So the examples you cited aren't terribly surprising, since they're from centuries ago, when medicine and hygiene were pathetic (to say the least). That's why I wanted to focus on cases in the more recent past, when the rate of dying from childbirth should have been declining, and did. But that was not to say that they no longer happened. My point was to juxtapose the cases of royal women who died when attempting to deliver their first (or second, third, or fourth) in recent centuries, compared to those who survived ten or more childbirths in earlier history.
It is indeed eerie to think that Queen Charlotte, consort of King George III, gave birth to fifteen children and lived to the age of 74, while her granddaughter and namesake, Princess Charlotte of Wales, died from trying to deliver her first child. She had suffered a miscarriage in her first year of marriage, and ended up delivering a stillborn son in her second year ...
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