Original subtitles

1716, December -

Drury Lane Theatre, London.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYS)

The future George II... (GASPING)

..narrowly escapes an assassination attempt on his life.

(MAN SHOUTS)

While his coolness under pressure earns him widespread admiration...

(CROWD CHEERS AND APPLAUDS) ..this was a bright moment

in a life overshadowed by family rifts and hatred.

George's lifelong conflict with his father

tarnished his whole life,

in time, poisoning his relationship with his own son

and threatening the entire Hanoverian succession.

But to understand the trials and tribulations

of George II's reign,

you have to go back to the very start.

Born in Hanover in 1683

to George Ludwig and his wife Sophia Dorothea,

young George was always aware

he would one day govern the Electorate of Hanover,

part of the Holy Roman Empire.

But at this point neither he nor his father knew that

one day, they would be kings of Britain.

Young George was the product of a deeply unhappy marriage.

He would have been more than aware

of his parents extreme, and often physical conflicts.

George's father was unfaithful.

But when his mother threatened to abscond with her lover,

George's father had her exiled in a distant castle.

This enforced separation means that, from the age of 11,

George grows up effectively motherless.

The absence of his mother,

and the way in which she was removed from his life,

I don't think George II ever really forgave his father for that.

MAN: George was very much a mummy's boy,

in the sense that he nurtures

an imagined memory of his mother.

He holds a kind of candle for this memory

of a sort of idealised mother figure

against the kind of... the brutal reality of his father.

George's relationship

with his controlling, emotionally-distant father

never recovers

from the deep scars left by this massive childhood trauma.

Having suffered the fallout of his parents' catastrophic marriage,

George is acutely aware of

the importance of finding a compatible wife -

not only someone with whom he might have a happy life,

but a woman up to the role of the title she would inherit.

He was interested, for his own sake,

to choose someone that HE wanted to live with -

which, in a way, would have been unusual for the time,

because most of these kinds of royal marriages

were very, very much organised by the parents.

And George seems to have had much more freedom of movement in that way

than some of his contemporaries.

Having surveyed the dynastic marriage market,

cultured Caroline of Ansbach emerges as the front runner.

There were several reasons to choose Caroline,

because she was not only a beautiful woman,

but she was very well educated.

She was a smart person.

Despite Caroline's accomplishments,

George is determined she will be marrying him for love, not status.

To see if they are truly compatible,

he arrives in Triesdorf in Ansbach

in a not entirely convincing disguise,

calling himself Monsieur de Busch.

Quite beautiful, no?

Very.

Have we met? Monsieur de Busch.

Oh. I don't remember seeing you arrive.

I probably went unnoticed.

I had only a small retinue.

A humble entrance for a humble man.

Now that, Monsieur de Busch, I do not believe.

Well, believe me when I say

you may not remember me arriving,

but you will remember me when I leave.

There's a definite performative element to this, that he is...

It's a little bit flirty, it's a little bit playful.

You know, he's performing his interest in her.

She's about eight months older than he is

and he's not as much into philosophy as she is,

but the two of them clicked.

The love-struck pair marry just a few months later.

It's a lovely thought, to think that

George II actually fell in love with his wife

upon seeing her.

Once married, and living in Hanover,

George's priorities shift to another equally pressing concern -

his lust for military glory.

As a future Elector of Hanover,

George is keen to prove himself on the battlefield.

One of the things we need to bear in mind,

in terms of 18th-century court culture

is the significance of kind of military service.

Being able to demonstrate martial prowess

is a source of honour, of prestige.

They need to demonstrate that they're good military leaders

that defend their subjects.

But his father does not approve.

The answer is no.

This is outrageous.

I am a grown man, and yet you treat me like some petulant child.

Then maybe you should stop acting like one.

I want to do this,

for the good of our country.

Give me an heir and secure our line

and you can go thirsting for glory in whatever war you like.

Fortunately for George,

he doesn't have to wait long for his passport to freedom.

In 1707, two years after they're married,

Caroline gives birth to their first son, Frederick.

A year later,

the War of Spanish Succession breaks out across Europe,

and, with his father's request for an heir fulfilled,

this provides George with the perfect opportunity

to prove his military mettle.

On July the 11th, 1708,

he leads the Allied cavalry into battle at Oudenaarde.

(EXPLOSIONS, SHOUTING)

In the fierce fighting which follows,

he narrowly escapes death.

