LOVE AND THE PRINCESSES

Based on the little-known story of George III's youngest daughter, Sophia, and her illegitimate son, this ""work of historical detection"" by an English novelist and scholar (The Ghosts of Versailles, The Cannibals, etc.) is in fact a carefully documented account of the Royal Marriage Act and its effects on the lives of George's six daughters. Ruling his ugly and submissive Queen, Caroline, and his fifteen children as tyranically as he did his American colonies, in 1772 the psychotic George, to keep his children from marrying, pushed through Parliament the still-existent Royal Marriage Act, by which no descendent of the previous king, George II, could, with a few exceptions, marry without the consent of the ruling monarch. Two of George III's unhappy daughters did manage to marry; the other four were all supposed to have lovers and one, Sophia, produced a son, ""Tommy Garth"", who later blackmailed the Royal Family; scandal said his father was either Sophia's own brother, the disreputable Duke of Cumberland, or one of her father's equerries; Sophia, who never told, lived to a respected old age. A tale of the dull lives of dull princesses, this book is too heavily entangled with references, minor biographies and dead scandals for easy reading; students of the Royal Marriage Act and 18th-century English royalty would find it an excellent work of reference, but its appeal to average American readers will be limited.