Maureen Waller Author and Historian

The Princess's chaplain noted that when James bluntly told his daughter that she was to marry her cousin William of Orange within the week, he took no trouble to hide his disapproval of the Protestant match. James, a Roman Catholic, would have liked to see his elder daughter marry the heir to the King of France. However, King Charles had insisted on making the match with their Protestant nephew to mollify the Protestants, who were extremely concerned about James's Catholicism. The marriage, ensuring that after James the crown would return to Protestant hands, was tremendously popular in England.

Cool, calculating and reserved, William was temperamentally his wife's opposite. Highly emotional and vivacious, Mary longed for affection and quickly imagined herself in love with her husband. She soon learned that the only way to win his approval was to repress her true nature and to be a submissive, obedient wife. After an early miscarriage Mary remained childless, but the couple shared other interests. They loved to beautify their palaces, to collect paintings and porcelain, and to create gardens. Above all, they shared a concern for the fate of the Protestant religion.

There was a rumour that William was unfaithful to Mary. Her meddling English servants warned her that she would catch him emerging from the bedroom of one of her ladies, Elizabeth Villiers, in the early hours of the morning. There was a scene, with William trying to assure Mary that it was not how it looked.

'Squinting Betty' was no beauty, but she was clever and witty and invited to all the diplomatic parties at The Hague. It is just possible that she was acting as an agent for William, bringing him intelligence. Certainly William was no womaniser and, if anything, his sexual inclinations might have veered more towards young men.

For William to succeed in taking her father's crown, it was essential for him to have Mary's support. As his wife, Mary had naively expected William to rule in her right - or at least that is what Bishop Burnet tells us. William made it quite clear to the English politicians that he had no intention of being his 'wife's gentleman usher'. In the Revolution Settlement of 1688/89, however, he had to be content with the fact that the crown was offered to them jointly. William had hitherto underestimated his wife's intelligence and abilities. In England he came to rely on her charm to win over the courtiers, who resented the Dutch interloper, and on her loyalty and good sense to rule during his many absences fighting the European war.

Depressed that they were spending so much time apart, Mary succumbed to smallpox at Christmas 1694. William was devastated at her loss. When he died in 1702 he was found to be wearing Mary's wedding ring and a lock of her hair close to his heart. It seems that he had loved her after all.