She was named after both her Grandmothers - HM Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III and Augusta, The Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg, sister of... King George III, which makes her parents first cousins. Despite her headstrong Hanoverian ways, the British people saw her as a beacon of hope after her male predecessors and her death in childbirth came as a great shock. As the only living legitimate grandchild of King George III, Charlotte Augusta's death left the Hanoverian dynasty with a problem. Her uncles, still of of father-able age, began a race to produce an heir and the winner was the Duke of Kent and his daughter who became HM Queen Victoria.
In 1816, around about the time of her marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld, Charlotte was assigned a Label of three Points, with a central red Rose. This was halfway between the traditional, three-pointed Label for the first born (son) of a Prince of Wales which, at that time, carried a St George's Cross but which had been assigned to her Uncle Frederick, Duke of York and Albany and who was still alive, and a traditional Label for a Princess Royal of a red Rose between two St George's Crosses which had been assigned to her Aunt Charlotte, Princess Royal and Queen of Württemberg who outlived her namesake.
The above representation of Charlotte Augusta's Coat of Arms shows everything correctly, such as Coronets - Crosses, Fleurs-de-Lys and Strawberry Leaves. However, contemporary representations of the heraldry of female members of the Hanoverian Dynasty, due to the traditions of male-dominated German heraldry, are few and far between. Queen Victoria, who gained her majority before she came to the Throne, was never recorded as having been assigned a Label, but her reign saw the regularisation of Labels in the second generation especially which we will see did not exist in the Hanoverian Dynasty, even for male members of the Family.
On 2nd May 1816, Charlotte Augusta, after rejecting her father's suggestion of The Prince of Orange, married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld who would later become King Leopold I of the Belgians. (Because he was the heir to the Dutch Throne, later to become King William II, I have never understood why the Prince Regent favoured him. This would surely have meant a very close alliance between the two countries (the UK and The Netherlands) at best as Charlotte Augusta would, like Queen Victoria, be banned from ascending the Hanoverian Throne due to the Salic Law there or, at worst, the then ultimately one and only legitimate heir being barred from the British Throne. Those two points may be exaggerated, but I cannot see this marriage proposal being anything other than fraught and full of unanswerable questions.) Luckily, Leopold was seen as a hero of the Napoleonic Wars and was able to win his future father-in-law over.
The marriage was very happy by all accounts and Leopold proved able to calm Charlotte Augusta's Hanoverian temper down. Their marriage was tragically short lived as, after a miscarriage during 1816, Charlotte Augusta died on 6th November 1817 having given birth to a stillborn baby boy. Not only was Leopold heartbroken but the whole country went into mourning. Eventually, after rejecting an offer of the Greek Throne in 1830 and although at first reluctant, Leopold accepted the offer of the Belgian Throne but on the condition that it was a popular choice which is why the Belgian monarch is designated 'King/Queen of the Belgians' and not 'of Belgium'. The portrait of Leopold to the right is purported to be an 1844 copy of an 1818 painting by George Dawe (1781–1829) commissioned by Queen Victoria. The copy is in the Royal Collection, RCIN 407376 |
The above gallery purports to show Leopold's personal Coat of Arms, presumably after his ascension to the Throne of the Belgians but really only shows the confusion in heraldry at the time.
Leopold was indeed assigned a five-pointed Label to the British and Hanoverian joint Arms with a central red Rose to reflect Charlotte Augusta's Label. However, this was not assigned to him until March 1818, after his (first) wife had passed away. The other versions above simply reflect artistic licence at the time.