Marriages
The king's first two marriages both ended in scandal and divorce. He was first married in Copenhagen on 1 November 1828 to his second cousin Princess Vilhelmine Marie of Denmark, a daughter of King Frederick VI of Denmark. They separated in 1834 and divorced in 1837. On 10 June 1841 he married for a second time to Caroline Charlotte Mariane of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, whom he divorced in 1846.
On 7 August 1850 in Frederiksborg Palace, he morganatically married Lovisa Christina Rasmussen, whom he created Landgravine Danner in 1850 (in Denmark known as Countess Danner), a common milliner and former ballet dancer who had for many years been his acquaintance or mistress, the natural daughter of G. L. Köppen and of Juliane Caroline Rasmussen. This marriage seems to have been happy, although it aroused great moral indignation among the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Countess Danner, who was denounced as a vulgar gold-digger by her enemies, but a doughty and unaffected “daughter of the people” by her admirers, seems to have had a stabilizing effect on him. She also worked at maintaining his popularity by letting him “meet the people” of the provinces.
Read more about this topic: Frederick VII Of Denmark
Famous quotes containing the word marriages:
“You can no more keep a martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there. The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth, and one of the shortest-lived.”
—Bernard Devoto (1897–1955)
“The happiest two-job marriages I saw during my research were ones in which men and women shared the housework and parenting. What couples called good communication often meant that they were good at saying thanks to one another for small aspects of taking care of the family. Making it to the school play, helping a child read, cooking dinner in good spirit, remembering the grocery list,... these were silver and gold of the marital exchange.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England.... If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)