although they never met. Caroline was an orphan who had become a ward of Electress Sophia's daughter Sophia Charlotte of Hanover and was married by Sophia to her grandson George in 1705. From her, Liselotte learned all the details about the family quarrels at the English court. She also wrote regularly with the sister of George II and granddaughter of the Electress Sophia, the Prussian Queen Sophia Dorothea of Hanover. Numerous letters to other relatives and acquaintances have also been found, including to Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and his librarian Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who had previously been in the service of Sophia and her husband. She knew that the Cabinet noir opened her letters to copy critical passages and translate them; hence, she sometimes even incorporated derisive remarks addressed directly to the government, particularly to her favorite enemy, Foreign Secretary Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquess of Torcy. Her most frank letters are those which she did not send by post, but gave to travellers en route to Germany. In these letters she was able to freely express her frustrations with Monsieur's favorites in the Palais Royal and her hatred for Madame de Maintenon. She describes her stylistic principles in a letter to her half-sister Ameliese: In her letters, Liselotte also mentioned her dislike for the pompous Baroque style that had become fashionable: To characterize the nature of her correspondence, she uses the term "chat". The letters usually consisted of 15 to 30 folded sheets of paper with gilt edging, which she inscribed with large, energetic handwriting. Her biographer Dirk Van der Cruysse says: "Had Madame lived in our time, she would have spent her days on the phone". Her letters provide us with a unique perspective on court life in the Baroque period and a vivid picture of her personality. Her descriptions of other members of court are often less precise, but much more colorful and humorous than those of Marquis de Dangeau, whose court diary and memoirs made him the official chronicler of the reign of Louis XIV. Nevertheless, she wrote without literary ambitions and not for posterity either: "I write as I speak; because I am too natural to think before I write." After answering a letter, she burned the letter she had received herself, and probably assumed that the same thing happened to her letters after being read. Fortunately, just under a tenth escaped this fate. Nature and