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Historic Love and Marriages From Hell

Khalid Elhassan September 22, 2020 31 min

Jerry Lee Lewis - Myra Gale Brown — Jerry Lee Lewis and his child bride, back home after a disastrous overseas trip. The Commercial Appeal

The line between love and hate is often pretty thin, and only a short step separates the two. Likewise, marital bliss and a marriage made in hell are often separated by a thin line, and a pretty short step. Following are thirty-five things about disastrous love affairs and marriages from history.

35. Princess of Wales’ Disastrous Marriage

Prices August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Pintrest

The wedding of Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1719 – 1772) was not the culmination of a love journey. Augusta was a German noblewoman who became Princess of Wales by marrying the Prince of Wales. Her marriage kicked off inauspiciously, with a terrible wedding ceremony, and continued as disastrously as it had began. To cap off her marital bad luck, she was one of the only four Princesses of Wales who never got to become queen.

Augusta was born in Gotha, Germany, the second youngest of its duke’s 19 children. In 1736, at the young age of sixteen, and young for her age at that, she was sent to Britain, still clutching her doll, as a bride in an arranged royal wedding. She arrived in England not knowing a word of English, to marry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the son and designated successor of King George II.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.