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. BBC - History - Prince Albert z Prince Albert, 1854 © Albert was the husband and consort of Queen Victoria and a significant influence on his wife. She never recovered from his premature death.

Albert Francis Charles Augustus Emmanuel of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born on 26 August 1819 at Schloss Rosenau, in Bavaria, the younger son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. When he was seven, his father divorced his mother on grounds of adultery, and she was sent to live in Switzerland and forbidden to see her children. Albert was educated at Bonn University. In 1840, he married his cousin, Queen Victoria. The marriage was unpopular in some quarters, and parliament resisted granting Albert what his wife regarded as a suitable allowance. Albert's role as advisor to his wife came into full force after the death of Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, who had exerted a strong paternal influence over Victoria, and Albert began to act as the queen's private secretary. He encouraged in his wife a greater interest in social welfare and invited Lord Shaftesbury, the driving force behind successive factory acts, to Buckingham Palace to discuss the matter of child labour. His constitutional position was a difficult one, and although he exercised his influence with tact and intelligence, he never enjoyed great public popularity during Victoria's reign.

It wasn't until 1857 that he was formally recognised by the nation and awarded the title 'prince consort'. Albert took an active interest in the arts, science, trade and industry. He masterminded the Great Exhibition of 1851, with a view to celebrating the great advances of the British industrial age and the expansion of the empire. He used the profits to help to establish the South Kensington museums complex in London. In the autumn of 1861, Albert intervened in a diplomatic row between Britain and the United States and his influence probably helped to avert war between the two countries. When he died suddenly of typhoid on 14 December, Victoria was overwhelmed by grief and remained in mourning until the end of her life. She commissioned a number of monuments in his honour, including the Royal Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens completed in 1876. Albert and Victoria had nine children, most of whom married into the other royal houses of Europe. Queen Victoria: The real story of her 'domestic bliss' - BBC News BBC News Queen Victoria: The real story of her 'domestic bliss' 1 January 2013 Read more about sharing.

Close share panel To the outside world Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their family seemed the embodiment of domestic bliss, but the reality was very different, writes historian Jane Ridley. The marriage between the two first cousins - the young Queen and the clever, handsome German prince - was a love match. Over 17 years, nine children were born: four boys and five girls. Paintings and photographs projected an image of a virtuous, devoted young couple surrounded by obedient, fair-haired children. Though sexually infatuated, the young couple were locked into a power struggle. Albert took over more and more of Victoria's work as queen as her pregnancies forced her to step aside. Victoria was conflicted: she admired her "angel" for his talents and ability but she deeply resented being robbed of her powers as queen. There were terrible rows and Albert was terrified by Victoria's temper tantrums. Always at the back of his mind was the fear she might have inherited the madness of George III . While she stormed around the palace, he was reduced to putting notes under her door. Though she was a prolific mother, Victoria loathed being pregnant. Repeated pregnancies she considered "more like a rabbit or a guinea pig than anything else and not very nice".

Find out more Queen Victoria's Children is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 1, Wednesday 2, and Thursday 3 January at 21:00 GMT Breastfeeding she especially disliked, finding it a disgusting practice. And she was not a doting mother - she thought it her duty to be "severe". She didn't do affection. Relations with her eldest son Bertie, later Edward VII, were especially fraught. From the start he was a disappointment for Victoria. Like all the royal princes, he was educated at home with a tutor. Bertie did badly at lessons and his parents considered him a halfwit. Victoria remarked: "Handsome I cannot think him, with that painfully small and narrow head, those immense features and total want of chin." When Bertie was 19, he spent time training with the army in Ireland and a prostitute named Nellie Clifden was smuggled into his bed. When the story reached Albert, he was devastated and wrote Bertie a long, emotional letter lamenting his "fall". He visited his son at Cambridge and the two went for a long walk together in the rain. Albert returned to Windsor a sick man and three weeks later he was dead.

Albert probably died of typhoid. Another theory is that he suffered from Crohn's disease , but for years afterwards Victoria blamed Bertie for his death. She could not bear to have him near her. "I never can or shall look at him without a shudder," she wrote. Head of a vast empire Queen Victoria was born on 24 May 1819 Her reign saw huge industrial expansion and the growth of a worldwide empire In 1877 she became empress of India. Her empire included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and large parts of Africa Life during Queen Victoria's reign For the next 40 years - the rest of her life - Victoria wore black mourning and only appeared in public rarely and reluctantly. To her people, the tiny "widow of Windsor" seemed a pathetic, grief-stricken figure. The truth was very different. Though Victoria was invisible, her need to control her children was almost pathological. She set up a network of spies and informers who reported back to her on her children's doings. When Bertie married the Danish princess Alexandra, Victoria instructed the doctor to report back on every detail of her health, including her menstrual cycle.

