The Mad Tyrant, Hey Hey!

Listener discretion is advised. In the forties, there was a young princess of Bavaria named Alexandra. By all accounts, Alexandra was brilliant. She would go on to write a number of books and published translations, and she was beautiful. But in her early twenties some peculiarities began to reveal themselves.

Alexandra always obsessed with ideas of purity and cleanliness. Dressed only in white, she walked gingerly in her slippers, turning sideways to go through doorways, and she avoided touching most things. Why was she being so careful, her family asked when they noticed the fear behind her eyes. When she narrowed her elbows to make her way down a hallway. The

explanation for her behavior, Alexandra said, was quite simple. She had swallowed a grand piano as a child, a full sized grand piano made of glass, and now years later, the glass piano was still inside her unbroken. That was why she needed to move so carefully to protect her body, because the glass grand piano was always at risk of

shattering inside of her. Though the quote unquote glass delusion all but disappeared after the nineteenth century, for hundreds of years up until then, it was a well documented phenomenon. Descartes mentioned it, and it's included in the sixteen twenty one medical book Anatomy of Melancholy. Princess Alexandra's case is one of the most famous, no doubt, because of her royal rank and also the poetic specificity of the grand

piano made of glass. But another famous royal was also struck by the glass delusion, Charles the Six, who would become King of France in the thirteen hundreds and whom I covered in the podcast episode Charles the Beloved, the Mad, the Fool, convinced that his body had transformed into glass Charles would spend hours motionless in his bed, protected by

layers of blankets. When he had to go out into the world, he did so with specially made iron ribs built into his clothing to protect his organs that he so believed might shatter with the most delicate of touches. It's not a coincidence that the glass delusion seemed to

mostly attach itself to high ranking royals. At the time, it was diagnosed as melancholy, but modern psychotherapists have interpreted the glass delusion as a manifestation of feeling vulnerable and fragile, fully exposed by a position in the public eye, being completely transparent and unable to protect oneself. The myth of the mad monarch is an appealing one, the maccabre tragedy of someone with wealth, power and privilege losing that one thing that all of the above can't protect, their mind.

The mad monarch trope also emerges barely often in pop culture, but usually with less tragedy. The pop culture version is usually a despot, a mad king or queen who uses their powers tyrannically and needs to be taken down. Perhaps there's no historical figure that straddles that dichotomy more than King George the Third, the Hanoverian King of England who lost the American colonies, at least in the United States.

When we learned about him, it's as a despot, the tyrant king who greedily imposed taxes on his humble servants while denying them representation. How easy it is then to fold the historical truth of his insanity into that narrative. The American colonists had to declare independence from the mad King George the Third. The truth, if you can guess, is a little more complicated, and unfortunately a lot sadder.

George the Third did lose the American colonies, although England, being a parliamentary monarchy at the time, his role in the affair was a little less active than I think most American school children believe. And then, more than three decades after that, George lost his mind. He became a shell of his former self, wandering through a palace with a long white beard, rambling incoherently forgetting the identities of

his loved ones and then forgetting himself. Treatments for his mental illness ranged from leeches to straight jackets, and the King of England's life ended bleakally a prisoner in his own palace, the most powerful man in the country, with absolutely no power anymore. I'm Danish Wortz, and this is noble blood. Contrary to what you might expect, George the Third was not the son of George the second. George the Third was actually the king's grandson, the eldest boy

born to Frederick, the Prince of Wales. George the Third had a dangerous and inauspicious early start in life. He was born two full months early, dangerous enough in this day and age of modern medical technological advancement. But in seventeen thirty eight the palace was so ready for young George to die that he was given an emergency baptism the very day that he was born. But then, despite

it all, George survived. A few weeks later he was given the public baptism befitting a member of the royal family. George the First and George the Second were both Kings of England who were born in Hanover with German as their first language. George the Third would be the first English monarch in living memory. Actually born in England as a young man in direct line to the throne, George

was given a first rate education. He was the first royal to study science formally, and his lessons touched on chemistry, astronomy, and physics. There's actually some debate as to how intelligent George the Third actually was growing up. One source I'll be a buy it source with a grudge against the Prince of Wales at the time, claimed that George the Third couldn't read until he was eleven years old, but more accurate reports are that by age eight he could

