One Prince of Wales scandal the Palace isn’t covering up...

Alove-sick prince — bewitched by a slightly older, previously married woman of indisputable glamour — conducts a furtive courtship far from the gaze of his father and disapproving courtiers.

sound familiar? Buckingham Palace is about to turn a royal scandal to its advantage. The Royal collection Trust has acquired a portrait of George iv’s lover, Maria Fitzherbert, which will go on public display next week for the first time in ‘George iv: Art & spectacle’ at The Queen’s Gallery.

long before his accession to the throne, George iv secretly married his lover, the highly unsuitable Maria, who, though only 29, had already buried two husbands: the first had perished in a riding accident, while the second died abruptly in his 30s.

The couple’s union was illegal, however, because George, then Prince of Wales, hadn’t sought permission to marry from his father, George iii, as the law required — still less been granted it.

obsessed with Maria, George commissioned Richard cosway, his ‘principal painter’, to produce a portrait of her. kate Heard, the exhibition’s curator, describes the work as ‘a reflection of the Prince’s devotion to Maria’.

George’s adoration of her never left him, even when, a decade later, he wed his first cousin, caroline of Brunswick — arguably a bigamous marriage, as his marriage to Maria had been conducted by a clergyman.

Three days after caroline gave birth to their only child, Princess charlotte, George composed his will, bequeathing all his ‘worldly property...to my Maria Fitzherbert, my wife, the wife of my heart and soul’.

Maria is reputed to have borne George a son, James ord, who emigrated to America and became a Jesuit priest before apparently tiring of holy orders to marry and father at least one son of his own.

Perhaps his descendants will pop along to Buckingham Palace to study the family resemblance.