Court balls were scheduled so that they did not coincide with Alexandra's periods. Victoria's eldest daughter Vicky married Fritz, the heir to the throne of Prussia, when she was 17. She was the mother of Kaiser William II. Even in faraway Germany, Vicky could not escape her mother's interfering. Victoria wrote almost daily and her micromanaging made her daughter ill with worry. When Vicky announced she was pregnant, Victoria replied: "The horrid news... has upset us dreadfully". Vicky and her younger sister Alice, also married to a German prince, colluded to defy their mother. Secretly, they breastfed their babies. When Victoria discovered, she was furious and called them cows. Image caption Prince Albert's practice of putting up Christmas trees at Windsor became well known in the 1840s Being a daughter of Queen Victoria was like playing an endless game of musical chairs - there was always one who was out of favour. There was always a favourite, too. Victoria's changes of mind were bewildering and her rages could be terrifying. She was not only her children's mother but also their sovereign and she never let them forget it.

She kept her youngest child Beatrice (known as Baby) at home; she was terrified of her mother. Victoria wanted Beatrice to remain unmarried. When Beatrice announced that she was engaged to a handsome German prince, Victoria refused to speak to her for six months and agreed only on condition that the couple lived with her. The rebel was Louise. Flirtatious, attractive and feisty, she refused to marry a German prince. Instead, she chose Lord Lorne, the son of the Duke of Argyll. This turned out to be a mistake - the marriage was childless and unhappy and Lorne was rumoured to be gay. Victoria controlled her sons just as tightly. Leopold, who inherited haemophilia, suffered especially. Victoria described him as "a very common-looking child". Bertie never broke off relations with his mother - and when he eventually succeeded her as king at the age of 59, he did a very good job She tried to make him live the life of an invalid, wrapping him in cotton wool. As a boy, he was bullied by the Highland servant who looked after him, but Victoria refused to listen to Leopold's complaints.

She wouldn't let him leave home but he finally won the long battle to study at Oxford. He died aged 30. Victoria wanted her sons to grow up like Prince Albert. The only one who resembled his father was Prince Arthur, the third of the boys, later Duke of Connaught. He was her favourite - he did what he was told and had a successful military career. The son with whom Victoria quarrelled most was the eldest, Bertie. She once remarked that the trouble with Bertie was that he was too like her. She was right. Like his mother, Bertie was greedy and highly sexed, with an explosive temper. But he possessed one supreme gift - personal charm. As Prince of Wales, Bertie lurched from one scandal to another. In spite of his repeated requests, Victoria never allowed him access to government documents. But the story had an unexpected ending. Bertie never broke off relations with his mother. When he eventually succeeded her as king at the age of 59, he did a very good job. He modernised the monarchy, which was one reason why the British monarchy survived World War I when so many others did not. Perhaps Queen Victoria was not such a bad mother after all.

Jane Ridley's Bertie: A Life of Edward VII is published by Chatto & Windus. Queen Victoria's Children is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 1, Wednesday 2, and Thursday 3 January at 21:00 GMT You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook 5 Things You May Not Know About Queen Victoria - History in the Headlines 5 Things You May Not Know About Queen Victoria June 28, 2013 By Sarah Pruitt Share this: 5 Things You May Not Know About Queen Victoria Author 5 Things You May Not Know About Queen Victoria URL Google On June 28, the 18-year-old Queen Victoria was crowned as monarch of the United Kingdom and Ireland in London’s Westminster Abbey. Some 400,000 visitors flocked to the city to witness the historic event, riding a worldwide wave of popular enthusiasm for the young queen. She would rule until her death in 1901, becoming the longest reigning monarch in British history. At the time Victoria took the throne, the role that Buckingham Palace’s chief resident should play in British politics had become unclear, and the ongoing existence of the monarchy was by no means certain.

Victoria’s rule would change that--during her long reign, Britain made its transition to a constitutional monarchy, even as Victoria’s influence on British society ensured the continuance of the crown itself. One hundred and seventy-five years after her coronation, explore a few facts about the queen who lent her name to an era. She was barely five feet tall. Queen Victoria’s outspoken nature and imposing reputation belied her tiny stature–the monarch was no more than five feet tall. In her later years, she also grew to an impressive girth. Some accounts claim she had a 50-inch waist by the end of her life, a conclusion supported by the impressive size of a nightgown and pair of bloomers (underwear) belonging to Victoria that were auctioned off in 2009. She proposed to her husband, Prince Albert, and not vice versa. Victoria first met her future husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, when she was 16. He was her first cousin, the son of her mother’s brother; their mutual uncle, the ambitious Leopold, engineered the meeting with the idea that the two should marry.