read and write in both English and German. In fact, by most accounts, he was a healthy, smart enough child who would grow into a relatively healthy, smart, if a little prudish, and old fashioned young man. He was tall and fair, with slightly bulging and prominent eyes. When he was nervous, he spoke too fast, and he had a keen interest in the mundane details of farming. He also had the habit of saying hey, hey, at the end of sentences. Most people liked him well enough, except his grandfather,

the Ing. The King viewed his grandson with suspicion and disappointment. The only person that the King disliked more than his grandson was his own son, Frederick. George the Second dreaded the day that he would die and leave Frederick to inherit the kingdom. Fortunately for him, that day never came. In seventeen fifty one, Prince Frederick died suddenly from a lung injury. George the Third, just thirteen years old, became the heir apparent. Within three weeks, his grandfather made it

all formal. George the third was the new Prince of Wales. The King still didn't really like his grandson, but well, now he didn't have a choice. He would have to make do with him. Their relationship was, to say the least tense as the fatherless George the Third grew older. When George the third was a young man, he offered his service to the military. I'll be a terror to the enemy, He's quoted as saying, presumably not remembering that

he had absolutely no military experience. As the heir apparent of the entire kingdom, and considering again the complete lack of experience, his grandfather, the King politely declined the offer. George the third was outraged. He started calling the King the old man and said that he was ashamed to be his grandson. It was perhaps the sort of youthful rebellion that you can imagine from a fatherless boy of ordinary ability but immense privilege. Another manifestation of youthful rebellion

for a prince falling in love with a commoner. When he was twenty one, George the Third was besotted with Lady Sarah Lennox, one of the notorious Lennox sisters. George's mentor, Lord Bute, was the most prominent voy against the match, and George the Third begrudgingly agreed that he wouldn't be able to marry her, but that didn't stop him from waxing poetic about how much he loved her and how miserable he was that he had been torn away from

a future with her. The King decided that he would help his grandson find a nice German princess to marry. The first two choices, from Dumstadt and Schwett, were eliminated because both girls were reportedly stubborn and ill tempered. The princess from Saxe Gotha was out of the question because George had heard that she had an interest in philosophy gasp. But before an appropriate match could be found, a seismic

shift occurred in young George's life. His grandfather, the King, died, and at twenty two years old, George the Third was the new king. First things first, he still needed a wife. He casually tossed around the idea of marrying Sarah Lennox now that he was the boss, but only half heartedly. Instead, he made the respectable choice of Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz.

She was seventeen at the time, and no one claimed that she was a great beauty, but the reports were that she was sensible and amenable to the Anglican Church. She and George met at three p m. One afternoon, and that very day they were married at nine p m. Two weeks after the wedding, the pair had a joint coronation in Westminster Abbey, and the king purchased Buckingham House, the palace out from which the modern day Buckingham Palace

would grow. By royal marriage standards, theirs was a rousing success. George never took a mistress, and he and Charlotte had fifteen children, twelve of whom which arrived through adulthood. It turns out both he and Charlotte shared the love of the domestic. They both adored music, and romanticized as rural

farm life. As King George the Third had the nickname Farmer George, a persona which I have to assume was at least in part helped by that way that he liked to shout, hey, hey, at the end of sentences. That seems sort of farm really, doesn't it. But even more than farm life, George loved his children and his family. When his son Octavius died at age four, George the Third wept, and when he recovered, he said, there will be no heaven for me if Octavius is not there.

It would actually be George's siblings that disrupted his perfect domestic fantasy. Early in his reign. He had nine of them, and each seemed beset by unique tragedy or scandal. Within the first few years of being king, two of George's siblings died, one of appendicitis and one of tuberculosis. George's favorite younger brother, his one time confidante and best friend, had become a rake. As an adult. He was a troublemaker, dabbling in opposition politics, drinking, and womanizing, a disgrace to

King George at court. This brother died suddenly in Monaco and then another sister died, also of tuberculosis. His youngest sister, Caroline Matilda, who had married the King of Denmark, was arrested for adultery. Her lover, the doctor Struncy, was executed. She wrote to her brother for help, and through political machinations, George the Third was able to arrange for Caroline Matilda to have a semi respectable retirement in Cell. But that

wasn't all. All of Georgia's siblings seemed insistent on causing scandal without telling the king. George's younger brother, Henry, secretly married a commoner, a widow. You have irretrievably ruined yoursel of the King told his brother. After that embarrassment, in seventy two, the King who passed the Royal Marriages Act, which forbade any member of the royal family under twenty

five to get married without the monarch's explicit approval. If you watched Season one of The Crown, this is the origin of the conflict of Queen Elizabeth the Second not allowing her younger sister Margaret to marry an older divorcee. Of course, as soon as King George passed the Act, another one of his younger brothers. William Henry came forward and shyly admitted that for the past six years he had actually been married secretly to a cordier's illegitimate daughter.

