VON REISBERG SERIES | Princess Sophia and the Search for Britain’s New Royal Family

With the death of Queen Anne’s last surviving child, William, Duke of Gloucester, in 1700, Britain was plunged into a succession crisis. The royal genealogists had to trace the Queen’s family tree all the way back to the sixteenth century to determine the order of succession and identify the next heir to the British throne. The lecture focuses on Princess Sophia, the fifth daughter and twelfth child of the exiled King and Queen of Bohemia, and the wife of the fourth and youngest son of a German duke, whose scheming, intrigues, and overarching concerns about wealth and status reached their unexpected apogee when she was nominated as the heir to the British crown. Though ultimately missing out on being queen by fifty-four days, Sophia became the progenitor of the new Hanoverian dynasty on the British throne as well as the direct ancestor of the present-day British Royal Family.

DR EUGENE BARILO VON REISBERG is a Melbourne-based scholar and art adviser, who shares his passion for art, history, and culture from the eighteenth century to the present day through regular lectures and publications. He has completed a doctoral dissertation on Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873), the 19th-century elite portrait specialist, and is currently working towards a catalogue raisonné of the artist’s works. 

Lectures in the von Reisberg series can be booked separately, however it is not compulsory to attend all three. If you would like to attend another lecture in the series please book using the links below:
James VI and I: One King, Two Crowns
Elizabeth Stuart, The Winter Queen

Your ticket includes tea or Market Lane coffee served before the lecture, and time to browse our exclusive range of books, gifts, and homewares at TJC Emporium. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition 'Fit for a King: Vincent Jenden Reimagines The Johnston Collection' can be booked separately.

This lecture is supported by The Colin Holden Charitable Trust.

Image:
Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656). Sophia, Princess Palatine (1630-1714) 1648. Collection of HM King Charles III