The Image of a Princess

Abstract

Considering the remarkable number of writings that treated the circumstances of Princess Charlotte’s death, it is tempting to wonder whether the young woman truly meant so much to so many, or whether some other phenomenon accounts for this extraordinary volume of writing and for the apparently universal outpouring of affectionate sentiment it would seem to indicate. The answer, not surprisingly, is more complex than it might at first appear to be. Certainly there was genuine public grief, for the death of a young woman in the direct line of succession, especially during a period marked by a national crisis of spirit, would naturally have occasioned more than mere formulaic pathos. The death of innocence and beauty is a moving phenomenon no matter when or where it occurs, as the history of Western culture has demonstrated repeatedly over the centuries. When that innocence and beauty is snuffed out in so public a figure as a princess to the throne of what had just emerged as the greatest ‘superpower’ of its time, however, its significance changes. For the death - like the life - of Princess Charlotte furnished the stuff of myth to an age peculiarly predisposed to such mythmaking.