Charlotte Sophie of Aldenburg

Charlotte Sophie of Aldenburg (4 August 1715 – 5 February 1800), was the ruling Countess of Varel and Kniphausen,[1] adjacent lordships on the German/Frisian border along the North Sea, from 1738 to 1748.

Charlotte Amalie was the daughter and only child of Anton II, Count of Aldenburg (1681-1738) and by his second wife, Princess Wilhelmine Marie of Hesse-Homburg (1678-1770).

Leaving no children by his consort, an Oldenburg princess of the Danish Sonderburg line, Anton Gunther was free to confer his unentailed lordships of Varel and Kniphausen on Anton I of Aldenburg (1633-1681), the son of his long-time liaison with Baroness Elisabeth Margareta Ungnad zu Sonnegg (c.1605-1683), for whom he also procured the rank of Imperial count in 1653.

Although Anton's daughters by his first wife, Countess Auguste Johanna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein (1638-1669) married into the Scandinavian nobility, his second marriage was to Princess Charlotte Amélie de la Trémoïlle (1652-1732), a Huguenot princesse étrangère whose descent from the Dutch leader, William the Silent, would eventually bring the Aldenburgs within the orbit of their powerful neighbors to the south, the House of Orange-Nassau.

So on 29 December 1732 the Holy Roman Emperor obligingly elevated Bentinck to teh rank of Imperial count, and he married Countess Charlotte Sophie von Aldenburg zu Varel und Knyphausen on 1 March 1733.