Meet the Ancestors: A Wills and Kate Special

Two weeks ago Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement. While the rest of the country were snapping up Issa dresses, ordering replica sapphire rings from QVC and placing bets on the wedding date, I was searching the Royal Collection catalogue for details on the full length ceremonial portrait hanging above the St James’s Palace photo call.

Which monarch would William align himself with on this most important of days? How about Henry VIII, famed for his matrimonial devotion and steadfastness? Or George IV who said of his wife Caroline of Brunswick that ‘it required no small effort to conquer my aversion and overcome the disgust of her person’? Maybe better to go with George III and Queen Charlotte who were married for nearly sixty years and had fifteen children together?

Prince William opted for a portrait of his namesake William IV by Sir Martin Archer Shee, the largely forgotten artist who succeeded Thomas Lawrence as president of the Royal Academy.  As matrimonial role models go, William is not the obvious choice. Before he came to the throne William IV spent twenty years living in sin with Mrs Dorothea Jordan, a comic actress with whom he had ten illegitimate children. 

The political satirists were merciless. ‘Actress’ was as bad as ‘prostitute’ and ‘jordan’ was slang for a chamber pot. A particularly vicious cartoon 'The Crack'd Jordan' by James Gillray has William disappearing headfirst into a large earthenware commode with much vigorous yahooing.  

William eventually settled down. At 53 he married the twenty five year old Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. The couple had four children; none survived infancy. And so ended the Hanoverian kings. 

Shee's portrait of William IV was a strange choice for the engagement of William and Kate. The Jordan affair ended dismally with Dorothea, exiled to France to escape her creditors, dying alone and in poverty in a Parisian suburb. Adelaide and William suffered the death of two daughters and twin baby sons.

William and Kate might have done their homework. Both studied history of art at St Andrews (we’ll let Wills off because he did switch to geography) and should have been alert to any adverse symbolism lurking in their choice of backing painting.

I wish them well. I hope the satirists are kind to Kate, that their many strapping heirs inherit her hair and not his, and that when the time comes to announce the first Windsor/Middleton birth they’ll do it in front of something more appropriate. Court painter Johann Zoffany did a nice line in happy families.