German Royalty. She was the Princess of Ahlden, de jure Queen of Great Britain. Born the only child of Duke Georg Wilhelm of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Celle and his exiled protestant French mistress Eleonore d'Olbreuse, she was legalized in 1874 and her parents married when she was age ten. As a young lady, she was described as a charming beauty. Although she had several marriage opportunities, for mainly political reasons, she was married at age sixteen to her cousin Georg Ludwig of Hanover on November 18, 1682. Georg Ludwig of Hanover would later become George I of Great Britain. As part of the marriage contract agreement, her husband had to part from his mistress, which caused more hard feelings between the couple as well as her in-laws. Besides this agreement, her rich father had to pay an annual allowance of a hefty one hundred thousand thalers for her needs. Despite the coldness from her husband, she gave birth to two children George August and Sophie Dorothea. After the birth of heirs, she had completed her duty and was no longer needed and was brutally rejected publicly. Some sources state that she was physically and mentally abused by her husband. Georg Ludwig took a new mistress Ermengarde Melusine von der Schulenburg, and in 1693 her husband became the father of a daughter with his mistress. Sophie Dorothea became reacquainted with the handsome Swedish Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmarck, who she had originally met years earlier in 1681, and the two became lovers. The couple's love letters from a six-year relationship have been archived at University of Lund in Sweden. She and Königsmark attempted to escape to Dresden court but their plan was discovered, and Königsmarck was assassinated at the request of her husband on July 2, 1694 with his remains thrown in a river. At that point, Sophie Dorothea was transported to the Castle of Ahlden where she was ordered to stay until after the divorce trial. The fathers signed the divorce contract on September 1, 1694, the trial started ten days later and ended on January 7, 1695. Part of the divorced agreement was that she was going to be guarded for the rest of her life, not allowed to remarry or to ever see her children again. After the divorce in February, she returned to Ahlden where she was guarded by forty men and was called "Princess of Ahlden." Some sources say that Georg August, who often visited his grandparents, tried to visit Ahlden several times against his father's orders. During the first years, she was not allowed to leave the castle without a guard. Later she was allowed to ride 2 kilometers to a bridge and back to the Castle. She stayed in close contact with her mother, who did visit until her mother's death in 1722. After her father died in 1705, she became one of the richest women in Europe but her husband eventually acquired the wealth. In the face of the French invasion of Brunswick duchies, she was moved from Ahlden to Celle in April of 1700, but was returned to Ahlden in September without seeing her father. Following Queen Anne's death in 1714, Georg Ludwig became King of Great Britain and Ireland on August 1, 1714. The people of England where told several fabrications why they did not have a queen; either she was mentally unstable, a Roman Catholic or simply did not exist. When the truth surfaced, George I became even more unpopular with his subjects. English historian Horace Walpole wrote that Georg August had two pictures of her in his bedroom. As a result of this, her former husband ordered everyone not to enter Georg August's bedroom. In August of 1726, she became ill and bedridden. At the time of her death, she was nearly 61 years old and had been imprisoned for almost 32 years of her life. Upon her death, George Ludwig did not allow any mourning in Hanover or London. He was furious when he heard that his daughter's court in Berlin wore black. Sophie Dorothea's body was put into a casket and was deposit in the cellar of the Castle of Ahlden, but was quietly moved to Celle in May of 1727 to lie beside her parents. Four weeks later, George I died. In the last year of her life, she suffered with liver failure and cholecystitis with over 60 stones. Her son would become George II of Great Britain and her daughter the wife of the King of Prussia. Her grandson would become Frederick II the Great of Prussia