He miraculously survives

what is quite a brutal and bloody battle.

His horse is actually shot out from underneath him.

It's a really pivotal moment, that he's almost wiped out.

There's, you know, a very, um, thin line

between survival and death in this battle.

And he manages to stay on the right side of it and survive.

Reports of the young soldier's heroism

filter across to Britain.

Though it will be another six years

before George's father accedes to the British throne,

young George's popularity

sows the seeds for a bitter rivalry between father and son.

Georgia's victory in battle

is not only the thing that catapults him to new fame and new popularity,

but it also sows a seed in the relationship with his father,

the older George.

And there's a tension that starts to brew there.

In 1714,

following the death of Britain's last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne,

George's father accedes to the throne,

making George and Caroline Prince and Princess of Wales.

The couple join him in moving to Britain.

On October the 20th,

George's father is crowned George I of Great Britain.

But the establishment of the House of Hanover

does nothing to bring the prince and his father together.

In fact, their fractious relationship

soon erupts into overt and very public hostility.

From the very start, the Prince and Princess of Wales

wanted to portray themselves as British -

almost in antithesis to George I,

who was seen as incredibly German.

And, as a result, they had this sort of butting of heads,

because the Prince and Princess of Wales

were seen as young and maybe fun, and more of the opposition.

Unlike his shy, socially-awkward father,

the prince and his wife love being in the public spotlight.

Much to the king's irritation,

the prince quickly becomes the toast of London.

They dine in public. They have balls. They have a wonderful time.

And he markets himself brilliantly to the British people.

A bizarre incident on an outing to the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane,

provides the Prince with an unlikely PR coup.

Oh, this is boring.

Shh. Stop it, George.

During the performance, a crazed man bursts into the theatre.

He comes in with several loaded guns.

(CROWD GASPS, SCREAMS)

One of the guns go off.

And the bullet whizzes into the box and goes over his shoulder.

Unperturbed, George remains in his seat

while the would-be assassin is apprehended.

(APPLAUSE)

The rapturous reports of the prince's bravery

only served to stoke his father's sense of insecurity.

The king is determined to assert authority over his son.

So when, soon after, Prince George and Princess Caroline

give birth to their second son in 1717,

the king insists on choosing the godfather himself.

His choice - his close political ally,

the Duke of Newcastle.

George II is kind of furious about it

'cause he hates the Duke of Newcastle.

And they have a massive falling out,

and it all kind of goes south from there.

After the ceremony,

a heated quarrel breaks out between the Duke and the prince.

(INDISTINCT) I can't remember!

Even though George said to him, "You villain! I'll find you,"

Newcastle misheard him.

He thought that George, Prince of Wales,

was challenging him to a duel.

George claims his thick German accent

has led to an innocent comment being misheard,

but his father refuses to accept his son's side of the story.

Firing off an angry letter,

he banishes the prince from St James's Palace.

Caroline leaves with him,

but the King delivers the killer blow

by demanding the couple's children remain behind in the palace.

DR PELLING: Banishment from the palace

doesn't necessarily mean banishment from the kingdom.

You know, they're not riding off on horses at midnight.

But what it means is that they are denied access to the king,

to their own children, who are the royal grandchildren,

who are kept on display in the royal court.

When it comes to family,

the decisions of the king are absolute.

Prince of Wales feels that he should have a right to his children,

but basically, at law, it's proven to him

that the King actually controls his grandchildren,

and the children are effectively HIS to deal with.

Forced into exile,

George and Caroline set up home in Leicester House.

This separation, this forced separation

between George and Caroline and their children

cuts them really deeply.

It causes serious trauma, essentially.

And when they do, when they manage to see their children,

Caroline reportedly faints,

because it's just so overwhelming to her.

It proves to be a separation that has tragic consequences.

When the new baby George falls gravely ill,

George and Caroline are finally permitted to see their son.

But it's too late.

He dies at three months old.

(SOPRANO SINGS OPERA)

Overcome with grief and anger,

Prince George's relationship with his father

hits an all-time low.

I think the crucial moment,

in terms of that flip between

when son becomes more popular than father

is when the son is able to exert independent political patronage.

So, in the case of George I and George II,

it's when George II removes himself from the court of Saint James

and sets up a new household at Leicester House.

Because what you then have is a physical space

where opposition and debate and discussion can take place.

