It would seem that the birth of a daughter instead of a son was in some sense a disappointment to the ducal family of Hanover, though why poor Sophie Dorothea should be blamed it is not easy to see. The event did not tend to increase her prestige, as the birth of George Augustus had done; and her husband, who was now home again, became more indifferent and colder than ever. In these two children, for she bore no more, Sophie Dorothea found all the happiness she experienced in her unhappy married life. Some of this unhappiness, it must be admitted, she deliberately provoked. Though she did not love her husband, she was furiously jealous of his amours with other women, and resented the presence of his favourites in proximity to herself. The little Hanoverian court was a hot-bed of intrigue, a nest of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, and the more we look into it the more we can understand the philosophic policy of the Duchess Sophia, who ignored and kept aloof from it all. No doubt she chose the better part, though it seems a somewhat unnatural one, for interference would have been useless, and by abstaining she preserved her dignity. Sophie Dorothea was different. At the outset she made an enemy of Madame Platen, and met gibe with gibe and intrigue with intrigue. Of course she had the worst of the duel; it was like a fight between a hawk and a dove. She was no match for the older woman, who thwarted her at every turn, and grew daily in authority and arrogance. About this time Ernest Augustus advanced Platen to the title of Count, and his wife blossomed into a Countess. Her power was now so great that even the stoutest of her foes feared to provoke her, and lesser obstacles were swept out of her path.