 Her father was the ruler of one of the smallest German states; he died of smallpox at the age of 32, when Caroline was three years old.Caroline and her only full sibling, her younger brother Margrave William Frederick, left Ansbach with their mother, who returned to her native Eisenach.In 1692, Caroline's widowed mother was pushed into an unhappy marriage with the Elector of Saxony, and she and her two children moved to the Saxon court at Dresden.