plan for the young princess, something that often has been customary with a royal child suspected of not being sired by its nominal father but in its mother's illicit liaison: to marry such a child to another member of the royal house. Since a male child of hers could inherit the throne some day, it would be advantageous to arrange a marriage early, and to marry the "half-royal" back into the extended royal house, to the Hereditary Prince of Augustenborg. This plan had the positive effect of more closely connecting the Danish royal house’s two lines, the ruling House of Oldenborg and the cadet House of Augustenborg, thus not only discouraging any breakup of the kingdom but also forestalling the possibility of a foreigner gaining influence into Danish affairs through marriage with her. This would certainly happen, for instance, if Louise were to marry her closer relations, the Swedish royals. The danger of Louise Auguste marrying into the Swedish royal house (the latter danger was rather low, however: at that time, there were Swedish princes only twenty years or more her senior, and her first cousin, the future King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden, had just been born when she already was seven). Binding agreements were made as early as in 1780, when Frederick Christian was 15 and Louise was only 9 years old. Five years later, in the spring of 1785, the young Frederick Christian came to Copenhagen. The engagement was announced then, and a year later, on 27 May 1786, the wedding was celebrated at Christiansborg Palace. The couple lived at the Castle for many years until the Christiansborg Palace fire of 1794 and the death of his father, the Duke of Augustenborg Frederick Christian I, at which point the prince inherited the estate and the duchy. After 1794, the couple lived during the summer on the island of Als and in Gråsten. The couple had three children: Caroline Amalie (born 28 September 1796 in Copenhagen; died 9 March 1881), married 1815 Prince Christian Frederick of Denmark (died 1848), the future Christian VIII of Denmark and earlier, 1814, briefly proclaimed king of Norway before the Swedish conquest; became Queen of Denmark; she died childless in 1881, then the Queen Dowager of Denmark. Christian August II (born 19 July 1798 in Copenhagen; died 11 March 1869), the Duke of Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg who was to become a pivotal figure in the