Act of Settlement; the Georges, then Victoria.
Partners
- Married King George I (1660 – 1727) in 1682; the marriage was dissolved in 1694 — 2 children together
Children
- King George II (1683 – 1760)
- Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (1687 – 1757)
Life
- 1666 — Born
- 1682 — Married George I
- 1694 — Separated from George I
- 1726 — Died