And I want a grand display of fireworks,” announced George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and—thanks to the ever-deepening madness of his father, King George III—Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. “At least two hours’ worth.”
The remark was addressed to Charles, Lord Jarvis, the King’s powerful cousin and the acknowledged stabilizing force behind the Prince’s fragile regency. The two men were in the Prince’s porcelain room, Jarvis standing with his shoulders propped against a silk-hung wall while the Prince looked over a new shipment of Ming vases and jade carvings laid out on a long table for his inspection. The skinny, nervous dealer hovered nearby.
“Two hours, sir? You don’t think that might be . . . excessive?” said Jarvis. He was a man in his early sixties, still strong and healthy. His physical appetites were robust but, unlike his cousin the Prince, he managed to carry his added pounds without drifting into the realm of obesity. He also still preserved a measure of his good looks, with fine, piercing gray eyes, an aquiline nose, and a surprisingly charming smile he could use to both cajole and deceive. He was a complex man, brilliant, uncannily prescient, utterly ruthless, and feared throughout the land. But he was also genuinely devoted to the preservation and the aggrandizement of both Great Britain and its monarchy. Without his wisdom and guidance, the Hanovers would in all likelihood have lost their heads along with the Bourbons across the Channel.
They certainly wouldn’t be celebrating the one hundred and first anniversary of their accession to the throne.
“Excessive?” The Regent turned up his nose at a copper red bowl and set it aside, his corset creaking with each movement. Once, he had been beloved by his people and cheered wherever he went; once, he had been handsome, with thick auburn hair, a fine figure, and pleasing features. Now, weeks shy of his fifty-third birthday, his hair was gray, his body fat and bloated, his good looks lost long ago to rampant pleasure seeking. As for his once-adoring subjects, they’d come to hate him, both for his expensive self-indulgence and for the petty cruelty with which he treated his wife and daughter. Now, whenever they saw him, they booed.
“Excessive?” he said again. “Hardly. It isn’t every day a country is given the opportunity to celebrate the one hundred and first anniversary of the accession of their monarch’s family to the throne and a crushing victory over a monster like Napoléon. I’d say the people deserve an extravaganza befitting the occasion.”
“Some are suggesting it might be prudent to wait and celebrate after we’re certain that Napoléon is securely in our hands—or dead,” said Jarvis.
The Prince’s lip thrust out in a pout. “But if we wait, then we won’t be able to combine the two celebrations, each one enhancing and emphasizing the other.”
With falling wages, spiraling food prices, and the gloomy shadow cast by a decades-long war that had recently ended so spectacularly at Waterloo, Jarvis suspected “the people” were in little mood to celebrate the accession of the Hanovers. In fact, the previous year’s ruinously expensive extravaganza—which included not only a massive fireworks display but also a mock naval battle staged on the Serpentine and a fanciful Temple of Victory erected in the park—had ended in a riot. But all he said was, “Then two hours it must be.” Chewing the inside of his cheek to hide a vaguely malicious smile, Jarvis shifted his shoulders against the wall. “I hear the people are expecting to see Princess Charlotte in London for the festivities.”
The Regent’s nostrils flared in annoyance. Nineteen-year-old Charlotte might be his only legitimate child and the heir presumptive to the throne, but he viewed her more as a rival and a source of aggravation than as a daughter to be loved and cherished. The previous summer he had forced upon her an unwanted betrothal to the Prince of Orange as part of a nasty scheme to get her out of the country. When she ultimately rebelled, the Regent reacted by flying into a frothing rage, dismissing her entire household, and banishing the disgraced Princess to a damp, cramped, unpleasant house deep in the woods of Windsor Castle.
And he was still furious with her.
“Ungrateful brat,” muttered the Prince, frowning down at a fifteenth-century Dehua piece. “What the bloody hell does she have to do with anything?”
What indeed? thought Jarvis. She’s only the future of the House of Hanover and the people love her. But Jarvis knew his prince, so he didn’t say it, for the Regent was as jealous and vindictive as he was vain and selfish, and the knowledge that his daughter was beloved while he himself was universally reviled ate at him.
The Prince’s corset creaked again in protest as he leaned over to study the pattern on the side of a particularly large vase. “I’ll never understand why Our Heavenly Father should have seen fit to bless me with some half dozen fine bastard sons and yet make my only legitimate offspring a headstrong, willful female totally lacking in any sense of what is owed either to her sire or to her royal house.”
Given her parentage and the way she’d been raised, those who knew the Princess tended to be amazed she’d turned out as well as she had. That she existed at all was something of a miracle, given that the Prince had spent one night in his wife’s bed and then never returned. Rumor had it the newly wed Princess of Wales had criticized both her drunken bridegroom’s performance and his anatomy, with disastrous results.
Carefully keeping his features utterly bland, Jarvis said, “Lord Liverpool has suggested it might be appropriate to invite Her Highness the Princess of Wales to return to England and attend the festivities.”
The Prince straightened with a jerk, his eyes bulging, his full, florid face darkening to an angry crimson. “Good God! Whatever can the man be thinking? Caroline?”
“I told him I didn’t think it would be necessary.”
“It’s beyond unnecessary; it’s madness!” The Prince stepped back from the table and waved a languid hand over the array of exquisite pieces, the cost of which would no doubt feed the poor of England for quite some time. “I’ll take them all—except for the red bowl.”
The dealer executed a deep bow. “Yes, Your Highness.”
Jarvis pushed away from the wall. “Liverpool also expressed a desire to meet with you to discuss what he and Sidmouth believe is a growing threat posed by the Spenceans.” As followers of the late Thomas Spence, the Spenceans were an annoying group of radicals who not only opposed the ongoing enclosure of traditional common lands but also advocated for any number of shockingly revolutionary concepts, from equal rights for all to universal suffrage.
“Damn rabble-rousing insurrectionists,” muttered the Regent. “What is there to discuss? Simply find something to charge the rascals with and hang them. How difficult can it be?”
Once again Jarvis hid a private smile, and bowed. “As you wish, sir.”