Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Stylish German Husband By Robert McNamara Prince Albert was a member of German royalty who married Britain's Queen Victoria and helped to spark an era of technological innovation as well as personal style. Albert, who had been born as a prince in Germany, was initially seen by the British as an interloper in British society. But his intelligence, interest in new inventions, and capability in diplomatic affairs made him a respected figure in Britain. Albert, who would eventually hold the title Prince Consort, became known for his interest in helping society improve in the mid-1800s. He was the great champion of one of the world's great technology events, the Great Exhibition of 1851 , which introduced many inventions to the public. He died, tragically, in 1861, leaving Victoria a widow whose trademark attire would become the black of mourning. Just prior to his death he served an important role by helping to dissuade the British government from a military conflict with the United States. continue reading below our video Profile of Queen Victoria Early Life of Prince Albert Albert was born on August 26, 1819 in Rosenau, Germany.

He was the second son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and was greatly influenced by his uncle Leopold, who became the king of Belgium in 1831. As a teenager Albert traveled to Britain and met the Princess Victoria, who was his cousin and nearly the same age as Albert. They were friendly but Victoria was not overly impressed with the young Albert, who was shy and awkward. The British were interested in finding a suitable husband for the young princess who was to ascend to the throne. British political tradition decreed that a monarch could not marry a commoner, so a British suitor was out of the question. Victoria's future husband would have to come from European royalty. Albert's relatives on the continent, including King Leopold of Belgium, essentially steered the young man toward being Victoria's husband. In 1839, two years after Victoria became Queen, Albert returned to England and proposed marriage. The Queen accepted. Marriage of Albert and Victoria Queen Victoria married Albert on February 10, 1840 at St. James Palace in London. At first the British public and the aristocracy thought little of Albert.

While he was born of European royalty, his family was not wealthy or powerful. And he was often portrayed as someone marrying for prestige or money. Albert was actually quite intelligent and was devoted to helping his wife serve as monarch. And over time he became an indispensable aid to the queen, advising her on political and diplomatic affairs. Victoria and Albert had nine children, and by all accounts their marriage was very happy. They loved being together, sometimes sketching or listening to music. The royal family was portrayed as the ideal family, and setting an example for the British public was considered a major part of their role. Albert also contributed to a tradition familiar to us today. His German family would bring trees into the house at Christmas, and he brought that tradition to Britain. The Christmas tree at Windsor Castle created a fashion in Britain which was carried over to America. Career of Prince Albert In the early years of the marriage, Albert was frustrated that Victoria did not assign him tasks which he felt were up to his abilities. He wrote to a friend that he was "only the husband, not the master in the house." Albert busied himself with his interests in music and hunting, and he did eventually become involved in the serious matters of statesmanship.

In 1848, when much of Europe was being shaken by revolutionary movement, Albert cautioned that the rights of working people had to be seriously considered. He was a progressive voice at a crucial time. Thanks to Albert's interest in technology, he was the main force behind the Great Exhibition of 1851 , a grand show of science and inventions held at a stunning new edifice in London, the Crystal Palace. The purpose of the exhibition was to showcase how society was being changed for the better by science and technology. It was a stunning success. Throughout the 1850s Albert was often deeply involved in the affairs of state. He was known for clashing with Lord Palmerston, a highly influential British politician who served as foreign minister and also prime minister. In the mid-1850s, when Albert cautioned against the Crimean War , some in Britain accused him of being pro-Russian. Albert Was Given the Royal Title of Prince Consort While Albert was influential, he had not, for the first 15 years of the marriage to Queen Victoria, received a royal title from Parliament. Victoria was disturbed that her husband's actual rank was not clearly defined.

In 1857 the official title of Prince Consort was finally bestowed upon Albert by Queen Victoria. Death of Prince Albert In late 1861 Albert was stricken with typhoid fever, a disease which was quite serious though not usually fatal. His habit of overwork may have weakened him, and he suffered greatly from the disease. Hopes for his recovery dimmed, and he died on December 13, 1861. His death came as a shock to the British public, especially as he was only 42 years old. On his deathbed, Albert had been involved in helping to lessen tensions with the United States over an incident at sea. An American naval vessel had stopped a British ship, the Trent, and seized two emissaries from the Confederate government during the early stage of the American Civil War . Some in Britain took the American naval action as a grave insult and wanted to go to the war with the United States. Albert viewed the United States as a friendly nation to Britain and actively helped steer the British government from what surely would have been a pointless war. Prince Albert Remembered The death of her husband devastated Queen Victoria. Her grief seemed excessive even to people of her own time.

Victoria would live as a widow for 40 years, and was always seen wearing only black, which helped create an image of her as a sullen and remote figure. Indeed, the term Victorian often implies a seriousness which is in part due to Victoria's image as someone in deep grief. There is no question that Victoria deeply loved Albert, and after his death he was honored by being entombed in an elaborate mausoleum at Frogmore House, not far from Windsor Castle. After her death, Victoria was entombed beside him. The Royal Albert Hall in London was named in honor of Prince Albert, and his name is also affixed to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. A bridge crossing the Thames, which Albert suggested building in 1860, is also named from him. Victoria and Albert – A Love Story | Two Chums Victoria and Albert – A Love Story by Two Chums on April 23, 2012 As the first anniversary of the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, approaches later this week, we couldn’t help but reflect on the their love story and the fascination the world has for everything “royal”.

