Hi everyone, and welcome back to Famous Brits Under the Microscope【英伦名人八卦堂】. Hi, 安澜.

Hi Lulu, hi, everyone.

We haven't done this for a while.

No, it's been a really long time since we last did this segment. But I thought today I want talk a little bit more about the gossip.

Mhm.

We talk about the great people from British history.

So boring...

You can get a bit boring.

Okay.

Today I want to tell you about probably one of the worst kings we ever had.

It's not the great,it’s the infamous.

Exactly. And this was George IV.

George IV. 乔治四世, I'm really bad at history, so remind me.

So George IV reigned in the early 19th century, but he was most famous for being the Prince Regent.

就是摄政王, 是不是Blackadder 里面, in Blackadder  Hugh Laurie that character.

He was the Prince Regent, and this was also the Time of Jane Austen.

And we still talk about the regency as a time of architecture, art, literature, good manners. But it's named after somebody who was not a very nice person.

And his time that was... when he had the power, when he's on the throne that was called the regency. That's right, 叫摄政时期, if you look it up in Chinese.

So it starts with him being born in1762, his father and mother were the king and queen obviously. And as a child, even though he was a good student,  he wasn't stupid, he was more interested in luxury, eating, drinking, and partying. He was incredibly lazy.

So it's basically someone born with really not just silver spoon, was like diamond spoon.

Well put it this way. He got around￡14 million a year as allowance from the king and also from parliament.

￡14 million?

In today's prices, in 2022.

And that was just allowance?

That was just his allowance, but even with that amount of money, he was constantly in debt. He was overspending.

What did he spend it on, partying? drinking? How much could he drink?

Partying, drinking, building palaces... He built a very famous palace which he kept changing so many times. He kind of finished one part of it and went, I don't really like that very much and knocked it down. He did that so many times. It actually made the palace unstable and they had to knock the entire palace down.

Yeah, so basically a royal waste of space.

Exactly. He was awful, when he was 21, he actually had a secret marriage with a woman 6 years older than him.

As a king how could you... back then he wasn't the king, he was the Prince.

He was a Prince.

As a Prince could you really get married secretly?

No, it was against the law.

Ok

And it was doubly against the law because the woman he married Maria Fitzherbert was a Catholic.

Back then it was Protestant and Catholic?

Yeah, and up until very recently it's actually against the law for the heir to the throne to marry a Catholic.

Well, I did not know that.

So by getting married, you actually breaking a number of laws.

But did he at least love her?

He loved her, but he also loved a lot of other women as well. He had a lot of mistresses, and important to know they were mostly women who were older than him.

Oh, Mummy issue.

Could be, could be.

Mama's boy就有点恋母情结.

His mom was notoriously cold with him, so maybe...

Typical

Yeah, so as you can imagine, the king and also parliament got really fed up with him and said that he had to get married to his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick.

That was very common, wasn't it, in royal family, they just inbred.

Yeah, and also you didn't have much choice in a matter, as a Prince he had to marry a princess and there were not that many princesses around. So as a sweetener, they offered him more money to pay his debts which by that time had reached in today's prices￡69 million.

WOW, just as a yearly bribe so that you can actually get married to a proper princess.

Because he's original marriage was invalid, so he was still technically single and.

Let me guess he didn't really like the arranged marriage.

The marriage was a failure. When I say a failure, I mean a really catastrophically bad marriage. When they first met, George took one look at her and said I need a drink, I'm not feeling very well.

Was she that ugly?

She was not very good looking. She was quite... how should I say, quite chubby.  Also apparently she didn't smell very nice either.

I see.

But George had no choice, he had to marry her. So in order to get through the wedding ceremony, he got completely drunk.

I can imagine that.

He was completely and utterly drunk during the wedding ceremony

And he couldn't consummate the marriage.

No, he spent the marriage night asleep in a fireplace.

Really doesn't sound like much of a king.

And eventually they spent their time apart.

George had mistresses and girlfriends, Caroline had boyfriends.

Oh, ok, so they lived their own lives.

They lived their own lives. But when George was finally crowned, he actually banned her from the coronation.

That's a bit cold.加冕礼也不让他这个名义上的老婆去.

She was meant to be the queen.

So she basically did not get crowned as a queen.

No.

It's a slap on the face.

There are some stories that she did try to get inside Westminster Abbey and they closed the door in her face. So she tried to go around the side entrance instead.

That's gonna be one of the... you know you read about these English royal family gossips and you think Diana story was pretty sad. At least it wasn't like closing the door in her face.

Now we get a little bit ahead of ourselves, when he was still the Prince, the Prince of Wales, his father, George III became ill, the madness of King George.

I've heard about that and his dad George III was a German?  

The whole family were German, his mother was German. But from his father's side, they came from Hanover in northern Germany.

噢，汉诺威.

They were pretty much German because his father was so ill. George became the Prince regent.

Now you would think that with this extra power, he would become more like a king. He would improve his behavior, he didn't. Instead he spent most of his time spending money, building palaces and buying artworks.

Now it wasn't all that bad. Because some of the places that he built stilll remain, such as Buckingham Palace.

Oh, really, that was from George IV?

Yeah, basically what he did was he spent a lot of money, a lot of time refurbish in Buckingham Palace to make it into a proper palace. And there's a famous story that the architect was trying to get the money from him.

He didn't pay the architect?

he was constantly in debt. So apparently the architect took him up to the roof and threatened to jump off the roof and bring the Prince down with him, whether the story is true or not, I don't know, but I like that story.

Whatever you were saying about this king, this prince and then king, really doesn't sound so royal.

No, he was terrible.

Yeah, it's just spending spending spending living a luxury life good for nothing and a bit of a waste of space really.

Yeah, but it gets worse.

Okay, I don't know how much worse it can get.

You remember I said that he likes to party, he likes to eat and drink, when he finally became king in 1820 when he was 57, he was morbidly obese, alcoholic and also addicted to drugs.

Actually, I'm quite surprised that he lived till the age of 57 the way that he partyed.

Yeah, particularly when you consider what he would have for breakfast.

According to the Duke of Wellington, very famous general and politician, the king would eat an entire pie, drink almost an entire bottle of wine, followed with Brandy and Port and then take some drugs. This was for his breakfast.

Wine and brandy for breakfast?

Yeah.

I'm so surprised that he lived till 57 when he could be crowned as a king.

Actually he died at 67 in1830 and his weight was 130 kilograms.

两百六十斤.

He was completely bedridden. He could only function by taking drugs. And he was so disliked the Times of London the famous newspaper in its obituary stated that no one would be sorry that he was dead.

So the media openly said Hurray, the king is dead.

Pretty much.They basically just said how horrible he was. And he was actually one of the first kings to be satirized because this was the age of satire.

So there's lots and lots of images of George IV in cartoons. And I would say and if you can try to find some of the cartoons, they are really, really disgusting and funny.

Ok. An example of British humor and satire for you. I think we better wrap up before you gave me even more of his gossip.

Yep. And hopefully we'll be doing a segment again very soon and we'll be sharing with you some of the best.

But some other worst.

But some other worst.

I do like that idea, and leave us comments in a comment section if there are any particular best of the worst people that you want to hear about.

Yeah.

so until then...

We'll see you next time.

Bye.