Sophia Dorothea of Brunswick-Lüneburg ¹

   Another name for Sophia was Sophia of Celle.

  General Notes:

In 1682, George married his first cousin, the Princess Sophia of Celle. After they had two children, George (in 1683) and Sophia Dorothea (in 1687), the couple were estranged. George instead preferred his mistress, Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenburg, whom he later created Duchess of Munster and Kendal in Great Britain, and by whom he had at least three illegitimate children.

Sophia, meanwhile, had her own romantic connexion with the Swedish Count Philip Christoph von Königsmarck. Threatened with the scandal of an elopement, the Hanoverian court ordered the lovers to desist. When they refused, George appears to have countenanced a plan to murder Königsmarck. Königsmarck was then killed in July 1694, and his body was then thrown into a river. The murder appears to have been committed by four of George's courtiers, one of whom is said to have been paid the great sum of 150,000 talers (about one hundred times the annual salary of the highest-paid minister).
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  Noted events in her life were:

• She was a Duchess Brunswick-Lüneburg.

Sophia married George I Louis Hanover, son of Ernest Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneberg and Sophia Wittelsbach, on 21 Nov 1682 in Celle Castle Chapel, Germany. The marriage ended in divorce in 1694. (George I Louis Hanover was born on 28 May 1660 in Leineschloss, Osnabruck, Hanover, Germany and died on 11 Jun 1727 in Osnabrück, Hanover..) The cause of his death was stroke.

  Marriage Notes:

George's marriage to Sophia was dissolved, not on the grounds that either of them committed adultery, but on the grounds that Sophia had "abandoned" her husband. With the agreement of his wife's father, George had Sophia imprisoned in the Castle of Ahlden in her native Celle. She was denied access to her children and her father, and forbidden to remarry. She was, however, endowed with an income for her servants and was allowed to ride in a carriage outside her castle (albeit under supervision).
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