Letters To My Daughter: Augustus And Managing Expectations

The first Duke of Sussex was Prince Augustus Frederick, a son of King George III. As the ninth child and sixth son of the King, his chances of sitting on the throne were slim. He was a staple Royal- a fixture merely destined to represent King and Country, much like a human flag.

Born in 1773, he was a liberal-minded royal who questioned tradition. Augustus supported electoral reform and extending the franchise beyond the gentry, an unthinkable political belief at the time coming from someone in his privileged position.

“I have every respect for the nobility of the country, but education ennobles more than anything else” he once said.

Augustus, as you might expect, was not free to marry without the King’s approval. The Royal Marriages Act, passed in 1772 by Parliament stipulated that members of the Royal Family needed the monarch’s consent before they could wed. Augustus was clearly not the first royal family member to push the bubble.

He was the first, however, to brush up against this particular law. At the age of 20, he secretly married a woman by the name of Lady Augusta Murray (small world!) a noblewoman ten years his senior, in Rome.

The King, for his part, was indignant. He moved to thwart the union, at times derailing the couple’s efforts to live in the same country. The king succeeding in driving the couple apart.

“Wherever you go, or wherever you reside, you can never divest yourself of the character of a British Prince” , an archbishop wrote to Augustus at the time.

Augustus was trapped. He may have won the battle, at the time, but he had also clearly lost the war. For most of his married life, he was estranged from lady Augusta.

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Times may have changed in Buckingham, and you may never be subject to such rigorous pre-determined marital criteria. Expectation, however, is hardly a historical relic.

Dogma and tradition are the prime birthers of expectation. Those who have themselves been placed in a box expect the same dimensions to be laid upon you.

Always meet this phenomenon with empathy, just as Augustus did initially. There is much truth and virtue in what these people believe. The traditions they pass along, for the most part, have proven historically resilient. Internalize the value of standing upon the shoulders of your predecessors.

You must remain vigilant, however, because ego and selfishness are also responsible for projection. How many parents feel their child in an Ivy-league school says more about them than it does about the child’s accomplishment? How many place more stock in what their social circle thinks than the unique wants and needs of their child?

Was King George selfish, or did he genuinely believe he had the best interest of his child in mind? I’m not sure.

What I do know, unequivocally, is that I will do my best to never expect something of you that I do not believe you would expect for yourself. I will attempt to guide you towards uncovering your own path rather than expecting you follow my own.

You will learn much from your errors and missteps, which should be the consequences of the actions you deliberately take. To rob you of making your own mistakes, would be akin to never allowing your potential to take shape.

And why else are we here?

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Prince Augustus Frederick was offered the title of Duke of Sussex by the King in November, 1801, as a reward for ultimately abandoning his wife.

“I adore you” , he wrote. “I am sure I never shall be happy till we meet again.”

But they never did meet again. Augusta bore a baby girl, and the Duke came to believe- mistakingly- that he wasn’t the father. “What has been so long wished for is at last come to pass. We are to meet again no more” , he wrote.

Augustus continued to challenge the norms, as he eventually married a widow after his first wife’s death in 1830.

Augustus was a man driven by curiosity, not fear or tradition. He, too, met his situation with empathy. We should laud him for these character traits. His error, and the real tragedy, was his recession. In the end, he remained just as curious and idealistic as he was when he was 20. He may have carved out the life he always wanted had he stood firm. We will never know.

And that, my child, is the lesson to behold here. You will never know what lies at the conclusion of a path you do not take. Before choosing a path, the guiding question should be: which path will teach me more about who I am? Like Augustus, you will find it very difficult to deny yourself of who you truly are. Unlike him, however, I hope that you never retreat.