Victoria enjoyed Albert’s company from the beginning, and with Leopold’s encouragement she proposed to Albert (as she was the queen, he could not propose to her) on October 15, 1839, five days after he arrived at Windsor on a trip to the English court. They were married the following year. Their marriage was passionate — she wrote in her diary that “Without him everything loses its interest” — and produced nine children. On the other hand, Victoria was notoriously disenchanted by pregnancy and childbirth, calling it the “shadow-side of marriage.” She was raised by a single mother, and later became a single mother herself. Victoria was the only child of Edward, duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III. Her father died of pneumonia in 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, and she was raised primarily at Kensington Palace, where she lived with her mother, the German-born Victoria Saxe-Saalfield-Coburg, duchess of Kent.

Third in line for the throne (after the duke of York, who died in 1827, and the duke of Clarence, third son of George III, who would become William IV), the future queen became estranged from her mother, who was driven by the influence of her advisor Sir John Conroy to isolate the young Victoria from her contemporaries as well as her father’s family. Instead, Victoria relied on the counsel of her beloved uncle Leopold, as well as her governess Louise (afterward the Baroness) Lehzen, a native of Coburg. When she became queen and moved to Buckingham Palace, Victoria exiled her mother to a distant set of apartments and fired Conroy. After Albert’s untimely death from typhoid fever in 1861, Victoria descended into depression, and even after her recovery she would remain in mourning for the rest of her life. Queen Victoria was the first known carrier of hemophilia, an affliction that would become known as the “Royal disease.” Hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder caused by a mutation on the X chromosome, can be passed along the maternal line within families; men are more likely to develop it, while women are usually carriers.

Sufferers can bleed excessively, since their blood does not properly coagulate, leading to extreme pain and even death. Victoria’s son Leopold, Duke of Albany, died from blood loss after he slipped and fell; her grandson Friedrich bled to death at age 2, while two other grandsons, Leopold and Maurice, died of the affliction in their early 30s. As Victoria’s descendants married into royal families throughout the Europe, the disease spread from Britain to the nobility of Germany, Russia and Spain. Recent research involving DNA analysis on the bones of the last Russian royal family, the Romanovs (who were executed in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution) revealed that Victoria’s descendants suffered from a subtype of the disorder, hemophilia B, which is far less common than hemophilia A and now appears to be extinct in the European royal lines. At least six serious assassination attempts were made against Victoria during her reign — most of which while she was riding in a carriage. In 1840, an 18-year-old named Edward Oxford fired two shots at the young queen’s carriage while she was riding in London. Accused of high treason, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Another would-be assassin, John Francis, made not one but two attempts to shoot the queen in her carriage in 1842. That same year, young John William Bean tried to fire a gun loaded with paper and tobacco at the queen, but the charge was insufficient. Two more carriage attacks came in 1849 and 1850–the first by “angry Irishman” William Hamilton and the second by ex-Army officer Robert Pate, who hit the queen with his cane. Finally, in March 1882, a disgruntled Scottish poet named Roderick Maclean shot at Victoria with a pistol while her carriage was leaving the Windsor train station. It was supposedly Maclean’s eighth attempt to assassinate the queen; he was also found to be insane, and sentenced to life in an asylum. In the wake of an assassination attempt, Victoria’s popularity usually soared among the British public. Tags Queen Victoria - The UK's Longest Reigning Monarch Queen Victoria Queen Victoria The Longest Ruling Monarch of the United Kingdom Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Original Artist: By T H Maquire. (1852).

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) By Patricia Daniels, Contributing Writer Updated July 26, 2016. Who Was Queen Victoria? Ascending to the throne at only 18 years old, Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom for nearly 64 years -- the longest of any British monarch. During her reign, Great Britain became a powerful industrial nation and boasted an empire that stretched across the globe. Despite the early loss of her beloved husband, Queen Victoria provided a reassuring stability during much of the 19th century - an era of great social and technological change. The years of her reign are referred to as the Victorian Era. Dates: May 24, 1819 - January 22, 1901 Reign: 1837 - 1901 Also Known As: Alexandrina Victoria of the House of Hanover; "the Grandmother of Europe" The Girl Who Would Be Queen Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819 to Edward, the Duke of Kent (and fourth son of King George III) and German Princess Victoire of Leiningen.

Although Victoria was fifth in line to the throne - unlikely to become monarch - the duke feared that any future claim to the throne might be challenged if she were born abroad. continue reading below our video Profile of Queen Victoria He ensured that his daughter was born on British soil, moving with his pregnant wife from Germany to England. Christened Alexandrina Victoria at birth, the child came to be called Victoria. Despite being born into royalty, she did not grow up surrounded by wealth. Edward's spendthrift ways had left him with many debts. The duke and duchess, in an attempt to reduce expenses, moved with their infant daughter to a modest home. Not long after the move, Edward became ill and died of pneumonia on January 23, 1820 (Victoria was just eight months old). Six days later, King George III died as well, thus making George IV King of England. Victoria was now third in line to the throne behind her two uncles, who had failed to produce heirs. Victoria's Less Than Royal Childhood King George IV , whose only legitimate child had died in childbirth, was resentful of his brother's daughter.

