Christian VII (Copenhagen
, 29 January 1749 – Rendsborg, 12 March/13 March 1808) was King of
Denmark and Norway, and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766
until his death. He was the son of
Frederick V, King of Denmark, and his
first consort
Louisa,
daughter of
George II of
Great Britain.
He became king on his father’s death on 14 January 1766, weeks
before his 17th birthday. All the earlier accounts agree that he
had a winning personality and considerable talent, but he was badly
educated, systematically terrorized by a brutal governor, Detlev
Greve zu Reventlow, and hopelessly debauched by corrupt pages, and
while he seems to have been intelligent and certainly had periods
of clarity, Christian suffered from severe mental problems,
possibly
schizophrenia.
After his
marriage at Christiansborg Palace
on 8 November 1766 to his cousin Princess Caroline Matilda (known
in Denmark as Queen Caroline Mathilde), a sister of King George III of Great
Britain, he abandoned himself to the worst excesses, especially
debauchery. In 1767, he
entered in to a relationship with the courtisan
Støvlet-Cathrine. He
publicly declared that he could not love Caroline Mathilde, because
it was "unfashionable to love one's wife". He ultimately sank into
a condition of mental stupor. Symptoms during this time included
paranoia,
self-mutilation and
hallucinations. He became submissive to
upstart
Johann Friedrich
Struensee, who rose steadily in power in the late 1760s. The
neglected and lonely Caroline Mathilde drifted into an affair with
Struensee.
In 1772, the king’s marriage with Caroline Mathilde was dissolved
by divorce. Struensee was arrested and executed in that same year.
Christian signed Struensee's arrest warrant with indifference, and
under pressure from his stepmother,
Juliana Maria of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who had led the movement to have the
marriage dissolved.
Caroline Mathilde, retaining her title but
not her children, eventually left Denmark in exile and passed her
remaining days in neighbouring Celle
. She
died of scarlet fever there on 11 May 1775, at the age of 23.
The marriage had produced two children, the future
Frederick VI and
Princess Louise Auguste.
However, it is widely believed that Louise was the daughter of
Struensee - portrait comparisons have supported this.
Christian was only nominally king from 1772 onwards. From 1772 to
1784, Denmark was ruled by Christian's stepmother
Juliana Maria of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his
physically disabled half-brother
Frederick
and the Danish politician
Ove
Høegh-Guldberg. From 1784 onwards, his son
Frederick VI ruled permanently as a
prince regent. This regency was marked by liberal and agricultural
reforms but also by the beginning disasters of the
Napoleonic Wars.
Christian
died in 1808 at Rendsburg
, Schleswig, not of fright
as some have suggested, but from a brain
aneurysm. He was 59.
Ancestry
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