{"id":1315,"date":"2026-08-06T12:10:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:10:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/08\/06\/how-queen-caroline-turned-king-arthur-into-an-18th-century-royal-pr-strategy\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:10:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:10:39","slug":"how-queen-caroline-turned-king-arthur-into-an-18th-century-royal-pr-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/08\/06\/how-queen-caroline-turned-king-arthur-into-an-18th-century-royal-pr-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"How Queen Caroline turned King Arthur into an 18th-century royal PR strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"
Merlin Presenting the Future King Arthur by Emil Lauffer (1909).<\/span> Sotheby’s<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amid family feuds, damaging headlines and questions about its future role, Britain\u2019s royal family has spent much of the past decade managing its public image. But the importance of good royal PR dates back centuries. <\/p>\n

Long before communications teams and media advisers became fixtures of royal life, Queen Caroline (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\u2019s most powerful national stories: the legends of King Arthur<\/a> and Merlin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the wife of the king of Great Britain and Ireland, George II (1683-1760), Caroline belonged to the House of Hanover. The German dynasty had inherited the British throne only two decades earlier and was still viewed with suspicion by many of their 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.<\/p>\n

Caroline\u2019s solution to this problem was unexpected. In 1735, she commissioned a curious attraction in the gardens of her palace at Richmond. Known as Merlin\u2019s Cave<\/a>, it looked like something from a fairy tale: a gothic thatched building filled with wax figures of Merlin, legendary prophets and other figures from Britain\u2019s distant past. Many contemporaries thought it bizarre, with one critic dismissing its inhabitants as \u201ca great many strange puppets\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n \"Painting
\n Portrait of Caroline of Ansbach in Manner of Michael Dahl (1730).<\/span>
\n Shire Hall<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet Merlin\u2019s Cave was far more than an eccentric garden folly. Although an unlikely tool of statecraft, Caroline\u2019s use of Arthurian iconography sought not only to strengthen the Hanovarian claim but also to promote a shared British identity at a time of political uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Myth as messaging<\/h2>\n

Although the House of Hanover had inherited the British throne in 1714, it did not yet possess a deep-rooted place in the nation\u2019s imagination. George I (who reigned 1714-1727) preferred his native Hanover to his new dominion and had relied heavily on interpreters and intermediaries throughout his reign. This exposed the dynasty to accusations that they were foreign rulers.<\/p>\n

Supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty, known as Jacobites, continued to regard James II\u2019s son, the \u201cOld Pretender\u201d James Francis Edward Stuart, as Britain\u2019s legitimate king. They had attempted ill-fated but bloody uprisings 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 to not only rule Britain, but to persuade his people that he belonged there.<\/p>\n

Arthurian legend offered a solution to this problem. Unlike the Jacobite claim, which emphasised 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 \u2013 one founded on patriotism, national identity and Britain\u2019s historical traditions.<\/p>\n

Queen Caroline was well placed to appreciate Arthur\u2019s political usefulness. Unlike her husband, who famously cared little for the arts<\/a>, 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<\/a> that exposed her not only to Arthurian myth but to traditions linking the House of Guelph \u2013 the Hanoverian dynasty \u2013 with medieval English royalty.<\/p>\n

While earlier monarchs such as Henry II and Edward I had often appropriated Arthur directly as a model of kingship<\/a>, Caroline shifted attention towards Merlin. Throughout Arthurian tradition, Merlin acts as an adviser, genealogist and interpreter of Britain\u2019s future. He guides Arthur while also foretelling the destiny of the realm. By placing Merlin at the centre of her cave, Caroline was employing these associations to connect the past, present and future in ways that linked the Hanoverians both to Britain\u2019s ancient heritage and its future success.<\/p>\n

\n \"A
\n Merlin\u2019s Cave from John Rocque\u2019s Plan of the Royal Gardens (1754).<\/span>
\n British Library<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This symbolism became even more pointed because the royal family itself was divided. George II and Caroline had a strained relationship with their son, Frederick, and contemporary supporters interpreted Merlin\u2019s inclusion as a call for reconciliation. In a 1735 poem inspired by Merlin\u2019s Cave<\/a>, the Anglo-Welsh writer Jane Brereton has Merlin urge Frederick to fulfil his filial duty and \u201cperpetuate Brunswick\u2019s Race\u201d, suggesting that at least some observers understood the Cave\u2019s symbolism as a plea for dynastic harmony as well as political stability.<\/p>\n

Not everyone was convinced, however. Caleb D’Anvers \u2013 a pseudonym for Nicholas D’Anvers, editor of the satirical journal The Craftsman \u2013 mocked Merlin\u2019s Cave<\/a> as an eccentric curiosity. Opposition writers, meanwhile, turned Merlin into a vehicle for attacks on both Caroline and her ally Sir Robert Walpole. Yet the very nature of these responses suggests that Caroline\u2019s critics understood the political message she was trying to convey. Their objections stemmed not from confusion, but disagreement. <\/p>\n

In the deeply divided political culture of the 1730s, Whig celebrations of Britain\u2019s legendary past could easily become targets for Tory and Jacobite satire. The negative responses to the cave demonstrate that Caroline\u2019s political opponents recognised her intentions well enough to parody them.<\/p>\n

Merlin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Dr Amy Louise Blaney received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for the doctoral research on which this article is based. She is a Knowledge Exchange Coordinator at the University of Wolverhampton, an Associate Member of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the International Arthurian Society, and a member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merlin Presenting the Future King Arthur by Emil Lauffer (1909). Sotheby’s Amid family feuds, damaging headlines and questions about its future role, Britain\u2019s royal family has spent much of the past decade managing its public image. But the importance of good royal PR dates back centuries. Long before communications teams and media advisers became fixtures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}