He begrudgingly allowed Victoria and her mother to move into an apartment at Kensington Palace, but would only approve a small allowance. The duchess’s brother, Prince Leopold (later King Leopold I of Belgium ), agreed to pay for Victoria's upbringing and education. Tutors were hired to school Victoria in history, math, drawing, and languages. Raised by a German mother who spoke little English, Victoria spoke mostly German the first few years of her life, but readily learned both English and French. In 1827, when Victoria was eight, her Uncle Frederick, the Duke of York, died, placing her one step closer to the throne. A Scheming Pair When newly widowed, Victoria's mother had turned for advice to John Conroy, a colleague of her late husband. In the years following the duke's death, the self-serving Conroy convinced the duchess that she should have herself declared Victoria's regent (an agent acting on behalf of an incapacitated or underage monarch) in the event that Victoria became queen while still a minor. In this way, Conroy - through the duchess - could essentially control the throne.

When King George IV (who loathed Conroy and the duchess) died in 1830, the pair believed they could easily persuade newly-crowned King William IV to name the duchess as Victoria's regent. But King William did not trust the duchess and refused her request. The duchess petitioned Parliament, winning approval as Victoria's sole regent in 1831. The regency proved unnecessary. On June 20, 1837, a month after Victoria's eighteenth birthday, King William died, making Victoria queen of England. The Young Queen Weeks after assuming the throne, Queen Victoria moved to Buckingham Palace , where she began the business of ruling the nation. The young queen's composure and confidence impressed the prime minister and the Privy Council (a group of high government officials and advisers to a monarch). The official coronation was held on June 28, 1838 amid great celebration. The public was enchanted by the new queen, who seemed more eager to please them than her predecessors had been. A scandalous incident, however, would soon sway public opinion against her.

The "Lady Flora affair," as it came to be known, was the product of the young queen's immaturity and lack of discretion. Victoria, among others, had noticed that her mother's lady-in-waiting, Flora Hastings - an unmarried woman - appeared to have a bulging abdomen. Queen Victoria jumped to the conclusion that Lady Flora was pregnant, and began to make comments about her to various members of her staff. The rumor circulated beyond palace walls. Within months, Lady Flora was gravely ill. When she died of an apparent abdominal tumor, the queen was blamed for having started the rumors that had brought dishonor upon a dying woman. The public was outraged; many of her detractors actually booed the queen when she went out in public. It would take an engagement and marriage for Queen Victoria to regain her reputation. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: Courtship and Marriage Victoria's Uncle Leopold had long favored his German nephew Prince Albert - first cousin to Victoria - as the perfect candidate for marriage to the queen. When the prince and Victoria had met two years earlier, she had been impressed by Albert's looks and demeanor. Upon meeting with him a second time in October 1839, Victoria seemed smitten.

Within days, she proposed to him (protocol would not allow him to propose to her), and the engagement was announced. Even before the wedding a debate arose as to what title Prince Albert should hold. Queen Victoria preferred "King Consort," so that Albert could rule by her side, but members of Parliament were opposed to giving that power to a foreigner. Parliament decided to award the prince no rank or title whatsoever; he was simply made a British subject. Prince Albert was immensely disappointed, and the queen was furious, but could not oppose the decision. The wedding was held on February 10, 1840 . Despite rainy weather, large crowds lined the streets to watch the procession from Buckingham Palace. Later, the crowd cheered as the newly-married couple rode past in their carriage. The Royal Offspring Queen Victoria and Prince Albert welcomed the birth of their first child, Princess Victoria in November 1840. However, the queen was not happy that she'd become pregnant so soon after the wedding, and often complained in her journal about the difficulties of motherhood. Queen Victoria gave birth to a male heir, Albert ("Bertie"), a year later.

Between 1843 and 1857, the queen had seven more children, completing her family of five daughters and four sons . All survived to adulthood, a rare outcome at a time when many children did not survive infancy. The queen's fourth son, Leopold, born in 1853, was diagnosed at an early age with hemophilia , a genetically-transmitted bleeding disorder. He died in his thirties of the disease. Through the marriages of Victoria's children, hemophilia later re-emerged in several European royal families, most notably in the son of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Alexandra (Victoria's granddaughter). It was later determined that Queen Victoria and two of her daughters (as well as Alexandra) were carriers of the gene, which was passed on to their sons. Prince Albert's Role Prince Albert enjoyed being a father and found that having children had necessitated that he take on more responsibilities in the royal household. Queen Victoria increasingly relied upon him for advice, and he welcomed this new role. The prince was widely praised for organizing palace finances and eliminating wasteful spending. Prince Albert earned the admiration of the British public following an assassination attempt upon the queen in 1840.

