Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (13 August 1792 – 2 December 1849) was Queen of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 26 June 1830 to 20 June 1837 as the wife of King William IV.
Biography[]
Adelaide Amelia Louise Theresa Caroline von Saxe-Meiningen was born in Meiningen, Saxe-Meiningen, Holy Roman Empire in 1792, the daughter of Duke Georg I of Saxe-Meiningen and Princess Louise Eleonore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. She married the philandering Duke of Clarence (who had already fathered ten illegitimate children by the actress Dorothea Jordan) in 1818 and became Queen of the United Kingdom in 1830; Adelaide, Australia was named in her honor. Adelaide was strongly Tory, unsuccessfully attempting to influence her husband politically and agitating against the Reform Act 1832. Her husband died in 1837, and she became an advisor to her niece, Queen Victoria, occasionally hosting them at Cassiobury House from 1846 to 1848. She died in 1849.