Bonnie Prince Charlie Was a Major Jerk
Charles Edward Stuart (1720 – 1788), commonly known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, has been greatly romanticized. Grandson of Britain’s last Catholic monarch, the exiled King James II, Charles was the last serious Stuart Dynasty claimant to the British throne. Stuart supporters, known as Jacobites, frequently rebelled against Britain’s new ruling dynasty, the Hanoverians. The last such rebellion in 1745-1746, led by Charles himself as a young man in his mid-twenties, culminated in catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. His dramatic escape afterwards cemented Charlie as a romantic figure of heroic failure. However, while thousands eagerly risked and willingly gave their lives for Charles, the Bonnie Prince probably deserved neither their admiration nor sacrifice.
The real life Charles Edward Stuart, as opposed to the romanticized Bonnie Prince Charlie, was a jerk. He was often a pretty seedy and slimy man. He was known for his grace and charm as a youth, but that only masked many dark facets of his personality. Among other things, he liked to beat up women – most notoriously his wife, Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedden. He married her when she was nineteen and he was fifty one. Obsessively controlling, he strung alarm bells around her bed at night to alert him if she tried to sneak off to see a lover. He beat her up so often, that she begged the pope for help. She was finally freed of his clutches when they separated after twelve years of marriage.
