"I suppose all the World is sitting in Judgement upon the Princess of Wales's Letter. Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband..." Jane Austen's words in her letter to Martha Lloyd, a friend, show her sympathy for Princess Caroline, the hapless and mistreated wife of the Prince Regent. Hating the Prince could seem unpatriotic and even radical, but sympathy was widespread for the Princess, in spite of her tendency toward affairs. The Prince Regent was a spendthrift and considered immoral because of his liking for mistresses. He was not at all like his respectable, hard-working and dutiful father.
In spite of her dislike for the Prince, Jane could hardly refuse to dedicate Emma to him when he made the request. 'Prinny' had good taste and Jane Austen was one of his favourite authors.
Although she didn't care for the Prince, Jane was very much in favour of the monarchy. Raised in a strongly Tory family and the daughter of a clergyman, her political sympathies were strongly conservative. Her family had connections with the aristocracy and Jane favoured tradition and stability. Her brother James married into the aristocracy and her brother Edward was adopted by a much wealthier and more prestigious family than the Austen's. This family belonged to the landed gentry. Jane's visits to Edward's family gave her great insight into the fairytale world of the fabulously rich Darcy. She admired landowners like Darcy, who treated their servants and tenants well, and took care of the traditions of the aristocracy and their inheritance. Jane wasn't in favour of change, unless it brought with it some demonstrable improvement, even though her novels show that she could see the faults within Society.
The horrific events of The French Revolution reinforced Jane Austen's strong conservatism. Her cousin, Eliza, a close friend of hers, married Jean de Feullide, a French aristocrat. He was guillotined for no other reason than belonging to the wrong class. Eliza escaped to England, finding sanctuary with the Austen's.
Jane Austen had a low opinion of France after this, understandably. She even advocated a bigger war against Napoleon who was commonly regarded as the 'Anti-Christ'. She came from a very patriotic family reflected in the fact that two of her brothers joined the Navy.
Some of Jane's opinions were somewhat radical, however. She had Stuart sympathies and wrote that the principal reason for writing her 'History of England' was 'to prove the innocence of the Queen of Scotland'. This charming history, written when she was a teenager, shows her antipathy to the new monarchy, descended from the Germans.
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