A Royal Romantic

The story of Prince Augustus, the only previous Duke of Sussex, is a tale of family breakdown, two illegal weddings and a heartbroken bookish and sensitive boy

- Duncan Hall

As a wedding present HM The Queen gave her grandson the title of Duke of Sussex.

But if one looks back to the story of the first Duke of Sussex the honour might not have quite the prestige it should.

King George III and his wife Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz famously had a large family of 15 – including two future kings, George IV and his brother William IV. But the bond between the king and his children was famously difficult – and his relationship with his sixth son, Augustus, was no exception. Born in 1773 the ninth child of the royal couple was one of 13 children who lived to adulthood. Like Harry and Meghan he lived in Kensington Palace, although according to Janice Hadlow’s The Strangest Family – an in-depth account of the private life of the Hanoverians – he was packed off to the University of Gottingen at the age of 13, subsisting on just a guinea a week in pocket money. She refers to him as a “bookish and thoughtful boy” who suffered from asthma, and so didn’t make it into the navy like his brother William – dubbed the naval prince. His asthma attacks were so severe according to Hadlow that: “He was often unable to lie down to sleep at night, and was forced to try to rest sitting up in a chair.”