And you're not under your dad's roof either,

which I think is really significant.

But Parliament is growing tired of

having to deal with a feuding king and his heir.

Prime Minister Robert Walpole

encourages the king to reconcile with his son

for the sake of the nation.

Reluctantly, the two Georges apologise.

However, in 1726,

Sophia Dorothea dies, still in exile.

It has been 32 years

since George was last able to see his beloved mother.

Beneath the surface, Prince George's bitterness towards his father

has continued to fester until the very end.

Your Grace? (CONTINUES KNOCKING)

What is it that's so important?

My apologies, Your Grace. It's your father.

Spit it out, Walpole!

He's dead, Your Grace.

Well, it took him long enough.

Did you have to wake me up for this?

My apologies, Your Grace.

Walpole.

My mother.

I want her portraits back up on the walls.

With the death of his father,

George is finally free to carve out a future of his own.

On October the 11th, 1727,

George and Caroline are crowned

King and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

(CHOIR SINGS HANDEL'S ZADOK THE PRIEST)

With Handel's Zadok The Priest ringing out across Westminster Abbey,

it's a moment of triumph for George.

Specially composed for the occasion,

the anthem will be performed at

the coronation of every British monarch from then on.

# God save the king

# Long live the king... #

But the family scars remain,

and history is about to repeat itself now,

with George II and his son, Prince Frederick.

When George II first came to Britain with his father,

he and Caroline were made to

leave their firstborn son, Frederick, behind.

At the Palace of Herrenhausen in Hanover,

aged just seven,

he remained as a representative of the electorate.

It would be another 14 years before he'd see his parents again.

Frederick is left behind in Hanover

because, again, it is important to have a male heir

to shore up any questions around dynastic succession

in a European context.

So Frederick is left as the kind of proxy head of the state of Hanover,

for over a decade.

The prolonged separation has devastating consequences

on Frederick's relationship with his parents.

Frederick doesn't really have a place, emotionally,

within the family.

Although he's made Prince of Wales,

they immediately feel aggrieved,

because it sort of disturbs the family image that they had created.

You know, they grew distant, of course, he didn't see them.

He felt abandoned.

And, as a result, that sort of set the tone

for when he eventually came to Britain for the first time.

(LOUD CHATTER AND LAUGHTER)

Increasingly resentful of his absent parents,

Frederick racks up more than £100,000 of debt

in Hanover's gentlemen's clubs and gambling dens.

Following his father's coronation,

Frederick, now aged 21,

is summoned to England to become the new Prince of Wales.

But it's not exactly a joyous family reunion.

He's in his early 20s, and he wanted to have fun.

So he annoyed his parents by gambling, drinking, whoring around,

to the point that his mother called him a monster.

And they were deeply, deeply divided about everything.

In sort of classic Hanoverian fashion,

we've got a dysfunctional relationship between father and son

at this point in time.

HUMPHRIES: Everything that George II did to his father,

Frederick would go on and do to him, kind of in spades.

So Frederick understood that he needed to court popular opinion.

He loved to be seen in St James's Park.

He loved to be seen amongst the masses

and show himself to be a man of the people.

There was a sense of history repeating itself.

Prince Frederik, at his home,

would entertain members of the opposition,

very much showing

his political allegiance was not aligned with his father, George II.

While Frederick is now purposefully annoying his parents,

and, at the same time, courting favour with the British public,

his father is spending more and more time back in Hanover.

Hanover had been his inheritance, in a sense.

Hanover gives him a place where he can, in a sense, perhaps,

maybe be more relaxed, in a way, than he is in England.

It's, in a sense, it's almost like a summer palace for him.

But Hanover has other attractions too.

While Caroline remains a close political confidant

throughout his reign,

this doesn't stop George taking a succession of mistresses.

Following a visit to Hanover in 1735,

Amalie von Wallmoden becomes the latest.

Back in London,

the King's increasingly frequent trips to Hanover

sparked fierce criticism.

It gets to the point where he's not here so much

that the British people are increasingly resentful of him,

and there's even one story of someone putting a lost notice

on one of the doors of the palaces.

"If you find my king, can you please return him to Britain?

"He appears to not be here."

George is canny enough to realise

that if the Hanoverian dynasty is to survive,

he must keep both Parliament and the British public on-side.

In 1728, he implements a Regency Act,

a law nominating someone to rule in his place

when he is out of the country.

