Another impediment to the marriage would have been any suggested irregularity in his parent's marriage or other possible stain in his recent ancestry raising questions about his legitimacy. And if his parents had each been married and divorced five times that would have been a distinct possibility. For example, although it is almost universally believed that the Electoress Sofia was the most senior Protestant descendent of James I, that distinction actually belonged to her cousin, Frederika, Countess of Mertola (in her own right) and Countess FitzWalter, the daughter of Raugravine Caroline Elisabeth, herself a daughter of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine and the Electress Sophia's older brother. Frederika was by-passed because of doubts about her legitimacy. Her grandfather, Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine, had asserted his sovereign right to divorce his wife on his own authority in order to marry Frederica's grandmother. Interestingly, Frederica's eldest son was Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness, whose only surviving child was Lady Amelia Darcy, who married (as her second husband) "Mad Jack" Byron (who subsequently became the father of the "mad, bad and dangerous" Lord Byron) and had one daughter, the incestuous Augusta Leigh. Sadly, Augusta was superceded genealogically by her mother's children from her first marriage, including the 6th Duke of Leeds and so would not have been our Queen anyway. |
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