Prince George of Denmark and Norway, Duke of Cumberland (Danish: Jørgen; 2 April 1653 – 28 October 1708), was the husband of Anne, Queen of Great Britain.

The marriage of George and Anne was arranged in the early 1680s with a view to developing an Anglo-Danish alliance to contain Dutch maritime power.

As a result, George was disliked by his Dutch brother-in-law, William III, Prince of Orange, who was married to Anne's elder sister, Mary.

Anne's seventeen pregnancies by George resulted in twelve miscarriages or stillbirths, four infant deaths, and a chronically ill son, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, who died at the age of eleven.

George was born in Copenhagen Castle, and was the younger son of Frederick III, King of Denmark and of Norway, and Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

[2] He travelled through Germany again in 1672–73, to visit two of his sisters, Anna Sophia and Wilhelmine Ernestine, who were married to the electoral princes of Saxony and the Palatinate.

[3] As a Protestant, George was considered a suitable partner for the niece of King Charles II of England, Lady Anne.

[8] Anne's father, James, Duke of York, welcomed the marriage because it diminished the influence of his other son-in-law, Dutch Stadtholder William III of Orange, who was naturally unhappy with the match.

[12] King Charles gave them a set of buildings in the Palace of Whitehall known as the Cockpit (near the site of what is now Downing Street in Westminster) as their London residence.

In December, James fled to France, and early the following year William and Mary were declared joint monarchs, with Anne as heir presumptive.

George held mortgages on Femern, Tremsbüttel and Steinhorst, Schleswig-Holstein, which he surrendered to the Duke of Holstein as part of the peace of Altona of 1689 negotiated by William between Denmark and Sweden.

[30] During the military campaign against James's supporters in Ireland, George accompanied the Williamite troops at his own expense, but was excluded from command, and was even refused permission to travel in his brother-in-law's coach.

[34] Some degree of reconciliation was achieved following Queen Mary's sudden and unexpected death from smallpox in 1694, which made Anne heiress apparent.

[39] Anne appointed him generalissimo of all English military forces on 17 April, and Lord High Admiral, the official but nominal head of the Royal Navy, on 20 May.

[42] George's secretary in the 1680s was Colonel Edward Griffith, brother-in-law of the Duchess of Marlborough, who was Anne's close confidante and friend.

[3] George followed William III as Captain-General of the Honourable Artillery Company,[43] and was made Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

[44] Anne failed, however, in her attempts to persuade the States General of the Netherlands to elect her husband captain-general of all Dutch forces, to maintain the unified command of the Maritime Powers that William had held.

Anne was in favour of the measure, and forced George to vote for the bill in the House of Lords, even though, being a practising Lutheran, he was an occasional conformist himself.

In his capacity as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, George held influence in parliamentary boroughs on the south coast of England, which he used to support Whig candidates in the general election of 1705.

There was blood in his sputum, but he seemed to recover,[55] although he was too ill to attend a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral in June for a British victory in the Battle of Ramillies.

[57] The Scilly naval disaster of 1707, in which a fleet commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovell foundered, highlighted mismanagement at the Admiralty, for which George was nominally responsible.

[58] By October 1708, five powerful politicians, known as the Whig Junto—Lords Somers, Halifax, Orford, Wharton and Sunderland—were clamouring for the removal of both Prince George and Churchill.

She never left him till he was dead, but continued kissing him the very moment his breath went out of his body, and 'twas with a great deal of difficulty my Lady Marlborough prevailed upon her to leave him.

[64] Anne wrote to her nephew, Frederick IV of Denmark, "the loss of such a husband, who loved me so dearly and so devotedly, is too crushing for me to be able to bear it as I ought.

[66] Anne resented the Duchess's intrusive actions, which included removing a portrait of George from the Queen's bedchamber and then refusing to return it, in the belief that it was natural "to avoid seeing of papers or anything that belonged to one that one loved when they were just dead".

Admiral Churchill retired, and Anne appointed the moderate Tory Lord Pembroke to lead the Admiralty, instead of a Whig.

John Macky thought him "of a familiar, easy disposition with a good sound understanding but modest in showing it ... very fat, loves news, his bottle & the Queen.

"[73] In making fun of George's asthma, Lord Mulgrave said the Prince was forced to breathe hard in case people mistook him for dead and buried him.

[6] He was not one of the most colourful political characters of his day—he was content to spend his time building model ships[77]—but he was a loyal and supportive husband to Queen Anne.

Anne occasionally used the image of wifely virtue to escape unpalatable situations by claiming, as a woman, she knew "nothing except what the prince tells me", but it was an artifice.