He chooses not Frederick, his heir,

but his wife, Queen Caroline.

It is very likely that George II came to this conclusion

largely because of the political opposition that his son had,

so that he didn't change too much,

in terms of the political workings of Parliament

while he was away in Hanover.

Because these visits were quite extensive.

They weren't just a week or two weeks,

they were several months.

Frederick believes he's been overlooked,

and goes to even greater lengths to goad his father.

One summer, there's a delay where George can't get back from Hanover

because the sea is stormy and travel is impossible.

And so Frederick lays these little seeds of gossip

in the royal court

that the king has drowned, that the ship has gone down.

And what this does is not only disrupt the apple cart

of George's well-laid plans at court,

and the way that he maintains power and the reputation that he has,

but it actually bolsters Frederick's reputation, his popularity.

People start to shift their focus away from George II.

Exasperated by his son's endless acts of defiance,

George decides that the only way to bring him to heel

is to marry him off.

Surveying the dynastic marriage market,

his eyes alight on German 16-year-old Magdalena Augusta Anhalt-Zerbst.

She is considered to be quite mousy.

She's quite a sort of physically diminutive, small person,

and the idea is that she will bring him back down to earth in some way.

In May 1736,

Augusta arrives in England,

clutching her favourite doll,

and unable to speak a word of English.

But for money-driven Frederick, she's the answer to all his prayers.

Once they tie the knot,

his annual allowance is set to triple.

This meant that he could finally get the money that he wanted,

and he thought that this would give him more standing in society,

and, you know, maybe his father would start to respect him more

because he'll be a father and a husband.

(BELLS PEAL)

The wedding takes place just a few days later.

As ever, securing the line of succession is the priority.

Within a year, Frederick and Augusta are expecting their first child.

But rather than healing old wounds,

the birth only widens the rift between prince and king.

Traditionally, a royal baby must always be born

under the same roof as the reigning monarch

to ensure that they can bear witness to the arrival of their newest heir.

But Frederick has other plans.

So determined is he to make sure

his first child won't be born under his much-hated father's roof,

he risks the lives of mother and baby.

Augusta is spending the evening with Frederick and her parents-in-law

at Hampton Court Palace.

When Augusta goes into labour,

the King, the Queen and the princesses

are upstairs playing cards,

and she's carried down the back stairs, labouring.

She's in intense pain. Her waters have broken.

Poor Augusta's in the midst of labour.

Frederick calls a carriage,

you know, basically bundles her into this carriage.

That is then sent at full-tilt for St James's Palace,

which is miles away.

And when they arrive at St James's Palace,

there's nothing ready for them at all.

Nobody knew that they were coming.

There's no midwife there,

and Augusta is forced to give birth basically between two tablecloths

because there's no sheets on the bed.

And the baby Augusta is born sort of 15 minutes after they arrive.

It's incredibly dramatic.

It's a miracle that both Augusta and her daughter survived.

On discovering the following morning

that Augusta has given birth to a baby girl,

Caroline cannot contain her anger.

Have you heard about this...birth?

I would hardly call it that.

The latest in the line of succession

almost squeezed out onto the floor of a carriage!

Not exactly a dignified beginning to life.

I could have him hanged.

And the Lord knows what his father will do.

To the king and queen,

Frederick's actions are an act of extreme provocation.

They were absolutely outraged.

They were so annoyed with their son,

that he had dared to deny them to see and to witness,

as was custom,

and also how dangerous, to endanger the wife,

you know, the life of his wife and unborn child,

who was potentially the heir,

and say this went down really, really badly.

Deploying the same tactics against his son

as his own father had used against him,

the king banishes the prince from the court.

It shows a complete lack of self-awareness on George II's part,

and a lack of awareness that this is history repeating itself.

But far worse family turmoil awaits the troubled king.

In November 1737,

Caroline falls ill with a mysterious stomach complaint.

Her condition rapidly deteriorates.

George is beside himself with grief.

Despite his serial infidelity,

he cannot imagine life without his beloved wife.

He remains at her side to the very end.

There's a really lovely moment

where you see the tenderness of George II that you often don't see.

On her deathbed, she says, "You can marry again."

And he goes, "No, no, I will be content with my mistresses."

What he means here

is that there's a difference, in his mind, between love and lust.

And I think that's a really important distinction

that Queen Caroline held for him, is that she was love,

whereas the mistresses were more lust.