When a gunman shot at the royal carriage, Albert acted quickly, pushing his wife to the carriage floor to avoid the bullet. (Queen Victoria would survive seven assassination attempts.) After initial reservations about Albert's capabilities, Parliament appointed him regent in July 1840 during the queen's pregnancy. As regent, Prince Albert would be in charge of the heir if Queen Victoria were to die in childbirth, or otherwise. The prince was not awarded the title of "prince consort" until 1857. War and Rebellion The British became involved in the Crimean War from 1854 to 1856. Most of the fighting took place in Russian-held Crimea, where bitter cold and disease took as many lives as battle wounds. The queen, lacking any power in military situations, felt compelled to help. She organized relief efforts, knitted socks and mittens, and visited soldiers in hospitals. In her official capacity, Queen Victoria wrote letters of condolence to war widows. British presence in India stirred up a rebellion of Indian soldiers, called "sepoys," in 1857. The uprising resulted in the deaths of hundreds of European civilians.

When the rebellion was finally subdued by British troops, all of India came under the control of the Crown of England. Queen Victoria proudly referred to India as a "jewel of her crown." She was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877, when Parliament passed the Royal Titles Act. The Death of Prince Albert Queen Victoria endured the darkest year of her life in 1861, beginning with the death of her mother in March. Later in the year, her oldest son, Bertie - first in line to the throne - created a scandal by becoming romantically involved with an actress. Prince Albert traveled to Cambridge to chastise his son, despite feeling weak and feverish. He returned to Windsor Castle, where his condition deteriorated over the next few weeks. Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861 at age 42, from probable stomach cancer. A widow at 42, the queen was devastated. Faced with her official duties as well as the care of her children, she felt incapable of carrying on. Queen Victoria became a recluse, avoiding public events and social engagements and even refusing foreign visitors. Victoria's children suffered as well.

They had lost their father; now their mother, too, seemed to abandon them in her grief. Some of the younger children became depressed and withdrawn, and Bertie became the object of his mother's anger. The queen blamed the 21-year-old prince for his father's death. She felt that her son's misbehavior had compelled Prince Albert to make the trip to Cambridge, worsening his illness. The public and Parliament began to lose patience with the queen, who neglected her duties and remained in mourning for more than three years. Queen Victoria and John Brown Desperate to help the grieving queen, the royal physician suggested that she go horseback riding to improve her health. He sent for the groom from the queen's stables in Scotland. John Brown arrived in early 1865. The handsome 39 year old sported a kilt and had a straightforward, somewhat rough way of talking with the queen. She responded well to him and began venturing out in public for the first time in years. Although it was clear that the queen was in better spirits since Brown's arrival, he was unpopular with both the queen's family and the public.

Rumors abounded that the two were having an affair, but no proof has ever been found to support that notion. John Brown remained the queen's servant until 1883, when he died of a streptococcal infection. Later Years Over the years, Queen Victoria regained her popularity by making more of an effort to attend public functions and by becoming involved in charitable causes. She kept close contact with an ever-changing roster of prime ministers, always ready with an opinion on the issues of the day. The queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, marking sixty years as monarch. She was proud of the many jubilee biographies that were written about her, several of which described her as a virtuous woman who set a good example. Queen Victoria died of a stroke on January 22, 1901 at the age of 81. Her eldest son, Albert, succeeded her as King Edward VII . Victoria's secret?

According to tantalising new evidence, Queen Victoria married her Scottish groom and bore him a secret daughter who was spirited to America | Daily Mail Online comments As the Queen advances indefatigably into the year-long festivities for her Diamond Jubilee, thoughts inevitably turn to the last British sovereign who survived to celebrate 60 years on the throne. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 marked the refulgent patriotic zenith of the British Empire. Standing less than 5ft tall, but nevertheless a towering colossus throughout the world, the iconic Queen Empress gave her name to an age that produced an empire measuring some 40 million square kilometres, with 387 million subjects. It was an age characterised by extreme sexual repression, strait-laced morality and invincible ignorance. Victoria flatly refused to allow her government to legislate against lesbianism, not because she approved of it, but because she regarded it as a physical impossibility. Close: Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in Mrs Brown.

A new article alleges that the Queen secretly married Brown in a clandestine ceremony and then bore him a child The old lady, whose best-known utterance was ‘We are not amused’, went to her grave labelled as the ultimate prude. But now an astonishing article, published this month in The Oldie magazine, seeks to explode this greatest of all royal myths. It claims that after the untimely death of her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort, Victoria sought sexual solace with her uncouth, arrogant and heavy-drinking Highland ghillie, John Brown. It further alleges that the Queen secretly married Brown in a clandestine ceremony and then bore him a child. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share The 82-year-old historian, John Julius (2nd Viscount) Norwich, son of the legendary society beauty Lady Diana Cooper, is cited as a source for this story. Lord Norwich, it appears, remembers his friend, the late historian Sir Steven Runciman, telling him that while he was researching in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, he chanced upon the marriage certificate of Queen Victoria and John Brown. Runciman was a pre-eminent expert on the Crusades and the Byzantine Empire.

