At the court of Hanover, as we have seen, there were plots and counterplots; in addition to the women’s squabbles, father was arrayed against son and son against father, and brother against brother. Among the unruly sons of Ernest Augustus, Sophie Dorothea had her friends, and the young princes for the most part hated Countess Platen quite as much as she did. Of them all, Maximilian was the most ungovernable, and had an unlimited capacity for getting into scrapes. Though well preserved, Countess Platen was by this time past her first youth, and she had recourse to divers means to heighten her charms, milk baths, artificial roses, and cosmetics. The rouge-pot, like dram-drinking, grows with habit, and the lady’s cheeks became so ruddy that they were the byword of the court. There was a quaint conceit that the water peas were boiled in was an infallible test of rouge, and the monkeyish Max, having a grudge against the Countess, procured a bottle of this decoction from the kitchen, and on the occasion of a court ceremonial, when she appeared in full war paint, he squirted some in her face, with the result that she had to retire amid the suppressed titters of the assembly. The Countess, boiling with rage, complained to Ernest Augustus, and the offender was severely reprimanded and locked up in his room for many days. The punishment was not a heavy one, but it served to engender bad blood between the father and son, and after he was liberated we find Maximilian intriguing with his two brothers, Augustus and Charles, against his eldest brother, George Louis, and his father. Ernest Augustus’s great desire was to add to the lustre of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg. To this end he sought to unite the duchies of Celle and Hanover, and he established primogeniture. He made his eldest son heir to all lands and territory, and only allotted to his other sons moderate sums of money whereby to support their dignity. This policy was the opposite to that pursued by his ancestors and by most of the German princes of his time, who in their wills were in the habit of dividing their territory among all their sons. It is no wonder, therefore, that the younger princes of Brunswick-Lüneburg disliked the innovation, protested noisily against it, and intrigued for its overthrow. The Duchess Sophia also disliked it. The disaffection was this time nipped in the bud by the vigilance of Countess Platen, who tried to implicate Sophie Dorothea in the plot, but nothing could be proved against her. It is possible that she had a hand in it, for the terms of her marriage settlement, which practically cut her off from inheriting territory, and left her at the mercy of her husband, were so unfavourable that she might be pardoned if she tried to alter them to her advantage.