With the death of Caroline,

George and Frederick are left alone to rub along as best they can.

Despite their mutual loathing,

Frederic still has an important role to play within the family -

securing the Hanoverian succession.

In 1738, a year after his mother's death,

Augusta gives birth to a baby son, George.

Nobody knows that it will be him, not Frederick,

who will become king.

Frederick may have fulfilled his dynastic duty,

but there is no letting up in hostilities

between George II and his son.

In a blatant act of defiance,

Frederick embarks upon open warfare on the king

from his new, rival court in Leicester House.

In the 1730s, we begin to see a shift

in terms of the relative significance

of different parts of the armed forces.

For George II, the emphasis and the excitement

has always been around a land-based, European system

of sort of armies and conflicts.

For Frederick and the next generation of politicians

who are sort of earning their stripes in the 1730s,

the future lies at the hands of the navy.

And Britain is an island nation, they say,

and our strength should be at sea.

In 1740, Frederick attends a theatrical revue

in which a new song, Rule, Britannia!, is sung.

The words are a thinly-disguised attack

on his army-loving father.

What's so striking about this first performance of Rule, Britannia!

is it is about an aspiration for Britain to rule the waves.

In that first performance,

it's "RULE the waves."

It's about what might happen in the future

rather than as we sing it now, "Britannia RULES the waves,"

you know, saying that it's kind of already happened.

But Frederick is wrong about the navy.

The biggest threat to Britain and the Hanoverian line

doesn't lie overseas, but at home.

For the second time in the Georgian era,

the Jacobites are the crown's most dangerous adversary.

As supporters of the descendants

of the last Stuart king to rule Britain, James II,

and they regard the Hanoverians as usurpers of the British throne.

PELLING: This support comes from a large Catholic community,

because, of course, James II himself was a Catholic.

But equally, it's a threat that is under the surface and invisible.

It's at the heart of British power.

It's in London, in Parliament, in the royal court,

and it's one that is always dripping in the background.

In a dramatic turn of events,

in 1745,

the Jacobite threat turns into armed insurrection.

What makes this rising different

to all the others that have come before

is that Charles Edward Stuart himself

eventually arrives on British soil.

The grandson of James II, Charles Edward Stuart -

better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie -

is the poster boy for the Jacobite movement.

In July 1745,

the would-be king set sail from France to Scotland.

Staking his claim to the throne,

he assembles an army and marches south towards London.

When Charles Edward Stuart's Jacobite forces

start to move through the English landscape,

there is a real panic, in England in particular,

and people start to try and head south, away from the army.

And actually, lots of people join the Jacobite army

as it moves through towns,

those who have Jacobite sympathies.

By December the 29th,

the army has reached as far south as Derby.

This is a moment of extreme jeopardy for the House of Hanover.

This really unsettled, as you can imagine, really unsettled

not just not just George II,

but the whole... the political establishment,

because they knew that the all the constitutional compromises

that had been achieved up to that point, the will of Parliament

was sort of at risk.

But when the anticipated support from France fails to materialise,

the Jacobites are forced to retreat.

Then, in 1746,

at the Battle of Culloden,

troops led by George's younger brother,

the Duke of Cumberland,

launch a surprise attack on the Jacobite army.

The result is a crushing defeat.

The British victors show no mercy.

In the aftermath, thousands of men are killed.

The aim was to annihilate Jacobitism

politically, physically and economically.

When they won the Battle of Culloden,

they did not stop there.

They ran after the survivors,

killed the wounded, attacked bystanders.

The battlefield is strewn with thousands of dead,

and this marks the end, essentially, of the Jacobite cause.

The Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart escapes,

through the Highlands and islands of Scotland

and makes his way back to Europe.

The brutality with which he puts down the supporters of the rebellion

earned Cumberland the nickname the Butcher.

With the Jacobite cause resolutely quashed,

the future of the House of Hanover is finally secure.

There were a competing dynasty.

So, from George's perspective,

this was this was a victory -

a horrible one, a bloody one,

but still a victory.

Really, what this represents

is the moment of confirmation of the Georgian line of succession.

It's George II's huge triumph,

to secure the throne for him and for his bloodline going forward.

And it really puts the threat of Jacobitism in Britain to bed.

It's not the end of everything,

but it's certainly the end of the action

that can provide any real threat.