According to this very tall tale, he showed the certificate to the late Queen Mother. The Queen with her uncouth, arrogant and heavy-drinking Highland ghillie, John Brown who she secretly married according to a source Without a word, she was said to have taken the document and burned it — so that it could never cause any damage to the image of the Royal Family. Runciman also revealed that he knew Queen Victoria’s great-grandson, the painter Prince Henry of Hesse, who was confronted at one of his post-war exhibitions in New York by an elderly lady who announced: ‘I think we are related.’ She proceeded to confide that her name was Jean Brown and that she was the daughter of Queen Victoria and John Brown. ‘Presumably she had been shipped across to America at a very early age and had lain doggo for more than 80 years,’ concluded Lord Norwich, who surprisingly does not appear to find it at all strange that this lady, who might have earned a small fortune from her alleged antecedents, then obligingly went back to lying doggo and was never heard of again. How much if any, of this ought we to believe?

The first thing to say is that The Oldie’s story is very, very old indeed. Queen Victoria in her Diamond Jubilee portrait in 1897 Rumours of this supposed liaison, marriage and pregnancy have been around for almost 150 years. In some of the numerous permutations of what clearly started out as republican and anti-monarchist propaganda, there was not just one secret child, but three. An alleged ‘son’ of the Queen by Brown died in Paris as a 90-year-old recluse. And a second ‘daughter’, Louise Brown, was also ‘sent to live in Paris’, where, according to John Stuart, who was formerly employed by the royal bankers, Coutts & Co., she was sent £250, ‘paid once a quarter’. Stuart added: ‘The money was debited in the account marked “His Royal Highness Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales”. ‘At the time I thought she must have been one of King Edward VII’s children from the wrong side of the blanket,’ he said — and indeed, she well may have been.

‘But what could have happened was that the King ordered the payments to continue after his death in 1910, to prevent a scandal involving his mother.’ But if that were the case, would Edward VII, a serial adulterer, who ordered all his private papers, and those of his long-suffering wife, Queen Alexandra, to be destroyed after their deaths, have been careless enough to leave a document lying around in the Royal Archives proving that his mother made a scandalous mésalliance with a foul-mouthed Highland drunkard? Then we have to consider the reliability of the original source of this story. Albeit a respected historian, Sir Steven Runciman was one of the Queen Mother’s ‘knitting circle’ of elderly gay bachelors — a notorious eccentric and supremely mischievous. One of his earlier pranks was to drip burning candle-wax onto the bald patch of the outraged Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, who was seated below him. While studying at Cambridge, he was one of Cecil Beaton’s first models, who photographed him with a budgerigar on his finger. The article alleges the Queen secretly married Brown in a clandestine ceremony and then bore him a child.

A scene from the film is pictured A friend of the Soviet spy Guy Burgess — never a recommendation of trustworthiness — Runciman dabbled in the occult, read Tarot cards for the King of Egypt and confessed in old age that he fancied the idea of marrying an elderly Spanish duchess so that he might become known as a ‘dowager duke’. Lord Norwich evidently regards him as a credible witness. I have to confess that I do not. Burning documents was not in the Queen Mother’s nature. Though it may be true that some of her more outspoken comments were concealed from the public — a 1940 letter in which she referred to her despised sister-in-law, the Duchess of Windsor, as ‘the lowest of the low’, vanished from circulation for a time — such censorship came from hands other than her own. In old age, she blithely left an earth-shaking correspondence between herself and Diana, Princess of Wales, discussing her break-up from Prince Charles, lying around in a chaise-longue, a fire-stool and plastic bags. It was Princess Margaret who took it upon herself, in her mother’s absence, to destroy the inflammatory cache.

But there is one aspect of the outrageous claims about Queen Victoria that has undeniable truth.Possibly as a result of some hormonal imbalance, Queen Victoria possessed a voracious sexual appetite bordering on nymphomania. John Brown with his dogs. The Queen was determined to marry Prince Albert and proposed after a courtship of only four days Her chosen husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, was a sensitive and somewhat effeminate 18-year-old virgin when Victoria surveyed his shapely legs in sexy skin-tight breeches. Suspected of latent homosexuality, Albert, on being asked why he had never sown his wild oats with women, replied: ‘That species of vice disgusts me.’ But the Queen, three months his senior, was determined to marry him, and proposed after a courtship of only four days. From their marriage night onwards, Victoria was the sexual aggressor and pursuer of the two. So appalled and unnerved did Albert become by his wife’s daily and nightly onslaughts that he took to cowering behind the locked door of his bedroom. The frustrated Victoria, in pursuit of her conjugal rights, hammered on it loudly from outside, screaming in German: ‘Open this door!