So your Two Chums thought it would be fitting, (and fun) to get “caught up”, as it were, on the other love stories that have surrounded the British throne. Today we begin with one of the most famous and arguably the most culturally influential of all the monarchs of the British or any empire, Queen Victoria and the great love of her life, Prince Albert. Known as the “grandmother of Europe”, Queen Victoria had nine children, all of whom married European royalty, thus spreading her family throughout the continent. She is the longest reigning monarch in Great Britain and the longest reigning female monarch in the world. It is because of this that we hear so much about her and her name is used in conjunction with so many things, for example, Victorian décor, Victorian ways of morality, Victorian dress, etc. When Victoria was born in 1819, she was fifth in line to the throne which means that there were four people before her who would become the regnant after her uncle, King George IV, passed away. When her uncle did pass away, the four other people in line, including her father, had already passed away so Victoria became Queen.

Victoria was just 18 years old when she took the throne in 1837. In her diary she wrote, “I was awoke at 6 o’clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen.” Official documents prepared on the first day of her reign described her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first name was withdrawn at her own wish and never used again. Quite an undertaking for an 18 year old girl. Victoria was, as yet, unmarried but was aware of the various matrimonial plans that were being concocted by her mother. Victoria had met her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha , before she became Queen. She knew that her mother was thinking that he might be a good suitor for her. According to her diary, she enjoyed Albert’s company from the beginning.

After the visit she wrote, “[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.” To her Uncle Leopold who had introduced the pair, Victoria wrote to thank him “for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert … He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so good, and so amiable too. He has besides the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see.” Clearly, Victoria was smitten! On 10 February, 1840, Victoria and Albert were married. The day after their wedding, Victoria wrote in her diary, “I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert … his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed each other again & again!

His beauty, his sweetness & gentleness – really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! … to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!” This was the beginning of a wonderful love story. Victoria truly loved Albert and Albert truly loved Victoria. Albert was a level headed, smart man and was of great help to Victoria in her role as monarch. There are many memorials to Victoria and Albert in London, Royal Albert Hall, Victoria and Albert Museum, to name a couple. Victoria and Albert parented nine children and created a warm, loving household. A wonderful film that highlights their story is Young Victoria. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were the first of the royals to occupy Buckingham Palace, the current home of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. Growing up, Victoria was rather smothered by her mother. Her father had passed away when she was quite young and her mother felt it necessary to keep Victoria away from any harm. She was kept at home in Kensington Palace where they lived (and where Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge are now living) and considered her upbringing “rather melancholy”.

Her relationship, therefore, with her mother was not the sweetest. Prince Albert was instrumental in “sweetening” this mother/daughter relationship and when her mother passed away in 1861, Victoria was by her side. It was through reading some of her mother’s papers after her passing that Victoria realized that her mother loved her deeply and Victoria went into a bit of a depression because of this. Albert stepped up to the plate, even though he was suffering from a stomach disorder, and did a lot of Victoria’s duties at this time. It was shortly after, they heard that the Prince of Wales, their eldest son, had slept with an actress, that Prince Albert went to Cambridge, where his son was studying, to confront him. This was not received well by the Prince of Wales. A few weeks later, Albert was diagnosed with typhoid fever and died. Victoria was devastated. She blamed her husband’s death on worry over the Prince of Wales’s philandering. He had been “killed by that dreadful business”, she said, and entered a state of mourning. Victoria wore black for the rest of her life and did not come out in public for many years.

The country went through rocky times as their Queen was not present, neither physically, nor emotionally. She did try to fulfill her duty as Queen but chose to do so from her residences, not appearing in public. John Brown, or “Mr. Brown” as he has become known, was one of Victoria and Albert’s outdoor servants at Balmoral Castle, their Scottish retreat. After Albert’s death, Victoria made John Brown one of her personal servants and a close relationship ensued. This is depicted beautifully in the film “Mrs. Brown”, which is the name some of her public gave to Victoria. People have speculated on just how close their relationship was, but one does not know for sure. Without a doubt, John Brown brought the Queen out of her depressed state and more into life. She was very saddened by his death, having had a long and lasting closeness with him. Though Victoria suffered much loss, she did a lot as Queen. She was a strong Queen, for the most part,and wanted to be involved in the goings on of the country. She died at the age of 81 in Osbourne House , a grand Italian Renaissance palazzo on the Isle of Wight which her beloved Albert had designed and built.

Without a doubt, Victoria left us with an amazing legacy, and had an influence on our culture which is still recognized and felt today. Home and family have become synonymous with Victoria. She no doubt very much approved of those values we hold so dear….love, joy and abundant living. BBC - Culture - Victoria and Albert: How a royal love changed culture Art history Victoria and Albert: How a royal love changed culture Much we take for granted today – from Christmas trees to birthday gifts – comes from the domestic traditions of the royal couple, writes Lucinda Hawksley. By Lucinda Hawksley 17 June 2015 When Queen Victoria inherited the British throne just a few weeks after her 18th birthday, there was immediate speculation about who she would marry. Few had foreseen that this little-known princess would become their monarch. But when the country found itself with a young queen after so many dissolute Hanoverian kings, it seemed that exciting new era was dawning. Queen Victoria’s mother and the government had expected her to marry her cousin Prince Ernst, eldest son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. So when Victoria fell in love with Ernst’s younger brother, Albert, the public was enthralled.

