At the tawdry, extravagant heart of England's Regency period - 1811 to 1820 - the bitter mismatch between the Prince and Princess of Wales.

When the Prince Regent (later King George IV) separated privately from Princess Caroline in 1796, they had been together for less than a year. Their disastrous (and probably bigamous) marriage - mercilessly ridiculed by the satirists and caricaturists of the day - had profound political consequences and eventually led to the greatest scandal in British royal history: the trial of Queen Caroline for adultery.

Caroline of Brunswick was a curious mixture of gravity and exuberance, wit and vulgarity, whose impact on society and public opinion was enormous. Barred from the Regent's court, she travelled through Europe with a small court of her own, her outrageous behavior leading to the flight of her English ladies-in-waiting and chamberlains and her employment of highly questionable Italian servants to replace them.

The tragic death of her daughter - her only child - found Caroline still abroad, but harassment from government spies and the death of George III persuaded her to return to England to take her place as Queen. At her trial before the House of Lords, the dignity and honor of the British Crown was in shreds, and Britain apparently on the brink of revolution.

1. Caroline's place in history has generally been reduced to that of persecuted wife, but in this thorough and superbly written biography, Flora Fraser - having acquired access to material in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle previously unavailable to other historians - paints a brilliantly detailed portrait of an ill-treated but irrepressible woman who refused to be victimized. The author does not articulate the glaring parallels to today's royal family, but they are inescapable.