Caroline’s duties as Princess of Wales began almost from the first hour of her arrival in England. The Court of George the First lacked a Queen, and all that the presence of a Queen implies. The King’s unhappy consort, Sophie Dorothea, whose grace, beauty and incomparable charm might have lent lustre to the Court of St. James’s, and whose innate refinement would have toned down some of the grossness of the early Hanoverian era, was locked up in Ahlden. Caroline had to fill her place as best she could; she laboured under obvious disadvantages, for no Princess of Wales, however beautiful and gifted, and Caroline was both, could quite take the place of Queen, and in Caroline’s case her difficulties were increased by the jealousy of the King, who viewed with suspicion every act of the Prince and Princess of Wales to win popularity as directed against himself. Caroline at first managed by tact and diplomacy to avoid the royal displeasure, and she would probably have continued to do so had it not been for the inept blundering of the Prince of Wales, who, in his efforts to gain the popular favour, was apt to overdo his part. But at first the Princess kept him in check, and gave the King no tangible excuse for manifesting his disapproval. “The Princess of Wales hath the genius,” quoth Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who hated her, “to fit her for the government of a fool,” forgetting that she was really paying a tribute to Caroline’s powers, for fools are proverbially difficult to govern, especially so vain and choleric a fool as little George Augustus.