The media made much of the fact that the queen’s fiancé was of her own choosing and that she, being of a higher rank, had proposed. The British were so used to royal marriages being business contracts that a genuinely romantic royal love match was keenly observed. This overwhelming love shared by a queen and her prince would change British culture forever. Many of the traditions we take for granted today, and the artistic legacies we celebrate, emerged from Victoria and Albert’s marriage. Both the queen and her consort were accomplished artists, as well as great collectors. In addition to paintings and sculpture, the couple also commissioned love tokens from jewellers and helped boost that industry. When Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria an engagement ring – an item little known in Britain in the first half of the 19th Century – he began a new fashion that has endured ever since. Gift-giving as we know it now took its form under Victoria and Albert too. They gave – and expected – gifts at every wedding anniversary, birthday and Christmas celebration, usually of works of art.

(And of course we all know how Albert helped introduce the German tradition of the Christmas tree into British life.) They loved to surprise each other with a ‘secret’ present, such as the surprisingly sexy painting of the young Victoria, with tendrils of hair tumbling over bare shoulders, by German artist, Franz Winterhalter (1805-73). The painting was commissioned by the queen as a present for her husband’s 24th birthday, in 1843. Over a decade after his death, the queen wrote fondly about the painting in her journal as “my darling Albert’s favourite picture”. View image of Franz Winterhalter's 1843 portrait of Queen Victoria (Credit: Corbis) Although Victoria often favoured artists from her mother’s and her husband’s native Germany, most notably Winterhalter, they also commissioned British artists. At Christmas 1841, the queen gave Prince Albert a painting by Edwin Landseer of the prince’s favourite greyhound, Eos, and Landseer was regularly engaged to paint royal pets from then on.

The queen also loved the works of the Pre-Raphaelite rebel turned society-portrait painter John Everett Millais (1829-1896), whose portrait of her adored Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was ordered to be garlanded with black mourning when Disraeli died. In the 1850s, the young Frederic, Lord Leighton knew his career was assured when his first major sale was to the queen. Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna, painted when Leighton was living in Rome, was exhibited at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1855. Victoria noted in her journal “Albert was enchanted by it – so much so that he made me buy it”. New frontiers Despite presiding over an age when it was considered shocking for a woman to show so much as an ankle in public, the queen was happy for her family to live surrounded by nude statues and paintings of frolicking naked nymphs. The artist William Edward Frost was renowned for painting nudes, and the queen and Prince Albert bought several of his works.

At Osborne House, the family’s home on the Isle of Wight, the queen commissioned Scottish artist William Dyce to paint the fresco Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea, a scene which contains a mass of nude bodies – male and female – about which Dyce recorded that the prince consort was shocked. On his birthday in 1857, Albert was presented with a statue of Lady Godiva, modelled in sensuous silver, gold and enamel. It was by the French sculptor Pierre-Emile Jeannest, whose work Albert had admired at the Great Exhibition of 1851. View image of William Dyce's Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea (Credit: Alamy) Albert’s delicate sensibilities may have been offended by Dyce’s painting, but he was progressive about the arts in many respects and even became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The queen was more circumspect. She loved poetry, especially that by her poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and said that his mourning poem, In Memoriam was a great comfort after being widowed.

She seems to have liked traditional forms of writing, but professed to despise the fashion for novels, especially when practised by women. She sacked her daughters’ French governess when she discovered that the princesses had been encouraged to read a novel in French. Scottish authors Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott also owe Victoria a debt – in fact, the royal couple’s love of Scotland also changed the very idea of what was ‘British’. Until her reign, Scotland and England’s rivalry remained at a fever pitch, with England seeing itself as superior. But when the queen fell in love with Scotland, visiting her home in Balmoral as often as she could, the rest of the British Isles did likewise. Suddenly tartan was immensely fashionable and couture houses reflected the new fad. The novels of Sir Walter Scott became massively popular to read, even though he had died five years before she began her rule, and Scotland’s tourism industry began to boom. Family photos Queen Victoria also embraced the very latest artistic medium: photography. She was the first British monarch to have almost her entire reign recorded in photographs.

As early as 1842, she and Albert began to collect photographs and helped photography become even more mainstream after its inclusion at the Great Exhibition of 1851, over which the royal couple presided. Victoria and Albert often sat for photographers and this new fashion saw a burgeoning photographic industry set up across Britain. View image of A photograph of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria (Credit: Alamy) In this era before social welfare payments, the responsibility of those with money to take care of those without, was a necessary part of the British class system. Similarly, wealthy art lovers understood the need to support artists, writers and craftspeople through regular patronage. Being a discerning patron was considered an essential part of a wealthy young man’s education. It was a system that relied upon the aristocracy being well educated in the arts and wanting to show off their knowledge by taking on protégées. To that end, it became usual for Victoria and Albert to pay artists, such as the father-and-daughter sculptors John Francis and Mary Thornycroft an annual salary – rather than per commission. John Francis was hired as Prince Albert’s sculpting tutor and he recommended his daughter when the royal couple were seeking a sculptor to create statues of their children.

