He and Albert were brought up and educated together as if they were twins. Though Albert was fourteen months younger, he surpassed Ernest intellectually. According to their tutor, "they went hand-in-hand in all things, whether at work or at play. Engaging in the same pursuits, sharing the same joys and the same sorrows, they were bound to each other by no common feelings of mutual love". Perhaps the aforementioned "sorrows" related to their parents' marriage; it was not happy, and Duke Ernest I was continually unfaithful. In 1824, Ernest I and Louise divorced; she subsequently left Coburg and was disallowed from seeing her sons again. She soon remarried to Alexander von Hanstein, Count of Pölzig and Beiersdorf, dying in 1831 at the age of thirty. The year after her death, their father married his niece Duchess Marie of Württemberg, who was his sister Antoinette's daughter. Their stepmother was thus also their first cousin. The duke and his new duchess were not close, and would produce no children; while the boys formed a happy relationship with their stepmother, Marie had little to no input in her stepsons' lives. The separation and divorce of their parents, as well as the later death of their mother, left the boys scarred and in close companionship with each other.