Princess Charlotte of Prussia, Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen (German: Victoria Elisabeth Augusta Charlotte, Prinzessin von Preußen; 24 July 1860 – 1 October 1919) was Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen from 1914 to 1918 as the wife of Bernhard III, the duchy's last ruler. Born at the Neues Palais in Potsdam, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Prince Frederick of Prussia, a member of the House of Hohenzollern who became Crown Prince of Prussia in 1861 and German Emperor in 1888. Through her mother Victoria, Princess Royal, Charlotte was the eldest granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Princess Charlotte was a difficult child and indifferent student, with a nervous disposition. Her relationship with her demanding mother was strained. As she grew older, Charlotte developed a penchant for spreading gossip and causing trouble. Eager to escape from parental control, at age seventeen, she married Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen in 1878. Her husband's weak-willed personality had little effect on her. Known for spreading gossip and her eccentric personality, Princess Charlotte enjoyed Berlin society while frequently leaving her only child, Princess Feodora, in the care of family members. Charlotte and Feodora, in turn, also had a difficult relationship.
Charlotte's brother succeeded their father as Emperor Wilhelm II in 1888, increasing her social influence. Throughout her brother's reign, she was known for her mischief-making, and spent her life in between bouts of illness, in frivolous and extravagant pursuits. She became Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen in 1914, only for her husband to lose his title with the end of World War I in November 1918. Charlotte died the following year of a heart attack in Baden-Baden. She had suffered from a lifetime of ill health. Recent historians have argued that she had porphyria, a genetic disease that afflicted the British royal family.
Princess Viktoria Elisabeth Auguste Charlotte was born on 24 July 1860 at the Neues Palais in Potsdam. She was the eldest daughter and second child of Prince Frederick William of Prussia and his wife Victoria, Princess Royal, known as Vicky in the family. The product of an easy labour, she was a healthy baby who arrived 19 months after the difficult birth of her elder brother, Prince Wilhelm. Her grandmother, Queen Victoria, wanted her eldest granddaughter to be named after her. However, the Prussians wanted the new princess to be named Charlotte after Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia, who had been born Princess Charlotte of Prussia, her paternal great-aunt. As a compromise, her first name was Victoria, but she was always referred to as Charlotte. She was also named after her paternal grandmother, Queen Augusta of Prussia.
Charlotte's paternal family belonged to the House of Hohenzollern, a royal house that had ruled the German state of Prussia since the seventeenth century. By the end of her first year, Charlotte's father had become Crown Prince as his father ascended to the Prussian throne as King Wilhelm I. Charlotte's mother, Vicky, was the eldest daughter of the British monarch Queen Victoria and her husband Albert, Prince Consort. Charlotte and her brother, Wilhelm, were the only grandchildren born in Albert's lifetime. He and Victoria visited their daughter and two grandchildren when Charlotte was two months old; Vicky and Frederick William in turn brought Wilhelm and Charlotte on a visit to England in June 1861, six months before Albert's death.
The growing family, which came to include eight children, spent its winters in Berlin and summers in Potsdam; the year also usually included a stay in the country, to the delight of the children. In 1863, Vicky and Frederick William purchased a run-down property and refurbished it into a farm, allowing the family to periodically experience a simple country life. Frederick William was a loving husband, but as an officer in the Prussian army, his duties increasingly pulled him away from the home. Vicky was an intellectually demanding mother who expected her children to exhibit moral and political leadership, and in her husband's absence she carefully supervised their education and upbringing. Shortly after arriving in her new adopted country, Vicky observed the continuous arguments and intrigues within the Prussian royal family. This bolstered her belief in the superiority of English culture; she raised her children in English-style nurseries, and successfully fostered a love of her native country by incorporating aspects of English culture in the home and taking them on frequent trips to England.
While Vicky was close with her eldest daughter, this changed as the girl grew older; by the time she was two years old, Charlotte had become known as "sweet naughty little Ditta" and would prove to be the most difficult of the family's eight children. As a young girl, she acted nervously and made frequent displays of agitation, such as pulling at her clothes. An early habit of biting her nails led to preventative measures like the forced wearing of gloves, but any methods only provided temporary relief. Queen Victoria wrote to her daughter, "tell Charlotte I was appalled to hear of her biting her things. Grandmamma does not like naughty little girls". In 1863 the Crown Princess recorded in her diary that Charlotte's "little mind seems almost too active for her body – she is so nervous & sensitive and so quick. Her sleep is not so sound as it should be – and she is so very thin." Charlotte developed violent tantrums; Vicky described them as "such outbreaks of rage & stubbornness that she screams blue murder." The young girl was also underweight and had a troublesome digestion.
Charlotte was an indifferent student, to the dismay of her mother, who placed a high value on education. Charlotte's governess declared she had never seen "more difficulties" than with the princess, while Vicky once wrote of Charlotte in a letter to her mother that "Stupidity is not a sin, but it renders education a hard and difficult task." The Crown Princess rarely withheld her true thoughts of those who displeased her, and bluntly admonished her children to encourage their efforts and help them avoid vanity. Queen Victoria urged her daughter to act encouragingly rather than reproachfully towards Charlotte, believing that she could not expect the young princess to share Vicky's tastes. The biographer Jerrold M. Packard thinks it likely that the "pretty but nervous and sullen girl sensed [her mother's] disappointment from an early age," exacerbating the gulf between them.
Over time, a rift developed between the family's three eldest and three youngest children. The deaths of Charlotte's brothers Sigismund and Waldemar in 1866 and 1879, respectively, devastated the Crown Princess. The historian John C. G. Röhl posits that Vicky's eldest three children "could never live up to [her] idealised memory of the two dead princes." The strict upbringing Vicky gave to the eldest three children—Wilhelm, Charlotte, and Henry—was not replicated in her relationship with her three youngest surviving children, Viktoria, Sophia, and Margaret. The eldest children, in turn and sensing their mother's disappointment, became resentful of Vicky's indulgence towards their youngest siblings. The historian John Van der Kiste speculates that had Vicky shown the same level of acceptance with Charlotte as with her younger children, "the relationship between them might have been a happier one".
Charlotte was a favourite of her paternal grandparents, whom she frequently saw. King Wilhelm and Queen Augusta spoiled their granddaughter and encouraged her rebellion against the Crown Prince and Princess, and Charlotte and her brother frequently took their side in disputes with her parents. This rebellion was encouraged by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who held political disagreements with the liberal Crown Prince and Princess. Charlotte also enjoyed a close relationship with her eldest brother, though they grew apart after his marriage in 1881 to Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein ("Dona"), a princess described by Charlotte as plain, slow-witted, and shy. Charlotte's relationship with Wilhelm would remain troubled as a result. Charlotte's cousin, Queen Marie of Romania, wrote in her memoirs: "it was greatly owing to Charly's intrigues that King Carol's animosity against the Emperor Wilhelm was kept alive. Charly had a grudge against her brother and was glad to do him a bad turn whenever she could. I believe her love of mischief was so ingrained that it became a game she could not resist."