It was enough to drive anybody crazy. George's health struggles began when he was twenty four, just two years after he became king. One ofternoon in seventeen sixty two, he started coughing. Breathing became difficult, and he complained of a constant stitch in his side. The court doctors murmured worriedly to themselves. The symptoms seemed to be similar to what George's own father had died up without warning a decade ago. Treatment would need to be aggressive. The King was blooded

seven times, prescribed asses milk and a laxative. The King was also put on a regiment of cupping over the next few months, during which a doctor would make a small laceration and then use a warm cup to create a vacuum over the wound to suck the blood out. In case you weren't sure, it is extremely painful. George recovered, but he suffered from insomnia and quickened pulse for the next few years. Some people erroneously described this period as

his first bout of madness, but that's not correct. There were no documented mental symptoms, just physical discomfort and even more uncomfortable treatments. Documented mental illness would emerge for the first time decades later, when George was fifty years old. In the Intervening Period, George the Third defeated France in the Seven Years War, which meant that Britain achieved global primacy as a world power, but it came at a

heavy cost. The war had been expensive, and the cost of it led Parliament to raise taxes on the American colonists. I'm sure you remember where all this goes. I hope I'm not stating the obvious when I say, of course, King George the Third was anti revolutionary, but his position wasn't despotic or egocentric, or even uncommon in Britain at the time. George wasn't a mad king trying to rule the colony so he could rename them all George Land.

King George the Third was a rigid traditional man who took the oath that he made during his coronation very seriously. At the very least, he saw it as his duty to defend Parliament's legal right to raise taxes whenever they so chose. It was less about absolutism actually than protecting the power of the parliamentary system. In Britain, anti revolutionary sentiment was the middle of the road position, especially after the story of the Boston Tea Party made its way

across the Atlantic Ocean. The rebellious colonists had destroyed a ship's worth of property and violently tarred and feathered the customs official. What had the customs official done wrong? He was just trying to do his job. Most of the British population saw the American rebels as incorrigible, and King George the Third was fully committed to backing Parliament's decision that Britain would take whatever action necessary to protect its

officials and its property. Long story short, they lost the Revolutionary War, mostly for George the Third. It was just a humiliation. Catherine the Great wrote at the time quote, rather than have granted America her independence, as my brother monarch, King George has done, I would have fired a pistol at my own head. The guilt and anxiety after yielding the colonies caused George the Third enormous angst. He drafted an abdication speech, planning on resigning and then moving to

his family seat in Hanover, but he decided against giving it. Luckily, the economic sting of the American Revolution healed quicker than the emotional one for George. Under the Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, the country's finances bounced back, and so George the Third tried to move on and put the past behind him. In seven George meant face to face with the ambassador of that new country, the United States. The ambassador was a man named John Adams. I will

be free with you, King George, said to him. I was the last to consent to the separation, But the separation having been made and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power. Life returned to relative normalcy for King George the Third, A normal life meant for him. He ate a spartan diet, exercised regularly, and even wrote about botany under a pen name Ralph Robinson. And as

I mentioned before, he was incredibly domestic. To quote John Cannon in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. One of the remarkable features of George's way of life his comparative lack of interest in travel. He never visited his Hanoverian dominions, although they were, at least in theory, very dear to him. He gloried in the name of Britain, but knew very little about it. Scotland, Wales and Ireland were ignored, so

was most of England. The royal family visited Weymouth for sea bathing, and when at Cheltenham in seventy eight, the King and Queen saw Gloucester, Worcester, Tewkesbury, and a few nearby manor houses like Maltston and Croome. But the Midlands and North were a closed book, as was the southwest end Cornwall. He never visited the University of Cambridge, nor

the great cathedrals at York, Lincoln, norch or Wells. The explanation seems to be a certain lack of intellectual vitality, the problem of conveying court and family, and the King's preference for a routine and familiar existence. He really really did seem to a door his children. When the time came to find his daughter's suitable German husbands. King George said, I cannot deny that I have never wished to see any of them Mary. I am happy in their company