Mary Thornycroft remained a part of the royal household for many years, becoming the teacher of Victoria and Albert’s daughter, Princess Louise (who became a professional sculptor). The queen also supported the performing arts, regularly attending the theatre and concerts. Victoria was the first British monarch to ennoble members of the acting profession, endowing the actor Henry Irving with a knighthood and making actress Ellen Terry a dame. Artistic collectors such as the queen and prince consort were an absolutely vital part of Britain’s artistic heritage and their love of the arts helped to transform the country. In a world hidebound by the rigidity of the class system, an entirely new stratum of society – a creative class – was created throughout Queen Victoria’s reign. By the last quarter of the 19th Century, successful artists, writers, artisans and actors had become considered a new elite. Queen Victoria | Information Facts Summary Queen Victoria’s Childhood By M. Foster Farley The plump toddler watering the flowers in the garden of her home at Kensington Palace was to overcome her early difficulties to become Britian’s great Queen-Empress.

The name “Queen Victoria” conjures up a picture of a small, plump old lady in a black gown and lace cap, querulous and exacting, “not amused” at the antics of the younger generation, yearning always to be reunited by death with her dear departed Albert. It is hard to visualise her as a child. Yet, of course, she was once young and not always the formidable matriarch and magnificent Queen-Empress of popular legend. In fact, her childhood did not really end until she was 18 years old, when she succeeded to the throne. Victoria was born on a bright spring day, 24th May 1819, at Kensington Palace, in the then quiet suburb of London. “Plumb as a partridge” was her father’s description of the baby, and she certainly bore a marked resemblance to her sturdy and robust Hanoverian ancestors who had ruled Great Britain for little more than a century at the time of her birth. By 1798 Victoria’s grandfather, King George III, had reigned for nearly sixty years, but he was now old and ailing.

The symptoms of his terrible illness, porphyria, seemed to his doctors to be those of madness, and for years the King had be confined in Windsor Castle while his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled in his stead. Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent, was the old King’s fourth son, but since his three elder brothers were without heirs, there seemed a good chance that he might one day himself become King. He had married late in life, when he was over 50, to supply an heir to the throne in the younger generation. Between the seven princes and five princesses of the royal family, not one of them had a legitimate child to carry on the succession, until 1819 saw three royal births within two months. The Prince of Wales had one child, the Princess Charlotte, who in time would have become Queen, but she died in childbirth in the autumn of 1817. It was her death which drove her uncles into marriage, to beget heirs to replace her in the line of succession.

Indirectly, Charlotte herself had found her uncle Edward his bride: the Princess had married a minor German princeling, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and, deeply in love with him, suggested to the Duke of Kent that he would find an amiable wife in Leopold’s widowed sister, Victoire. In fact, Edward and Victoire met in 1816, but then there seemed no urgency in the matter of their marriage, and there were too many difficulties in the way at the time for the Duke of Kent to urge his suit — not the least of them being that he was perfectly happy with his French mistress of some quarter of a century’s standing. But soon after Charlotte’s death, Edward proposed to Victoire, and the couple were married the following summer. Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was 31 years old when she married the English Duke, a pretty woman with dark hair and sparking eyes, with a fine figure and lively ways. A German Princess of ancient lineage but little fortune, she had been first married at the age of 17 to Prince Emich Charles of Leiningren, a widower in his late thirties.

Together they had weathered the storms of the Napoleonic invasions of Germany, their tiny principality impoverished by the wars. Emich Charles died only a few months after the first defeat of Napoleon, in 1814, leaving his widow with two small children and the manifold demands of noblesse oblige to tax her wits and strength. Her marriage with the Duke of Kent seemed to promise Victoire a brighter future, taking her away from her narrow existence in the village of Amorbach, with its careful economies and restricted social life, into one of the leading Courts of Europe, with the chance of one day becoming a queen. In the summer of 1818 Edward brought his bride to England, but then, after a few heady months in London “society”, it was back to Amorbach and the familiar daily round, for the Duke was so burdened with debts that he could not afford to keep up appearances as a royal personage in England. But he was determined that his child should be born in his native land, and by dint of borrowing from his long-suffering friends, he managed to bring his wife back to England in time for the baby’s birth.

Edward was not disappointed that the baby was a girl and not the long-hoped-for male heir: “I am decidedly of the opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times the wisest and the best,” he wrote to a friend. A month after her birth, the Kent baby was baptised. After much debate in the royal family — in which not a little ill-feeling was aroused, she was named “Alexandrina Victoria”, after her chief godfather, the Russian Tsar Alexander, and her mother. The name “Victoria: was then completely unknown in England, though it had long been in use in the forms “Victoire” and “Victoria” on the Continent. For the first few years the child was known as “Drina”, but in one of her first copy-books is limned the name “Victoria” by which she came to be known in later childhood. Despite the fact that the Kents had married “for convenience” their union proved remarkably happy. Edward had never known the comforts of a settled home in England, nor had he ever enjoyed so much approval from his family as this new domesticity brought.

For Victoire, the change in her circumstances was delightful: with her new baby, and with a husband who doted on her, she was well content. Unfortunately, however, this happy state of affairs did not last long. The family moved down to Sidmouth in Devon in December 1819, and there, on 23rd January 1820, Edward, Duke of Kent, suddenly died. He, who had no serious illness in his life, caught a cold and took no special care of himself, so that it turned to pneumonia. In abject grief and almost penniless, the widowed Duchess allowed her brother Leopold to make all the arrangements for her return to London. For months she remained in seclusion, at Kensington or at Leopold’s house at Claremont in Surrey. It was a testing-time for too, in that she had to decide whether to return to the familiar German countryside which had been her home for any or to remain in England, where she was still a comparative stranger.

