C (29:37)
Yeah, it absolutely is. And, you know, but again, it comes down to, you know, this isn't just a kind of soap opera of these people living crazy lives, but there's even discussion that the child that Caroline has had with George is illegitimate because they're both so unfaithful. Like, how can we possibly know? And therefore, you know, that impacts the future of the monarchy and all of that. So these are conversations we had in public all of the time. But the public hatred for George will really spill over. And because of that, sort of as a direct reaction, there will be support for Caroline. And it's not really because she does anything that great. She just is the opposite of George. And therefore people are like, she's our icon. Like, we're gonna go with her. So we now get into the Regency around kind of 1811 and the sort of 1810s, you know, which is very much kind of Jane Austen era. It's when Pride and Prejudice is coming out. Sense sensibility, all of that. It's the kind of, you know, polite ballroom world that we all know and love. On screen, the reality, of course, is much grimier, but this is, you know, people will have an inkling into what this world looks like. And at this moment, George iii, George's father, is so mentally unwell that he has retired again from public view. He is being treated at Kew and he will never really recover at this point. So George iv, as he is going to become in a few years, he's the Prince Regent now, for all intents and purposes, he is the monarch. And he knows his father's life won't last that long. I mean, it's remarkable, really, that George III lives as long as he does because, you know, we have all these moments of, like, real crisis. But George knows that he will become King in the foreseeable future. And he decides that he doesn't want Caroline to be his queen because he spends no time with her. She's unfaithful, he's unfaithful. Whether or not he wants Mariah, I think that's. Even he would acknowledge that was kind of unrealistic in that moment. But he certainly doesn't want Caroline. And so he wants a divorce, but he has been so publicly unfaithful that he can't really say, well, she's been unfaithful, so it's fine, we'll be able to divorce. And so he's trying to think of the way to do this, and he wants to kind of drag her through the mud, but he knows that any court in the land is going to criticise him as well. So he basically goes to Parliament, which is a rogue move, instead of a court. He's like, I am going to drag Caroline up in front of the entirety of the British Parliament. We're going to talk about her sex life, because politicians have nothing better to do. This is the era of the Napoleonic wars at this moment. So, you know, the French revolutions happened in 1789. Going into the 1790s, the French royal family been killed, Napoleon's come to power. Britain is fighting for its life across its empire with the French. It's, you know, completely wild time. There are soldiers and sailors coming back with limbs missing. In this moment, there are food shortages across Britain, particularly in the Industrial North. There's immense poverty. People are feeling pissed off. There is unrest, and there is this feeling that, you know, maybe the revolution in France wasn't such a bad thing, and maybe we should do something similar here, because this guy is not helping us. He's not doing anything to help. He's just slagging off his wife in public. So poor Caroline is called into Parliament and all the politicians on both sides of the House basically have to go through with a fine tooth comb all of her affairs, whether her children are legitimate or not. And she is just raked through the mud in a really public way. And this isn't just like, one day she has to turn up, for this is day after day after day, she is being ritually and publicly humiliated by George simply because he doesn't want her as the Queen. And eventually this becomes so popular, what he's doing to her, and she becomes the kind of symbol of the working people of Britain, the people who feel that they're being wronged by the monarchy, even though she is herself living the life of a member of the Royal family. Like, she's not slumming it, and she's not out there, like, with a placard calling for universal suffrage. She does not care. She's not invested. But she's kind of taken up as this symbol. And so George kind of backs down. Eventually, Parliament's like, what are you doing? Like, we're here every day discussing who your wife has had sex with. Like, this is embarrassing for everybody, it's embarrassing for her, it's embarrassing for you, it's embarrassing for us. We don't want to do this anymore. So eventually he kind of drops that, because they're like, we can't. We're not going to give you a divorce. This is not how Parliament works. This is not what it's for. Have you not seen in the previous century what we did to the monarchs who overstepped? Like, come on, you know, this isn't good. So eventually he kind of gives up there. But obviously the damage has been done. Caroline's been humiliated. We get to 1820 and George III dies finally, and George, Prince Regent, is now George IV officially. And the pettiness. My God, the pettiness. So he has his coronation at Westminster Abbey, as do most of the British monarchs of history, and it's, as you can imagine, a kind of ridiculous affair. He has a diamond diadem made for himself, like a tiara that was worn, I think, up until Queen Elizabeth ii. And if you see, like, old postage stamps of the queen, she's wearing it. It's very recognisable crown. But he has that made for him on the day. He's like, I want a little tiara.