and do not in the least want a separation. But then in something happened that put all talk of marriage to rest. Just a week after he turned fifty, George the Third became incredibly ill, vomiting and unable to leave bed. This was in June. By October he still hadn't recovered. He wasn't sleeping, had difficulty walking, and he was clutching

his stomach and pain. His legs cramped. Rheumatism plagued all of his limbs, and he was confused, occasionally lashing out with violence, but mostly he would just be a horse from constant talking. His words would make very little sense. They would just tumble from his lips without pause. His mood was constantly agitated, and though he could barely stand up on his own, he rose and sat up and down frequently. By November he was delirious, confused, and insomniac.

There were rashes on his arms, bright red as if he had been beaten, and the whites of his eyes had turned yellow and gray. One of his more unusual compulsions was an obsession with a courtier named Lady Pembroke. King George, who had been loyal to his wife for their entire three decade marriage up until that point, started making explicit sexual comments to Lady Pembroke in public, who

was a longtime family friend. He openly lusted after her and bad talked the Queen, but then periods of lucidity would return and the King would be embarrassed and profusely apologetic. He had seven royal physicians treating him. Their best explanation for the baffling array of symptoms was that George was suffering from a humor in his legs and that it was his own fault because he had left wet stockings

on for too long. The physicians consulted and advised that the King moved from Windsor to the palace at Q so that he would have more privacy while he recovered. But the change of scenery did nothing to improve his condition, and so a specialist was brought in, Dr Francis Willis, an Oxford educated clergyman who ran an asylum. Dr Willis's strategy for managing mental illness was intimidation, coercion, and restraint. His practice was based on the fundamental principle that mentally

ill patients had to be broken in like horses. When King George rambled or misbehaved, he was physically restrained, pulled into a strait jacket, or strapped onto a chair that George would miserably referred to as his coronation should chair. Word of the King's incapacity led to something of a political crisis. The king was an old fashioned conservative, supporter

of the Tories and their leader, Pitt the Younger. On the opposition side was Charles James Fox, a Whig who would very much prefer the more liberal George the Fourth to be in charge. Fox proposed a regency bill. After all, the King was clearly unwell and all of the powers of the monarchy should be in the hands of his son, George the Fourth. Pitt the Younger, knowing that he would be removed from office if George the Fourth was given full royal powers, argued in favor of limiting the region's

temporary powers. It was an ironic reversal of political positions. Usually the Tories were the ones in favor of more royal power, and the Whigs were the ones arguing for limiting the role of the king, but while this issue was still being debated in Parliament, it became moot. George the third recovered before a regency bill ever passed. The people rejoiced to have their king well again, and Dr Willis became something of a national hero, with coins minted

and busts sculpted in his honor. The king Farmer George was more popular than ever. There were maybe a few combined factors that led to this increase in popularity, maybe a little bit of pity after his illness, maybe because the people were so relieved not to have to suffer that young, awful George the fourth actually becoming king. Yes, maybe George the third was a little old fashioned, but he loved his wife and children. Domestically, he was above reproach.

He had fought his hardest against those incorrigible colonies. It was an age of conservatism and domestic welfare, and their king became a living folk hero. When George the third was bathing in Weymouth, a local band, carrying their instruments, all waded into the sea alongside him to play God Save the King. A few years later there was an assassination attempt when King George the Third was sitting in the Royal Box of the Drury Lane Theater when a man in the pit stood on a box and fired

two pistol shots at the king. The bullets missed by mirror inches, embedding themselves in the wooden paneling behind him. George was so un anxious at this period in his life that he insisted that the show continue, and then he fell asleep during intermission. It was this sort of anecdote that made the people love him. There were a few short bouts of the so named madness, but nothing unmanageable, and nothing that led to another regency crisis, at least

not until eighteen ten. It was a tough year to begin with. Early in spring, one of the king's sons, the Duke of Cumberland, was involved in the scandal where one of his valets was found dead, presumably by suicide, although the circumstances were grisly and mysterious and led to widely circulating rumors that maybe the valet had been murdered by the Duke himself. And then that summer, another of the king's children became a cause of concern. His daughter,

Princess Amelia's health was deteriorating and quickly. Her health issues had begun with pain and her knee joints, and she had been sent to the seaside to recover. But the summer of eighteen ten, it became obvious that recovery wasn't going to be an option. She was dying of tuberculosis.

