"Ernest Augustus (German: Ernst August; 5 June 1771 – 18 November 1851) was King of Hanover from 20 June 1837 until his death. As the fifth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Hanover, initially he seemed unlikely to become a monarch, but none of his elder brothers had a legitimate son. Ernest succeeded in Hanover under Salic law, which debarred women from the succession, ending the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714.
Ernest was born in London but was sent to Hanover in his adolescence for his education and military training. While serving with Hanoverian forces near Tournai against Revolutionary France, he received a disfiguring facial wound. He was created Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale in 1799. Although his mother Queen Charlotte disapproved of his marriage in 1815 to her twice-widowed niece, Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, it proved happy. The King´s eldest son, George, Prince of Wales (later George IV), had one child, Charlotte, who was expected to become the British queen, but she died in 1817, giving Ernest some prospect of succeeding to the British throne as well as the Hanoverian one. However, his older brother Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, fathered the eventual British heir, Victoria, in 1819 shortly before the birth of Ernest´s only child, George." - (en.wikipedia.org 05.11.2019)
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