This 18th-Century British Queen Turned King Arthur Into a P.R. Strategy, Drawing on Myth to Promote Her Dynasty’s Claim to the Throne

Amid family feuds, damaging headlines and questions about its future role, Britain’s royal family has spent much of the past decade managing its public image. But the importance of good royal P.R. dates back centuries.

Long before communications teams and media advisers became fixtures of royal life, Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683-1737) attempted a remarkable piece of image management. Faced with the challenge of making a German royal dynasty seem unmistakably British, she turned to one of Britain’s most powerful national stories: the legends of King Arthur and Merlin.

As the wife of Great Britain and Ireland’s then-king, George II (1683-1760), Caroline belonged to the House of Hanover. The German dynasty had only inherited the British throne in 1714 and was still viewed with suspicion by many of its subjects. At the same time, an increasingly public feud between the king and his heir, Frederick, Prince of Wales, threatened to undermine the image of stability that a country recently torn apart by civil war, religious schisms and political revolution so desperately needed.

Caroline’s solution to this problem was unexpected. In 1735, she commissioned a curious attraction in the gardens of her palace at Richmond. Known as Merlin’s Cave, it looked like something out of a fairy tale: a Gothic thatched building filled with wax figures of Merlin, legendary prophets and other individuals from Britain’s distant past. Many contemporaries thought the grotto bizarre, with one critic dismissing its inhabitants as “a great many strange puppets.”

Yet Merlin’s Cave was far more than an eccentric garden folly. Although an unlikely tool of statecraft, Caroline’s use of Arthurian iconography sought not only to strengthen the Hanoverian claim but also to promote a shared British identity at a time of political uncertainty.

Myth as messaging

The House of Hanover had inherited the British throne two decades earlier and did not yet possess a deep-rooted place in the nation’s imagination. George I, who reigned between 1714 and 1727, preferred his native Hanover to his new dominion and had relied heavily on interpreters and intermediaries throughout his reign. This exposed the Protestant dynasty to accusations that its kings were foreign rulers.

Supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty, known as Jacobites, continued to regard the son of the Catholic king James II, who’d been deposed by his Protestant daughter and son-in-law in 1688, as Britain’s legitimate ruler. They had attempted ill-fated but bloody uprisings in support of James Francis Edward Stuart, the so-called Old Pretender, in 1715 and 1719. On his accession to the throne in 1727, George II therefore faced a challenge that was both political and cultural: He needed not only to rule Britain but also to persuade his people that he belonged there.

Arthurian legend offered a solution to this problem. Unlike the Jacobite claim, which emphasized hereditary right, it provided access to something broader and potentially more powerful: the idea of a shared British past. Arthur and Merlin were useful precisely because they belonged to no single dynasty. They could be appropriated to cultivate a different kind of legitimacy—one founded on patriotism, national identity and Britain’s historical traditions.

Caroline was well placed to appreciate Arthur’s political usefulness. Unlike her husband, who famously cared little for the arts, Caroline was an enthusiastic reader who understood the political value of culture. Raised in the intellectually vibrant courts of Berlin and Hanover, she had access to extensive libraries that exposed her not only to Arthurian myth but also to traditions linking the House of Guelph—the Hanoverian dynasty—with medieval English royalty.

The Truth Behind the Legend of King Arthur

While earlier English monarchs such as Henry II and Edward I had often appropriated Arthur directly as a model of kingship, Caroline shifted her attention to the magician Merlin. Throughout Arthurian tradition, Merlin acts as an adviser, genealogist and interpreter of Britain’s future. He guides Arthur while also foretelling the destiny of the realm. By placing Merlin at the center of her cave, Caroline employed these associations to connect the past, present and future in ways that linked the Hanoverians both to Britain’s ancient heritage and to its future success.

This symbolism became even more pointed because the royal family itself was divided. George and Caroline had a strained relationship with their son Frederick, and contemporary supporters interpreted Merlin’s inclusion as a call for reconciliation. In a 1735 poem, the Anglo-Welsh writer Jane Brereton had Merlin urge Frederick to fulfill his filial duty and “perpetuate Brunswick’s race” (in other words, ensure the continuation of the Hanoverian line). The poem suggests that at least some observers understood the cave’s symbolism as a plea for dynastic harmony as well as political stability.

Not everyone was convinced, however. Caleb D’Anvers—a pseudonym for Nicholas Amhurst, editor of the satirical journal the Craftsman—mocked Merlin’s Cave as an eccentric curiosity. Opposition writers, meanwhile, turned Merlin into a vehicle for attacks on both Caroline and her Whig ally Robert Walpole, Britain’s first de facto prime minister. “The figure of Merlin situated in the cave became an object of ridicule, closely associated with the minister, the devilish ‘wizard’ who could not be trusted,” scholar Amanda S. Meixell wrote in a 2005 journal article. Yet the very nature of these responses suggests that Caroline’s critics understood the political message she was trying to convey. Their objections stemmed not from confusion but disagreement.

In the deeply divided political culture of the 1730s, Whig celebrations of Britain’s legendary past could easily become targets for Tory and Jacobite satire. The negative responses to the cave demonstrate that Caroline’s political opponents recognized her intentions well enough to parody them.

Merlin’s Cave therefore offers a revealing glimpse into the political uses of myth in 18th-century Britain. In turning to Arthurian legend to promote the image of a stable, legitimate and distinctly British monarchy, Caroline understood a lesson that monarchies continue to grapple with today: Legitimacy depends not on inheritance but on the stories people tell about who belongs to the nation and who should shape its future.

This article is republished from the Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Amy Louise Blaney is a knowledge exchange coordinator at the University of Wolverhampton in England. Her research explores the nationalism of British cultural mythologies, with a particular interest in how mythic narratives are reshaped to construct and contest ideas of national identity.