But the fact that her baby was now third in line to the throne (for George III had died only days after his son Edward) steeled her to her duty: for the sake of the baby’s future inheritance, she would stay in England and bring up her child as an Englishwoman, ready to succeed to the throne. The new King George IV had had very little affection for his late brother, so unlike him in character and principles, and he was not enamoured of the idea of having to contribute to the support of his widowed sister-in-law. Fortunately for Victoire, she had her own brother Leopold at hand, for he had decided to make his home in England after the death of his wife Charlotte, and out of his own allowance he provided most of the Duchess’s income. Many years later, Queen Victoria gathered together her earliest memories. Her infancy was people with kind faces: her mother, always anxious and prudent for the child’s health; her half-sister Feodora, ten years her senior but her constant companion; old Baroness Spath, the Duchess’s German lady-in-waiting; the adoring nurse Mrs.

Brock, replaced when Victoria was 4 years old by Fraulein Lehzen, Feodora’s governess. There were numerous aunts and uncles of the Royal family: her favourites were kind Aunt Adelaide, Duchess of Clarence, and her bluff husband William, struggling to hold back, in polite company, those rough seamen’s oath which he had learned in his roistering youth, as well as the devoted Uncle Leopold from Germany. On the other hand, there was “Uncle Sussex” who lived next door and who, it was always threatened, would be angry if his niece’s raised voice reached his ears; and the sinister “Uncle Cumberland”, next in line to the throne after the little Victoria, who, it was rumoured, was not incapable of “removing” so irritating a small rival to his aspirations to the crown. “We lived in a very plain manner”, reminisced the Queen later, “breakfast was at half past eight, luncheon at half past one, dinner at seven – to which I came generally (when it was not regular large dinner-party) — eating my bread and milk out of a small silver basin.

Tea was only allowed as a great treat in my later years.” A few pen-pictures of the young Victoria were written by contemporaries: the plump toddler attempting to water the flowers in the Palace gardens but pouring most of the contents of her watering-can over her shoes; a straight backed infant atop an ambling donkey, with a sweet-faced elder sister to guide her; a solemn little girl at church at Esher, so wrapped in her own thoughts that she failed to notice the threatening bumble-bee buzzing inside the rim of her bonnet. Victoria was no model child. She had her fair share of the royal temper, screaming and stamping when she was crossed, throwing a pair of scissors at Lehzen in a right royal rage. “When you are naughty, you make me and yourself very unhappy,” her mother rebuked her on one occasion. “No, Mamma,” corrected the child, “not me, mot myself, but you!” All her life the future Queen would be stubborn and obstinate, but when she became calm after an uncontrolled fit of temper, she would always be contrite and wheedling for forgiveness.

She was bright enough, quick at her lessons and shrewd in personal relationships: when her uncle George IV whisked her off to hear the band at Windsor one day, and gave her choice of a “number”, the artful child requested “God Save the King”. But Queen Victoria’s childhood was not idyllic by any means. As she grew up, she came to realise how narrow the circle admitted to Kensington Palace; she agreed with her half-sister that only at Claremont, on their holiday, had she been completely happy. The darkest shadow over her young life was one John Conroy, the Comptroller of the Duchess’s household at Kensington and the virtual controller of all the Duchess’s attitudes and aspirations. Conroy had been the Duke of Kent’s aid-de-camp, a military man who made more success of his social studies than he ever had of active service. He was a flamboyantly good-looking Irishman, possessed of an ample measure of charm and an overweening ambition. The Duchess of Kent was no simpleton, but she was used to having her life ruled by men and could not accustom herself to having to make independent decisions.

A better guide would have been her brother Leopold but, he, after a few years of carefully supervision of his sister’s affairs, took a mistress of whom she could not approve, which drove a wedge between them; then, as he tired of inactivity in England, he began to travel abroad more frequently. Finally, in 1831, he departed permanently to take up the crown of the newly-created kingdom of Belgium. Left alone in England, daunted by her responsibility as mother of a future Queen, Victoire of Kent relied increasingly on the soothing blandishments of her Comptroller. It was Conroy who insisted that Victoria should be strictly guarded, playing on her mother’s fear of a fatal “accident” at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland. It was Conroy who urged a suitable match for Feodora with a German prince, when it seemed likely that the widower King George IV himself might offer for her hand (thus snatching the little Victoria’s chance of a crown by begetting heirs of his own).

Conroy could see himself as the chief adviser to the future Queen Victoria, the father-figure who would be the girls éminence grise, the “power behind the throne” of her reign, and he did all he could to prepare his glorious future. Having made himself indispensable to the Duchess by his administration of her household and his advice to her as to the care of her child was not averse to a little more personal interest too: Conroy, a married man, never became the Duchess’s lover — she was far to circumspect and he was far too fearful of scandal for such a situation to develop, but he knew hot to make himself agreeable to a lonely widow. The child Victoria once witnessed “some familiarities” between her mother and Conroy and prattled of them to lady-in-waiting Spath. When the horrified Baroness rebuked her mistress, she received short shrift and was sent packing by Conroy, of course, to the safe distance of Feodora’s new home in Germany. Sir John could not risk malicious gossip: if it were ever thought that the Duchess of Kent was an unfit moral influence on her daughter, the child might be swept off to other guardians.

