- King of Great Britain and Ireland -
( 1738 - 1820 )
* List of the stories
he appears in :
- AR 145 : "His Majesty, McDuck", from 1989, by Don Rosa (by name only). |
* His biography :
William Frederick
Hanover was born on June 4, 1738 in Norfolk House, London, England,
the son of Fredrick Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha,
and grandson of King George II of Great Britain.
In 1760, on the death of George II, he became King
of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1761, he married Charlotte of Mecklinburg-Strelitz,
with whom he had 15 children, althought he was in love with Sarah Lennox,
and was crowned.
He was afflicted with porphyria, a maddening disease,
and was victim of several attacks of this illness, which debilitated him
in the last years of his reign.
In 1763, the Peace of Paris ended the Seven Years War
against France, from which Great Britain emerged as the world's greatest
colonial power, but George and Prime Minister Lord North wanted
to tax the American colonies to pay for military protection, which led
to the War of Independance, from 1775 to 1783.
In 1788, he suffers his first attack of his illness and
tries to kill his son, George Prince of Wales, but he carried on
with his royal duties, said by doctors to have recovered from his madness.
In 1793, a new war broke out with France, which stopped
in 1802.
Several assassination attempts have been made on him.
In 1800, an act of union was passed between Great Britain
and Ireland.
In 1803 other hostilities against France, the Napoleonic
wars, lasted until 1814, taking several forms : Arthur Wellesley,
Duke
of Wellington, led the land attack, while the navy, commanded by Lord
Horatio Nelson won the decisive battle off Cape Trafalgar, and imposed
a blockade of Europe to offset Napoleon's " continental system"
which was forbidden from importing British goods, and Pitt the younger
guided the government through the hardships of total war.
In 1810, he suffered a recurrence of his mental derangement,
and so his son George Prince of Wales was made Regent in
1811.
On January 29, 1920, George III died, blind, deaf and
mad, at Windsor Castle.
* His place in the Barks/Rosa stories universe
:
In "His Majesty, McDuck",
during a battle which takes place in 1818, American soldiers in Fort
Drakeborough, attacked by the Spanish troops, receive an urgent dispatch
from King George which says they have to leave the fort to the Spanish.
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