Sophia Dorothea and the Castle of Ahlden

Saraband for Dead Lovers is an excellent 1948 movie about the doomed royal marriage between King George I of England and Sophia Dorothea of Celle, who was imprisoned by her husband for 30 years in a castle in Germany on charges of infidelity, charges which have never been conclusively proven. Joan Greenwood stars as Sophia Dorothea and she is exquisitely beautiful and moving in the role, portraying the woman who would never sit on the throne of England with her husband as the innocent victim of schemers and cruelty by her husband.

There are three outstanding female perfomances in this movie. In addition to Greenwood, Francoise Rosay plays the imperious Duchess Sophia, the mother of George, originally George Louis of Hanover. Flora Robson is the plotting and vain Countess Platen, the former lover of  Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck, played by Stewart Granger. The costumes and the scenes of seventeenth century Hanover help to make this an exceptional product of London’s famous Ealing Studios. Directed by Michael Relph, it was the Ealing Studios’ first film in technicolor and for some inexplicable reason it was a box office flop.

In real life, Sophia Dorothea was forced to marry her cousin George Louis in 1682 after his mother, the Duchess Sophia, plotted to arrange the match for financial reasons.  The marriage was arranged on the very day Sophia’s engagement to another man was to be announced. Prince George Louis of Hanover (Peter Bull in the film) was disliked by even his own mother, who said he was “the most pigheaded, stubborn boy who ever lived.”  George Louis later inherited the throne of England through his mother, who was a granddaughter of King James I.

The marriage was never happy and resulted in the birth of two children, including the boy who would become George II. Sophia fell in love with the Swedish Count Konigsmarck, and he loved her. It is not known whether the affair was ever consummated. In the movie, Sophia Dorothea resists having an affair though she admits to loving Konigsmarck. In both real life and the film, the pair was caught trying to flee, and the count was murdered. Sophia spent the next 30 years confined to the Castle of Ahlden after being divorced by her husband. She died at the age of 61.

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