Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria
by By Plaidy, Jean
Category: Fiction , Historical , General

In this unforgettable novel of Queen Victoria, Jean Plaidy re-creates a remarkable   life filled with romance, triumph, and tragedy. At birth, Princess Victoria was   fourth in line for the throne of England, the often-overlooked daughter of a prince   who died shortly after her birth. She and her mother lived in genteel poverty for   most of her childhood, exiled from court because of her mother’s dislike of her uncles,   George IV and William IV. A strong, willful child, Victoria was determined not to   be stifled by her powerful uncles or her unpopular, controlling mother. Then one   morning, at the age of eighteen, Princess Victoria awoke to the news of her uncle   William’s death. The almost-forgotten princess was now Queen of England. Even better,   she was finally free of her mother’s iron hand and her uncles’ manipulations. Her   first act as queen was to demand that she be given a room—and a bed—of her own. Victoria’s marriage to her German cousin, Prince Albert, was a blissfully happy one   that produced nine children. Albert was her constant companion and one of her most   trusted advisors. Victoria’s grief after Prince Albert’s untimely death was so shattering   that for the rest of her life—nearly forty years—she dressed only in black. She survived   several assassination attempts, and during her reign England’s empire expanded around   the globe until it touched every continent in the world. Derided as a mere “girl   queen” at her coronation, by the end of her sixty-four-year reign, Victoria embodied   the glory of the British Empire. In this novel, written as a “memoir” by Victoria   herself, she emerges as truthful, sentimental, and essentially human—both a lovable   woman and a great queen.