In 1827, the heir to the throne, the Duke of York, died, followed in 1830 by his brother King George IV. Now only the frail life of King William IV, already in his sixties, stood between the Princess Victoria and the Throne. By 1830 the Duchess of Kent — or rather, Conroy — had plans already in train in case the princess should succeed while still a minor. By proving to an invited committee of prelates that her child was well grounded in her education and religion, the Duchess of Kent won wide approval; it was a short step to gaining recognition, a few months later that she, Victoire, should be her daughter’s regent should Victoria come to the throne before she reached the age of eighteen. In fact, by the modern standards of royal training, Victoria’s education was somewhat deficient. Lehzen, and the visiting tutors who were brought in, gave the child a good grounding in English, French and German (though her Latin, which she began at 8 years old, never progressed very far). More interesting to the Princess were her music and dancing lessons, and she actually chose to learn Italian from her passion for the Italian opera.

Her reading in history, however, was prodigious: at 15 she was immersed in Clarendon’s dry History of the Rebellion and Sully’s Memoirs, so that though she was taught no political theory or philosophy, Victoria came to have a good appreciation of the mistakes and achievements of past rulers. Apart from her tutors, Victoria’s contacts with the outside world were few in her early years. Conroy induced the Duchess of Kent to discourage visits from the royal family, who might, he feared, either woo Victoria’s affections away from her mother or enquire too closely of his own influence. Occasionally, the Princess might be allowed to attend a children’s ball or a little girl might be brought in to play with her (“You must not touch those, they are mine,” declared the Princess to a child who wanted to play with the royal toys, “and I may call you Jane, but you must not call me Victoria!”) but usually she had only the company of the Conroy girls, Jane and Victoire, and so much had she come to hate their father that they never became her friends. How soon Victoria realised how baneful was the influence of Sir John Conroy in her life is hard to say.

But certainly, once she had come to realise her own significance and her destiny, it would not be too difficult for even a child to see through his wiles. It has often been affirmed that she never knew for years that she would one day be Queen, and did not understand why men stared at her in the Park, sweeping off their hats and bowing. If so, there could well be a good deal of truth in the oft-told story of Lehzen’s slipping a family tree of the royal dynasty into the child’s history book in 1830: when Victoria realised the significance of her own place in the royal family, she pondered “I am nearer to the throne than I thought.” Then she said the memorable words, “I will be good.” As presumptive heir to William IV from 1830, Victoria became an important personage in the Kingdom. Her mother (that is, Conroy) was careful to keep the Princess’s name totally disassociated from that of the King; while William IV was reviled throughout the nation for his opposition to the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832, the Duchess, via Conroy, courted the Radical and Whig politicians of the Opposition.

While stones were thrown at the royal carriage in London streets, Victoire and Victoria were everywhere cheered as they made a summer “progress” through the provinces. As these journeys continued, every summer, the King became increasingly resentful. In petty spite, he forbade the firing of gun salutes at the appearances of his niece and her mother. At first Victoria found these journeys enthralling, a wonderful escape from Kensington. When she first left London for a tour of Wales in 1982, she began a journal in a book which the Duchess had given her. So fascinating was the coach ride and so tempting the blank pages of the diary that for the first few days she would record the exact time of her arrival and departure at the stages along the route: “Twenty minutes to nine. We have just changed horses at Barnet, a very pretty little town. Five minutes past half past nine. We have just changed horses at St. Albans. The situation is very pretty and there is a beautiful old abbey there. Five minutes past ten. The country is beautiful here: they have begun to cut the corn; it is so golden and fine that I think they will have a good harvest . . . A quarter to eleven.

We have just changed horses at Dunstable . . .” With these naive beginnings, the future Queen instituted the great disciplined life-work of her journals, in which, for the first time, a British monarch recorded conversations, impressions and feelings to the eternal benefit of her biographers. But by 1835 the strenuous journeys had lost their appeal. Conroy had planned a series of visits to the great houses of the aristocrats very much to the advantage of the Duchess’s popularity. Victoria balked at the idea. So violent was the quarrel between the Princess and her mother over this issue that the Duchess had to resort to writing a letter to her daughter, for she could not control her anger in conversation. She demanded that Victoria recognise her responsibilities to show herself to “the people”: “I must tell you, dearest love, if your conversation with me could be know, that you had not the energy to undertake the journey, or that your views were not enlarged enough to grasp the benefits arising from it, then you would fall in the estimation of the people in this country.” Victoria conceded the victory, but throughout the “progress” she complained vehemently of head-ache and back-ache and other ailments.

Only a few weeks after the family settled at Ramsgate to recuperate from the journey, Victoria fell really ill, most probably of a severe case of tonsillitis. Having recovered from a fever, she was still very week for more than a month, losing a good deal of weight and continually complaining of cold, through bad circulation. Sir John Conroy was not the man to miss such a chance of taking advantage of the girl’s debility. The Princess’ antipathy to him was becoming ever more apparent, and he had by then given up the hope of obtaining future power through her affections. While Victoria was still weak from her illness, he put before her the demand that he should become her secretary when she succeeded to the throne. He actually produced a document for her to sign, binding her to the promise. Victoria firmly resisted. Despite her physical frailty, she had the strength of her hatred of Sir John to give her resolution. At the same time, she had the encouragement of Baroness Lehzen, her governess, who was always her ally against Conroy. For years this woman had attempted to shield her charge from him and to open the Princess’s eyes to the scope of his enormities.

