Charles James Fox was born into a well-to-do political family, and was, on his mother's side, a direct descendant of King Charles II. He entered parliament aged just nineteen, on 10 May 1768. Though initially an ally of Lord North and a follower of his father's predominantly Tory principles, he twice resigned government posts in protest against the passing of particular laws, and gradually came around to the Whig view that George III had despotic ambitions to undermine parliamentary government.

Perennially out of favour with the committed Tories George III and Queen Charlotte, Fox made strategic use of his friendship with the heir to the throne, George, Prince of Wales, and advised him during the intrigues surrounding the prince's illegal marriage and, during George III’s illness, the Regency Crisis. Known for heavy drinking and gambling as well as for affairs with high-profile women, Fox was among the most frequently caricatured men of the late eighteenth century.

This portrait bust was one of several representations George commissioned of his political allies between 1805-1815 and pointedly displayed on the ground floor of Carlton House – not far from Philips’s painting of his grandfather playing Prince Hal.

The firstborn son of George III became King George IV in January 1820, but he had been ruling Britain as Prince Regent since 1811, during his father's final period of mental illness. As a result, when he came to the throne he was already a very familiar figure to the public - comparable, in this sense, to the later Princes of Wales, Edward (Edward VII) and the present-day Charles.

In contrast to his parents, who cultivated an image of respectable domesticity, George was known for his extravagance, flamboyance, and dissolute lifestyle. He was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, carrying out regular remodelling on his London residence, Carlton House, and his pleasure palace, Brighton Pavilion, as well as in public spaces in London, where Regent's Park and Regent's Street still bear his title. The vast sums he spent on art, jewellery, clothes and horses, as well as his various love affairs, ultimately made his debts the subject of Parliamentary intervention in 1787.

In 1785, George became infatuated with the Catholic widow Maria Fitzherbert and secretly married her in defiance of both the Act of Settlement 1701 (forbidding royal marriage with a Catholic) and the Royal Marriages Act 1772 (which forbade marriage without the King's consent). This, in addition to his political sympathies with the Whig leader Charles James Fox, contributed to a difficult relationship with his father, the socially and politically conservative George III.

In 1795, George agreed to marry his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick, partially to offset his ever-increasing debts. The marriage was immediately a disaster, and the couple separated after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte, nine months later. The 'Pains and Penalties Bill', by which George attempted to block Caroline from his coronation in 1820, was a public embarrassment for a King already regarded by many of his subjects as a dissolute spendthrift and was quickly abandoned.

As he aged, George was increasingly plagued by health problems and addictions resulting from his legendary over-indulgence and he spent his final years in seclusion at Windsor Castle. His only legitimate child, Charlotte, had predeceased him in 1817, and the crown therefore passed to his younger brother, William, Duke of Clarence, as William IV.