Time avenged him. Two of his granddaughters--Mary and Anne--
reigned successively as queens in England.
X. THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN
Count Philip Koenigsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea
He was accounted something of a scamp throughout Europe, and
particularly in England, where he had been associated with his
brother in the killing of Mr. Thynne. But the seventeenth century
did not look for excessively nice scruples in a soldier of
fortune; and so it condoned the lack of virtue in Count Philip
Christof Koenigsmark for the sake of his personal beauty, his
elegance, his ready wit, and his magnificent address. The court
of Hanover made him warmly welcome, counting itself the richer
for his presence; whilst he, on his side, was retained there by
the Colonelcy in the Electoral Guard to which he had been
appointed, and by his deep and ill-starred affection for the
Princess Sophia Dorothea, the wife of the Electoral Prince, who
later was to reign in England as King George I.
His acquaintance with her dated back to childhood, for they had
been playmates at her father's ducal court of Zell, where
Koenigsmark had been brought up. With adolescence he had gone out
into the world to seek the broader education which it offered to
men of quality and spirit.
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