Queen Anne, married at eighteen to a Danish nobleman, produced seventeen children, none of whom lived past childhood. Anne's confidante, Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, presumably stood by to hold the Queen's hand during her times of tragedy. Correspondence between the Duchess and the Queen reveal the two women enjoyed a royally passionate romance. When Anne came to the throne in 1702, she gave Sarah, whom she called "Mrs. Freeman," the highest court appointments.

The passage, from Macaulay's History of England, describes the devotion of the Princess Anne (daughter of James II, and later Queen Anne) to Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough - a devotion which had considerable influence on the political situation.

"It is a common observation that differences of taste, understanding, and disposition are no impediments to friendship, and that the closest intimacies often exist between minds, each of which supplies what is wanting in the other. Lady Churchill was loved and even worshipped by Anne. The princess could not live apart from the object of her romantic fondness. She married, and was a faithful and even an affectionate wife; but Prince George, a dull man, whose chief pleasures were derived from his dinner and his bottle, acquired over her no intluence comparable to that exercised by her female friend, and soon gave him self up with stupid patience to the dominion of that vehement and commanding spirit by which his wife was governed."

Anne was always remarkably independent, helping to overthrow her own father, James II, so that her brother-in-law, William III, could become King in 1688. As Queen, she was concerned about her people's welfare, and they in return loved her. In 1711 she helped to overthrow the Whig government in order to end a war with France. Anne was the last English monarch to have power over the cabinet and the ability to overrule parliament. She was often in ill health, and became grossly overweight, but she enjoyed playing cards and gossiping, among other distractions.