, the rightful heir, but only to find the place
filled by a wicked uncle, Don Miguel. She had a long fight with the
usurper, her father coming over to help her, and finally ousted Miguel
and got into that big, uneasy arm-chair, called a throne, where she
continued to sit, though much shaken and heaved up and about by political
convulsions, for some dozen years, when she found it best to step down
and out.
It is said she did not gain, but lost in beauty as she grew to womanhood;
so finally the English Princess had the advantage of her in the matter of
good looks even.
King George IV., though he was fond of his amusing little niece, did not
like to think of her as destined to rule in his place. He is said to have
been much offended when, as he was proposing to give that ball, his chief
favorite, a gay, Court lady, exclaimed: "Oh, do! it will be so nice to
see the _two little Queens_ dancing together." Yet he disliked the
Duchess of Kent for keeping the child as much as possible away from his
disreputable Court, and educating her after her own ideas, and often
threatened to use his power as King to deprive her of the little girl.
The country would not have stood this, yet the Duchess must have suffered
cruelly from fear of having her darling child taken from her by this
crowned ogre, and shut up in the gloomy keep of his Castle at Windsor.
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