Charlotte and Leopold

Charlotte is the daughter of the Prince Regent, later George IV, and a granddaughter of George III, the king known as Mad. She is popular with the public from the day she is born. At home she is caught in other people's quarrels, and this biography follows her and Leopold as a couple.

The rivalries come from every side: her parents, her father and the old king, and the tutors and governesses of a household that rarely agrees. In the end the Whig opposition and the Tory government fight over her too. She is used and mistreated by all of them.

James Chambers writes a royal biography set in the Regency, an era of glamour and a famously dysfunctional royal family. The tone is sympathetic, at times funny and at times moving. The book treats the lives of Charlotte and Leopold as ones largely shaped by others.

The question running through it is how much of her life Charlotte can call her own, when so many people have a stake in what she does.