Despite Lehzen’s power over Victoria, which was grounded on sincere affection and bulwarked on common cause against the enemy, Conroy dare not act against the governess, to oust her as he had the lady-in-waiting Spath. He knew only too well that Lehzen enjoyed the confidence of both King William IV and King Leopold of the Belgians, the Duchess’s brother. Infuriated by this impotence, he only made matters worst by continually sniping at Lehzen in Victoria’s presence. Nevertheless, the girl’s life was not completely unhappy, and for quite long periods Kensington Palace could be free of raised voices and sudden bursts of tears. Victoria would spend many quiet hours with Lehzen, dressing her large collection of dolls as characters from history or fabricating tiny trinket boxes from odds and ends of silk and coloured beads. There was a stream of letters from Feodora to cheer Victoria, with news of her growing family, or the screeds of advice from her Uncle Leopold, who fancied himself as mentor to the future Queen.

Although the Duchess had not encouraged visits from her own German family in the early years, she had made sure that Victoria learned a large measure of devotion to her unseen aunts and uncles to make up for her deprivation of closer ties. When the Princess was in her early teens, several of the German relations were invited to Kensington Palace, including, in the summer of 1836, her cousins Ernest and Albert, sons of Victoire’s eldest brother, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria was open to teenage enthusiasms (for years she went into raptures of the singing of the young and beautiful Giulia Grisi, who sang her favourite Italian operas so well) and she threw herself whole-heartedly into entertaining her cousins and could not sufficiently praise their looks and accomplishments. However, King William was not so rapturous. He had dark suspicions that the Duchess, or the King of the Belgians (whom he had never liked), was angling for a Coburg match for Victoria, which was certainly not to his tastes. His reception of the Prince of Orange and his eligible sons was timed to coincide with that of the Coburgs.

For once, Victoria did not side with her English uncle against her mother, and she assured her Uncle Leopold that Ernest and Albert were perfectly to her taste while the Oranges were detestable. By the middle of the 1836, relations between the King and his sister-in-law were at breaking point. Matters came to a head in August when William IV openly insulted the Duchess at a public dinner in honour of his birthday: “I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer [when Victoria would gain her majority], after which period, in the event of my death, no regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady . . . the heiress presumptive of the crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me [Victoire], who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed.” It was a bombshell. From that moment Conroy became desperate — and Victoria more resolute.

Recognising that the future Queen would never willingly allow in him any power in her future government, Sir John began to make out a case for her unworthiness to govern and need for guardians. He was forever harping on her emotional instability and inciting her mother repeatedly to draw attention to her faults. But though the Princess was certainly unbalanced in her emotions after such years of strain at home, she was by no means unfit to rule. And above all, she had the will to do her duty, to “be good.” On 24th May 1837 Victoria celebrated her 18th birthday. At last she was free of the impending regency. But she had had a narrow escape: by that date her Uncle William was already close to death. Conroy panicked. In the last days of William IV’s life, he stepped up his campaign. He tried to convince Lords Liverpool and Melbourne, the leading politicians of the day, that Victoria was totally unfit to govern — but they were not taken in. He put pressure on the Duchess of Kent and her son Charles of Leiningren, Victoria’s half-brother, to force the Princess into signing away her independence. But already it was too late.

King Leopold, realising now how precarious was his niece’s position, sent over his own trusted adviser, Baron Stockmar, both to report to him on the situation and to attempt to hold it in check. At last Conroy ruined everything. He told the Duchess, “if Princess Victoria will not listen to reason, she must be coerced.” Victoire was already becoming apprehensive: realising that she had lost her daughter’s trust, she was now hesitant to take any more drastic measures. Even Charles Leiningen, formerly a pawn of Conroy’s by his reliance on financial loans, saw that Sir John had gone too far and advised his mother not to obey him. For the last few days of King William’s life, Kensington was in a state of uneasy truce. At 6 o’clock on the morning of 20th June 1837 the Duchess of Kent woke her daughter with the news that William IV was dead. All her life Victoria had been used to receiving visitors in the company of her mother; now, for the first time, she went alone into the room where the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain were waiting.

All through that day of mixed grief and triumph, Victoria undertook her first duties alone, emphasising that word in her account of the day in her journal with immense relish. That night, for the first time, she did not sleep in her mother’s bedroom. Victoria was no longer a child. She was now a woman and a Queen. All her accounts were paid in full: Lehzen became her closest attendant, remaining her confidante; her mother, though treated with deference in public, was shunned at home — often, in reply to the Duchess’s request to see her daughter, Victoria would send a note with the one word “Busy”; Conroy was forbidden access to the Queen’s private rooms at Buckingham Palace. In the years to come, it was obvious to courtiers that Victoria had more regard for her former governess than for her mother, for the Duchess would complain of such treatment to all who would listen. Conroy stayed in her service and, in 1839, was involved in a scandal at Court which seriously threatened the Queen’s popularity in the country.