But just as it seems George's reign is about to enter calmer waters,

once again, a family drama threatens to derail everything.

Six years later, aged only 44,

Frederick, the future king, dies suddenly.

What Frederick's death does for George is,

of course, there probably is a kind of personal emotional element,

but I...my sense of it is is that the real concern -

or the real opportunity, if you like -

is it kind of it changes the game in a really unexpected way.

Finally overcoming the years of constant feuding,

the ageing king reaches out to his now-widowed daughter-in-law.

Augusta is totally devastated, as you can imagine.

But his father, who he'd had a terrible relationship with,

took it quite stoically,

but in private, when he went to see Augusta,

they apparently cried for hours together.

So that's quite sad, considering they'd never truly reconciled.

With the unexpected death of the heir to the throne,

and George himself now in his late 60s,

all eyes are on Frederick's firstborn son,

the king's grandchild, George.

With the death of his father,

young George is now first in line to the throne.

But he is only 12 years old,

and too young to accede to the throne

were anything to happen to his grandfather.

This was not planned for. This was not expected in the slightest.

That's why it comes back to the kind of significance of

what does it mean to educate a prince in the 1750s?

The idea that your heir, your new heir,

is in their early teens,

and, up until they're 18, they will require a regency.

So it really changes the political game quite considerably.

And so for George II, the kind of question is

how do we manage that kind of Regency relationship?

A new regent must be picked immediately.

The obvious candidate to become regent

is George II's second-born son,

the Duke of Cumberland - the Butcher of Culloden.

But George II is wary of his ruthless reputation.

While we mourn the death of the prince,

there is, of course, the issue of

who will act as regent in your absence.

What about the Duke of Cumberland?

(CLEARS THROAT) No?

Can I really trust him to rule in my absence?

Well, he is your eldest son. He's too controversial.

The people hate him.

Some call him the Butcher of Culloden.

A worthy accolade.

For a general. Not a regent.

Unless he plans on wreaking havoc on my subjects.

There is, of course, Augusta.

I know you had your differences, but as the prince's spouse,

she might be the more... favourable choice.

Then the matter's settled. The regent will be Augusta.

There'll be no further discussions on the matter.

By picking his son's widow, Augusta,

the ageing king finally manages to achieve

some kind of family harmony.

But by now, he is becoming increasingly frail.

Towards the end of his life, George II's health

is seriously deteriorating,

and he's spending more and more time in bed.

He has various ailments.

Blind in one eye, deaf, and increasingly immobile,

George withdraws from public life.

His final nine years are spent almost entirely in isolation,

following the same day-to-day routine.

In 1756, another major conflict breaks out in Europe.

It is the start of what will become known as the Seven Year War.

A series of decisive victories over the French

will ultimately leave Britain a global superpower.

When it really kind of hits,

it's so tied up with the growth of empire, land grab,

you know, in all parts of where

the British are trying to take control or retain control

of places that they already claim in ownership.

But the spoils of that war will only be enjoyed by George's heir,

because, before the war is won,

the reign of George II comes to an end.

On October the 25th, 1760,

the king rises early, as is his custom,

and drinks his habitual cup of chocolate.

And then he needs to go to the loo.

So he goes to the close stool, and it's quiet,

but then there's a loud thud and a bang,

or something like that.

(KNOCKS SOFTLY)

George II is found dead on the floor of his bathroom,

aged 77.

By now, Frederick's son George is 22

and able to take the throne himself.

Despite George II's somewhat ignominious ending,

he leaves behind an important legacy.

The House of Hanover is finally secure.

The fact that again, in 1760,

we have a kind of smooth transition,

I think says a lot for what George II achieved during his reign.

This is not a monarchy that falls apart.

It's not a monarchy that is being riven by revolution or rebellion.

So continuity and security, in a sense,

I think are really important.

He brought this country forward

and shepherded in kind of a new era, really.

Globally, for Britain,

they're on the cusp of something really interesting.

George's death ushers in a new era for Britain,

one of unrivalled global dominance and wealth.

It will lead to a very different set of challenges for his grandson,

George III.

Next time, George III becomes the first Hanoverian king

born in Britain.

A devoted husband who created the modern image of a royal family.

But a king whose reign was shaken by events both at home and abroad...

..the loss of the Americas...

..revolution in France...

..and then his own inescapable decline into madness.

Captions by Red Bee Media (c) SBS Australia 2024