I am the Queen!’ After years of being a royal breeding stud, Albert was forced to invent and install a bedside switch to activate mechanical locks on the bedroom door so that their nine children, all still minors, would not come in and catch their parents in flagrante. 'Victoria began to address Brown as ‘Darling’ in her letters to him' After the birth of their youngest child, Princess Beatrice, in 1857, Victoria’s doctor, Sir James Reid, gave her a stern warning against attempting any further pregnancies. The 38-year-old Queen was devastated. She had described her sex life with Albert as ‘heavenly love-making’. ‘Oh Sir James!’ she wailed. ‘Am I not to have any more fun in bed?’ When four years later, Albert succumbed to typhoid fever at the age of only 42, he was no longer the slim, attractive Adonis of his youth, but fat, bald and prematurely middle-aged. Courtiers speculated that the sexual athletics imposed upon him by his wife had worn him out both in body and spirit.

When, to combat Victoria’s deepening melancholia, John Brown was brought south from his post as Albert’s ghillie at Balmoral to become her personal groom at Osborne, her house on the Isle of Wight, he immediately adopted a bullying and familiar manner with her that astonished courtiers and caused the Queen’s daughters to refer to him as ‘Mama’s lover’. He encouraged her to drink whisky with him. Begg’s Best was their preferred tipple. She was soon referring to the hirsute Highlander as ‘fascinating Johnny Brown’, and the shocked Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Derby, recorded that they slept in adjoining rooms ‘contrary to etiquette and even decency’. The first anti-Brown propaganda, claiming that he was the Queen’s ‘morganatic husband’ (married but with the stipulation that he would have no claim on any title), appeared in pamphlets circulated by the Scottish socialist republican nationalist Alexander Robertson.

The story of the Queen’s alleged marriage also surfaced in the late 19th-century diaries of the Liberal politician Lewis Harcourt, which claimed that one of the Queen’s chaplains, the Reverend Norman Macleod, had made a deathbed confession, repenting his action in presiding over Victoria’s marriage to Brown. But this proved to be the merest hearsay. Harcourt was only nine years old at the time of Macleod’s death. Victoria began to address Brown as ‘Darling’ in her letters to him, and it was claimed that during a trip to Loch Ordie, ‘Hochmagandy’ — the old Scottish word for sexual intercourse — had taken place. But suggestions that a child was born nine months later in Switzerland are untenable. Victoria was already aged 46 by the time that Brown attained his ascendancy. A pregnancy at that age in Victorian times was unthinkable and also extremely dangerous. A medical examination of Queen Victoria’s body after her death revealed that for some years she had suffered a ventral hernia, which had damaged the walls of the abdomen, and a prolapse of the uterus, which would have made sexual intercourse not only uncomfortable but difficult, and child-bearing out of the question.

Victoria’s secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, commented that Brown was ‘certainly a favourite, but he is only a servant and nothing more — and what I suppose began as a joke has been perverted into a libel’. But the republican Press now referred to Victoria as ‘Mrs Brown’, and later, after her elevation as Empress of India, as ‘the Empress Brown’. It was only Brown’s courageous action in foiling an assassination attempt on the Queen in 1872 that changed public opinion, converted him into a national hero and restored Victoria to popularity. After Brown’s death in 1883 from a severe form of the skin complaint erysipelas, at the age of 56, Victoria showed that her appetite for masculine attention had not diminished. In 1887, she replaced Brown with a low-caste, uneducated and exploitative Indian, Abdul Karim, whom she called ‘The Munshi’. He rose from waiting on her at table to become her ‘Indian Secretary’.

She gave him three houses: a cottage at Windsor, a bungalow on the Isle of Wight and a lovely house at Balmoral, all of which he filled with his penniless Indian relations at the British taxpayer’s expense. On Victoria’s own death in 1901, at the age of 81, she was buried with Prince Albert’s dressing-gown and a plaster-cast of his hand, a lock of John Brown’s hair, a photograph of Brown clasped in her hand, several of his letters and a ring belonging to his mother. There is a pathos and a poignancy about Victoria’s desperate dependence on the burly and bullying Brown. It highlights, more than anything else in her long reign, the daunting and unbearable loneliness of sovereignty. Like Victoria, our Queen also came to the throne young, and has had a loyal and steadfast husband to support her. The fact that she has coped with more strength and better judgment with the pressures of what her mother called ‘the great and lonely station to which she has been called’, is a measure of the respect and affection in which she is held, and with which this year’s Diamond Jubilee is being celebrated by the nation.