It was suspected that he had made a young lady-in-waiting pregnant: Victoria hounded the unfortunate woman mercilessly — though in fact Lady Flora Hastings, an old enemy from Kensington days, was suffering from an incurable illness which merely gave her body the appearance of pregnancy. The ensuing furore gave Victoria’s advisers a chance to press for Conroy’s resignation. It was to be many years, however, before the Duchess of Kent regained her daughter’s affection. When the Queen married her Coburg cousin Albert, in 1840, Victoire mourned that now she would never be “all in all” to her daughter. But gradually with her new emotional balance, Victoria would look more kindly on her mother and recognise the good intentions which had prompted her to such unwitting former unkindness. As a doting grandmother, the Duchess found her ideal role, and one which her daughter could grant without loss of dignity. By the time of her death in 1861, Victoire had Victoria’s complete devotion. The Queen mourned her mother in typically hysterical fashion, bitterly regretting the years of their estrangement.

Many Kings and Queens of England have had unhappier childhoods than Victoria; Elizabeth I, for example, when she was repudiated by her father and left to live in poverty, when she first learned to fear the headsman’s axe and the marriage-bed; or Charles II, amid war and political intrigues, with fears for his life at the hands of his father’s enemies. Perhaps it is a prerequisite of a great monarch to have a previous tempering in the fires of adversity. Victoria’s early misfortune certainly did not mar her suitability for the throne. [tabby title=’More Queen Victoria Articles’][srp widget_title=”Queen Victoria Articles” widget_css_id=”testing-grid” post_type=”post” post_content_type=”content” post_content_length=”50″ post_content_length_mode=”words” post_title_length=”12″ post_title_length_mode=”words” post_date=”no” category_include=”148″ post_offset=”2″ string_break=” More…” layout_mode=”multi_column” srp post_limit=”200″ display_thumbnail=”no” vf_everything=”no”][tabbyending] Copyright 2014 British Heritage. How Was Queen Victoria Related to Prince Albert?

How Was Queen Victoria Related to Prince Albert? Cousins, But How? "Marriage of Queen Victoria" 1840 - from Pictures of English History, 1850. Hulton Archive/The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images By Jone Johnson Lewis Updated September 01, 2016. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were first cousins. They shared one set of grandparents. They were also third cousins once removed. Here are the details: Queen Victoria’s Ancestry Queen Victoria was the only child of these royal parents: Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld Marie Luise Victoire, August 17, 1786 – March 16, 1861 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn Edward Augustus, November 2, 1767 – January 23, 1820, fourth son of King George III of the United Kingdom When Princess Charlotte, the only legitimate grandchild of George III, died in November of 1817, the unmarried sons of George III found wives and attempted to father children.

In 1818, Prince Edward, 50 years old and the fourth son of King George III, married Victoria, 31, the sister of Princess Charlotte’s widower, Leopold. (See below.) When Victoria, a widow, married Edward, she already had two children, Carl and Anna, from her first marriage. Edward and Victoria had only one child, the future Queen Victoria, before his death in 1820. continue reading below our video Profile of Queen Victoria Prince Albert was the second son of Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg Louise Dorothea Pauline Charlotte Fredericka Auguste, December 21, 1800 - August 30, 1831 Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Ernst Anton Karl Ludwig Herzog, also Ernst III of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, January 2, 1784 – January 29, 1844 Ernst and Louise were married in 1817, separated in 1824 and divorced in 1826.

Louise and Ernst both remarried; the children stayed with their father and Louise lost all rights to her children because of her second marriage. She died a few years later of cancer. Ernst remarried in 1832 and had no children by that marriage. He also acknowledged three illegitimate children. Common Grandparents Queen Victoria’s mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Prince Albert’s father, Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, were brother and sister. Their parents were: Countess (Princess) Augusta Caroline Sophie Reuss of Ebersdorf January 19, 1757 – November 16, 1831 Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld Franz Frederick Anton, July 15, 1750 – December 9, 1806 Augusta and Francis had ten children, three of whom died in childhood. Ernst, Prince Albert's father, was the eldest son. Victoria, Queen Victoria's mother, was younger than Ernst. Another Connection Prince Albert's parents, Louise and Ernst, were second cousins once removed.

Ernst's great grandparents were also the great grandparents of his wife's mother. Because Ernst was a brother of Queen Victoria's mother, these were also the great grandparents of Queen Victoria's mother, making Queen Victoria's mother a second cousin once removed of her sister-in-law, Prince Albert's mother Louise. Princess Anna Sophie of Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt September 9, 1700 - December 11, 1780 Prince Franz Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld September 25, 1697 - September 16, 1764 Anna Sophie and Franz Josias had eight children. Their eldest, Ernst, was a great grandfather of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and also great grandfather of Leopold II of Belgium and Carlota of Mexico . Their fifth child, Princess Charlotte Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was a great great aunt of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and also Albert's great great grandmother. Through this relationship, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were also third cousins once removed. Given the intermarriages in royal and noble families, they had other more distant relationships as well.

Uncle Leopold The youngest brother of Prince Albert's father and Queen Victoria's mother was: Leopold I, King of the Belgians Leopold Georg Christian Frederick, December 16, 1790 – December 10, 1865 Leopold was therefore Queen Victoria’s maternal uncle and Prince Albert’s paternal uncle. Leopold had been married to Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate daughter of the future George IV and his heiress presumptive until she died in 1817, predeceasing both her father and her grandfather, George III. Leopold was an important influence on Victoria before her coronation and for some time after. He was elected King of the Belgians in 1831.

Question: What relation was British monarch Queen Victoria to Prince Albert before their marriage?
Answer: First cousin