Saint Anthony's fire left her skin red and inflamed. Amelia was confined to her bed, but every single morning at seven am, the king summoned her doctors to report on her condition, and he required additional reports throughout the day, sometimes minute by minute, so he would be able to hear how his daughter was doing. The King's final public appearance was on October ten, the anniversary of his succession.

He was distracted and anxious, and within days he was back to being treated by being restrained in a strait jacket again. Princess Amelia died a week later, on November two. Before she died, she reached out to the Royal family jewelers Rundell and Bridgers and gave them a jewel that they could make into a morning ring for her father. The ring included a lock of her hair beneath the crystal haloed with diamonds inscribed in the band where the

words remember me. The king was inconsolable when he received it. The symptoms of his madness began again. The king would write long letters to his dead daughter Amelia, his handwriting a scrawl, words fully indecipherable. The kingdom was fairly optimistic that, like about a few decades before, the king would quickly recover and things would return to normal, But George continued to deteriorate. His condition worsened by his advanced age and

his grief over his daughter. Recovery never came. For the final ten years of his life, King George the Third lived in a world of paranoia and isolation. His symptoms were physical too. His eyesight continued to worsen until the king was completely blind, and he was also going partially deaf. Believing that visitors would excite him, George's physicians kept anyone from coming to see him and prevented him from even the simple pleasures of conversation or even outings beyond the

palace walls. George the Third spent his days speaking to imaginary and long dead figures walk through the gardens, pretending to inspect invisible parades. He became a tragic figure, like something out of Shakespeare, a man shambling through the lonely halls of Windsor Castle with a long white beard, wearing a purple dressing robe. He might have appeared to be a common madman had it not been for the Order of the Garter pinned to his chest, a reminder of

the status and title he still technically held. In eighteen fourteen, George the Third was officially declared the King of Hanover. His old family lands were finally recovered after a decade in other hands, but he was completely unaware of his additional title. He didn't know when his own wife died in eighteen eighteen, and it seemed he didn't know himself either. George would spend long afternoons plucking absent mindedly at a

harpsichord that once belonged to handle. This song used to be the late King's favor, peace, he said, referring to himself. The Regency Act that had been pushed aside twenty years ago finally passed in eighteen eleven, and George the Fourth became the official acting regent for the rest of his father's life, ushering in the era that's now synonymous with Jane Austen the regency. On Christmas in eighteen nineteen, the

king rambled incoherently for fifty eight hours straight. King George the Third died at Windsor Castle the end of that January. It's sometimes easy to forget, especially in the context of the tragic end of his reign, but during his lifetime, George Third was the longest reigning and longest living monarch, and to this day he's only been outlived and out

reigned by Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth the Second. Up until George the Third was over seventy there were fewer than six months of quote unquote madness in his reign. Still it fully colors his reputation. It became the most memorable thing about him, the tragedy of his vulnerability. The king whose throne became a chair with straps and whose velvet brocade became a straight jacket, abused, isolated, and dismissed,

Still the king. But what difference did that make? That's the sad story of George the Third and his madness. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear about modern interpretations of his diagnosis. It doesn't always serve us to retroactively diagnose historical figures, especially someone like George the Third, who clearly suffered from some sort of mental illness given his obsession with Lady Pembroke during his early

bout of mania. It became trendy in the shadow of Freudian psychology in the nineteen twenties to cast George's illness as a manifestation of his sexual repression. But then in nineteen sixty nine there was a breakthrough. Two doctors, Ida mackel pine and Richard Hunter cataloged all of Georgia's symptoms and found that many of them, including the symptom of dark indigo urine, were in line with a hereditary illness known as porphyria, a rare disease that leads to neurological damage.

Porphyria has been the pop psychology diagnosis for George the Third for a long time, but most recent scholarship actually indicates that it's probably inaccurate. The primary symptom that pointed to porphyria, the bluish urine, is actually a side effect of one of the flowers that George the Third was given as medicine. Gentian medicine is still used today as

a mild tonic. Most historians today believe that it's more likely that George suffered from bipolar disorder or an otherwise undefined mania, but a diagnosis at this point doesn't really mean anything. It's a parliam tric game. The far more interesting investigation, I believe is learning about what George's life was like, exploring the symptoms of his illness, what they were, and what the treatment for his illness was, regardless of

whatever you want to call it. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M