In 1863, Vicky and Frederick William purchased a run-down property and refurbished it into a farm, allowing the family to periodically experience a simple country life.

Vicky was an intellectually demanding mother who expected her children to exhibit moral and political leadership, and in her husband's absence she carefully supervised their education and upbringing.

[14] While Vicky was close with her eldest daughter, this changed as the girl grew older; by the time she was two years old, Charlotte had become known as "sweet naughty little Ditta"[15] and would prove to be the most difficult of the family's eight children.

"[16][20] The Crown Princess rarely withheld her true thoughts of those who displeased her,[21] and bluntly admonished her children to encourage their efforts and help them avoid vanity.

[8] Queen Victoria urged her daughter to act encouragingly rather than reproachfully towards Charlotte, believing that she could not expect the young princess to share Vicky's tastes.

[17] The biographer Jerrold M. Packard thinks it likely that the "pretty but nervous and sullen girl sensed [her mother's] disappointment from an early age," exacerbating the gulf between them.

"[24] The strict upbringing Vicky gave to the eldest three children—Wilhelm, Charlotte, and Henry—was not replicated in her relationship with her three youngest surviving children, Viktoria, Sophia, and Margaret.

[8] The historian John Van der Kiste speculates that had Vicky shown the same level of acceptance with Charlotte as with her younger children, "the relationship between them might have been a happier one".

[26] King Wilhelm and Queen Augusta spoiled their granddaughter and encouraged her rebellion against the Crown Prince and Princess,[27] and Charlotte and her brother frequently took their side in disputes with her parents.

[28] This rebellion was encouraged by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who held political disagreements with the liberal Crown Prince and Princess.

[27] Charlotte's cousin, Queen Marie of Romania, wrote in her memoirs: "it was greatly owing to Charly's intrigues that King Carol's animosity against the Emperor Wilhelm was kept alive.

[32] She suffered from significant health issues for the majority of her adult life; this was accompanied by a nearly continuous state of mental agitation and wild excitement, confusing her doctors.

[33] As Charlotte grew older, her behaviour came to include flirtation, spreading malicious gossip, and causing trouble, traits her mother had noticed in her daughter's youth and had hoped she would outgrow.

[37] Van der Kiste believes Charlotte's decision to marry Bernhard also stemmed from a desire to become independent of her parents, and especially from her mother's criticism.

[39] Charlotte's maternal uncles, the Prince of Wales and Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, attended the wedding, as did King Leopold II and Queen Marie Henriette of the Belgians.

[42] They also purchased a villa in Cannes, a decision that angered Wilhelm, who viewed France as an enemy country; Charlotte eventually spent most of her winters in the French city, as she hoped that its warm climate would help alleviate her lifetime of ill health.

[52] Charlotte's father ascended the German throne as Emperor Frederick III in March 1888,[53] only to succumb to throat cancer in June of that year.

[54] With her brother's ascension as Wilhelm II, Charlotte's social influence increased in Berlin, where she surrounded herself with a wild group of nobles, diplomats, and young officials from the court.

[55] While she had gradually reconciled with her mother during Frederick's illness, Charlotte sided with Wilhelm when he complained that he should have attended Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in place of his ailing father.

[57] In early 1891,[58] Berlin society erupted in scandal after a series of anonymous letters circulated to prominent members of the court, including Wilhelm and his wife Dona.

[69] Van der Kiste writes that Charlotte and Feodora had very similar personalities, "both strong-willed creatures who loved gossip and were too ready to believe the worst of each other".

[71] In June 1911, Charlotte attended her cousin George V's coronation in England, but the country's summer heat left her bed-ridden with a swollen face and pain in her limbs.

World War I broke out on 28 July; Bernhard left for the front while Charlotte remained behind to oversee the duchy, serving mainly as a figurehead (German: Landesregentin).

[73] Recent historians have argued that Charlotte and Feodora were afflicted with porphyria, a genetic disease that is believed to have affected some members of the British Royal Family, most notably King George III.

[29][74] In their 1998 book Purple Secret: Genes, 'Madness', and the Royal Houses of Europe, the historian John C. G. Röhl and the geneticists Martin Warren and David Hunt identify Charlotte as "occup[ying] a crucial position in [the] search for the porphyria mutation in the descendants of the Hanoverians".

[76] As a young woman, Charlotte became gravely ill with what her mother called "malaria poisoning and anaemia," followed by "neuralgia, fainting and nausea," all described by Röhl as a "textbook list of the symptoms of porphyria, and this several decades before the disorder was clinically identified".

[75] In them, Charlotte variously complains of "toothache, backache, insomnia, dizzy spells, nausea, constipation, excruciating 'wandering' abdominal pains, skin oedema and itching, partial paralysis of the legs and dark red or orange urine," the last of which Röhl calls the "decisive diagnostic symptom.

Röhl, Warren, and Hunt conclude "...for what else could have caused their terrible attacks of lameness and abdominal pain and skin rashes – and in Charlotte's case dark red urine?

Marie wrote:"It needed years entirely to destroy my feeling for her, and even after I had discovered what a false friend she was, her soft, purring voice could, if I shut my eyes, occasionally awaken again that old sensation of delight she had given me when I was a child.

Charly belonged to those beings who, with a single word of disdain, could shrivel up your ardent enthusiasm, make your dearest possession appear worthless or rob your closest friend of her charm, and this with a voice, soft and gentle like a caress.