‘Hidden Stories’: Historical Fiction and the Gift of Empathy

The Royal Coronation of H.M. King George IV, by James Stephanoff (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

It’s easy to forget the past. From accepting sanitised schoolbook versions of controversial events, to judging polarising figures by modern standards, there are plenty of pitfalls facing anyone who wants to understand history as it really was. 

Finding the time and energy to grasp historical facts is a challenge in itself, though there’s a greater one that’s easy to overlook. How can we scrutinise historical figures and the troubling or hateful views they held, all while recognising why they behaved in those ways? At a time where empathy is increasingly rare and valuable, this question isn’t just vital to how we relate to people in the past, but also the ones around us. 

Portrait of Frederick Blomberg (image credit: Austin Auction House)

Rosalind Freeborn has tackled this dilemma in an atypical way. According to a story passed down by her grandmother, she believed her family had a connection with an illegitimate son of King George III. ‘Stories like this are gold dust,’ novelist Richard Condon (best known for The Manchurian Candidate) told her when she worked with him as a book publicist. That encounter occurred when Freeborn was twenty-two, but it would take a further forty years until she decided to pursue this story to its conclusion: the publication of her debut novel, Prince George and Master Frederick. 

‘Stories like this are gold dust.’

Freeborn’s book reimagines the true story of Frederick Blomberg, the supposed son of a king who featured so intriguingly in her family legend. Adopted by the royal family in 1765, the orphaned Frederick became a close companion of Prince George, heir to the throne and later King George IV. As she further researched her grandmother’s childhood home at Kirby Misperton, in Yorkshire - the estate that George IV had gifted to Frederick Blomberg - the reality of this royal connection became increasingly plausible. 

Having grown up within the royal family, Frederick was sent to Cambridge University to study Divinity, was ordained, and then came back swiftly to the court as a chaplain to the King at Windsor. Contemporary newspapers and observers who knew Frederick even knowingly alluded to his resemblance to both the King and Prince George. 

George IV as Prince Regent in Garter Robes, by Thomas Lawrence (image credit: public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

In 2023, the Royal Collection Trust purchased a portrait of Frederick, drawn by Hugh Douglas Hamilton. It had been made as part of a series commissioned by Queen Charlotte of King George III and his eldest sons. In the description notes, the existence of this portrait ‘suggests he [Frederick] was considered a member of George III's “family” at this time’. This very portrait had hung on the wall of Kirby Misperton Hall, following Blomberg’s death, and became the property of Freeborn’s grandmother’s family who, through familiarity, ‘adopted’ Frederick’s story into their own history.

Frederick was born before slavery was abolished or the French Revolution began, in an era when fewer than one in ten men could vote. Despite these vast differences between his time and ours, Freeborn finds plenty of relatable details in his relationship with Prince George. 

‘When you’re thrown together as tiny children against the world, it stays with you,’ Freeborn says. ‘There was a genuine friendship, so I was anxious to capture it, but that relationship was coloured by the extreme position of one man and the relative modesty of the other.’ She compares Frederick’s anxieties over his illegitimacy and ambiguous status in the royal household to Prince Harry’s much-publicised disgruntlement at being a ‘spare’, in line to inherit the throne but with no realistic chance of doing so. 

This empathetic approach towards the actions of historical figures enables Freeborn to reconsider the historical reputation of Prince George, a figure best known for his scandalous affairs and lavish spending of public money. She depicts Prince George’s selfish, bullying streak in childhood, with Frederick serving as his literal whipping boy, made to take punishments on the prince’s behalf. However, she also shows how Prince George uses extravagant spending to compensate for an unhappy family life. Late in the novel, in a scene shortly before George IV’s death, she imagines him telling Frederick: ‘When we were children, I just remember wanting to be loved, whilst you were desperate to be king.’

As Freeborn points out, many of the Prince’s projects—the construction of Brighton Pavilion, or the remodelling of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle—are now acclaimed. ‘He did a lot to introduce frivolity, fun, fashion, and a broadness of thinking to this country,’ she says. 

Book cover of Prince George & Master Frederick (provided by Rosalind Freeborn and Alliance Publishing Press)

‘He didn’t have that basic thing we all crave, which is love and appreciation or the comfort of being able to put your feet up with your slippers on,’ Freeborn adds. ‘You can see that going on with royal families, ours and everywhere else. There’s a pressure to behave a certain way, when what they’d probably like to do is put their feet up and watch Bridgerton—and I’m sure they probably do!’

‘[George IV] did a lot to introduce frivolity, fun, fashion, and a broadness of thinking to this country.’ 

Despite her novel dealing with the rarefied circles of royalty and aristocracy, she’s also fascinated by the stories that flourish in the shadows of these figures. ‘I’m quite interested in going behind the scenes and lifting the cover of things,’ Freeborn says. ‘Who was doing the cooking and making the beds in those houses at the time? Those hidden stories are every bit as interesting as ones that are out in the open.’ 

This is why she introduces some fictitious characters amidst the primarily historical cast of the novel, such as Frederick’s cousin Harriet, an independent-minded actress who grows to admire the ideals of Mary Wollstonecraft. Whereas Frederick rarely defies the class system he’s born into, Harriet refuses to accept what she calls ‘the narrow teaching which places the rich man in his castle and the poor man at his gate’, endorsing then-radical values like universal education and a woman’s freedom to decide whom she marries. By shining a spotlight on the experiences of women and the hierarchies that marginalised them, Freeborn gives a more nuanced view of what it meant to live in the 18th century. 

‘I’m quite interested in going behind the scenes and lifting the cover of things.’

Having been inspired by her grandmother’s story, it’s unsurprising that the production of Prince George and Master Frederick was a family affair. ‘My children are proud and bewildered in equal measure that their mother suddenly hit upon this project,’ Freeborn shares. Her family members, alongside her editor Janet Weitz, Director at Alliance Publishing Press, supported her in editing her drafts and ironing out historical inconsistencies. Her husband helped her by editing the audiobook of her novel over the course of five days in a freezing-cold recording studio. ‘He’s read it more times than anyone would wish to,’ she says. 

Rosalind Freeborn at her book launch (image credit: Florence Battersby)

Publishing this novel has only whetted Freeborn’s writing ambitions. Though she’s keen to stress that the next project she has in mind is only in the earliest stages of development, she’s currently researching another story, set in the 1800s and likewise inspired by her family history. ‘Everyone in my family’s filled with horror by the prospect of me diving into this again,’ she jokes. 

‘Hidden stories are every bit as interesting as ones that are out in the open’

You don’t have to be a novelist like Freeborn to find value in history. Her journey into the intertwined lives of George IV and Frederick Blomberg rests not just on research into the mores of 18th-century life, but on a deep interest and sympathy with people of that era. Despite dealing honestly with Prince George’s nastier qualities, she makes it possible for us to see him as a fully-fledged person deserving of compassion and familial love. This empathetic perspective is the gift that fiction provides us, and a quality that everyone would benefit from reviving. 

For more information please visit Rosalind Freeborn’s website, or to purchase Prince George & Master Frederick, please visit Amazon.