Prince Albert's death finally solved 150 years, he was suffering Crohn's disease | Daily Mail Online comments His sudden death 150 years ago this week propelled his adoring wife, Queen Victoria, into life-long mourning. And until now it had always been thought that Prince Albert’s unexpected passing on December 14, 1861 - at the age of just 42 - had been caused by a virulent bout of typhoid fever. Now an acclaimed historian, who has spent the last three years researching the death of the Prince Consort, believes he actually succumbed to a very modern affliction – Crohn’s Disease. Mystery solved: Historian Helen Rappaport who has uncovered details about the death of Prince Albert Crohn’s is a serious – and sometimes fatal - form of inflammatory bowel disease that today affects one in 500 people. While the exact cause is unknown, the condition is linked to a problem with the body’s immune system response. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share A person’s genes and environmental factors seem to play a role in the development of Crohn’s disease, but it usually occurs in people between ages 15 - 35.

Symptoms can come in waves and include debilitating and crampy abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, chronic diarrhoea, liver inflammation and weight loss. So were the Royal Family simply mistaken about Albert’s death or was there a cover up? According to author Helen Rappaport - who has been given unrivalled access to contemporary records including both Albert and Victoria’s private letters, the Royal Archives and records of the Royal Household – the Queen’s husband had been chronically sick on and off all his adult life and suffered from long-standing gastric problems. Deep bond: Queen Victoria was distraught after Prince Albert's death at the age of 42 This was never verified by doctors after his death, however, as grieving Victoria refused to allow a post-mortem to be carried out on her beloved husband. So Rappaport took her findings, contained in a detailed 14-page medical dossier, to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where Dr Chris Conlon, consultant in infectious diseases including typhoid, and Dr Simon Travis, consultant in gastroenterology, examined them in detail.

Having looked at the evidence, both doctors dismissed typhoid fever and cancer as possible causes of death and concluded the evidence for Crohn’s looked very strong. They pointed out that there are a number of similarities between the symptoms displayed by those suffering from typhoid fever and Crohn’s disease, including fever and severe abdominal pain, which may have accounted for confusion at the time. QUEEN VICTORIA'S GRIEF Her grief over the loss of her husband, Prince Albert, came to define her entire reign. The extent of Queen Victoria’s despair has been laid bare in a previously unseen letter, in which she expresses the hope that she will go to an early grave. The remarkably candid letter, which has been acquired by London auctioneers Argyll Etkin, is thought to be the first in the public domain in which the Queen yearns for her own death, so she can be reunited with her husband. Victoria wrote the ‘astonishing’ letter in March 1863, some 15 months after Albert’s death, to 82-year-old Viscount Gough. The hospital will be holding a seminar into the issue entitled ‘What Killed Prince Albert?”’ next month.

The author then went to a Crohn’s specialist in Belgium, Philippe van Hootegem of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Leuven. In his written reply, he says: ‘You were able to collect from letters and diaries a lot of details concerning the health problems of the Prince. These data clearly demonstrate the presence of a chronic condition with several years of intermittent episodes of symptoms such as fatigue, abdominal cramps, inability to eat for several days, attacks of diarrhoea etc… leading eventually to a more serious situation of acute illness with rapid deterioration and death at the age of 42. ‘A chronic inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease could certainly explain a lot of the symptoms, with episodes of intestinal (sub-)obstruction, diarrhoea, also the “rheumatic” joint symptoms … and finally a complication such as a bowel perforation and sepsis leading rather quickly to the lethal outcome. ‘The hypothesis of Prince Albert suffering from Crohn’s disease looks very attractive and seems to be more likely than the “official” cause of death : typhoid fever.’ In the last weeks of his life, Albert suffered from terrible muscular pains and insomnia.

A visit to the new Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in the pouring rain added to his woes, as did highly emotional a meeting at Cambridge two days later with his son, Bertie, the future King Edward V11, over his scandalous affair with a young actress, Nellie Clifden. He returned to Windsor tired, emotional and in enormous pain where doctors made their diagnosis of typhoid fever. He died at 10.50 p.m. on December 14, 1861 in the castle’s Blue Room in the presence of the inconsolable Queen and five of their nine children. Fortunately bowel conditions such as Crohn’s, which were a mystery to earlier science, are treatable today thanks to advances in modern medicine. But Miss Rappaport hopes her new findings, outlined in her book, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monarchy, [must keep in] will add to our knowledge of his ‘highly underrated man’. She said: ‘“Crohn’s disease doesn’t necessarily kill people, but there is a direct correlation between stress and flare-ups.

‘All the anxiety and stress about Bertie and politics seem likely to have caused a major flare-up. ‘Crohn’s disease was a totally unknown condition in the Victorian period, so the doctors had nothing to go on. And of course they were desperate for a diagnosis. ‘What actually killed him though, in the last few days, was what killed so many people at the time, especially when weakened by illness: congestion of the lungs and pneumonia. ‘It’s time this highly underrated man was given the credit he’s due. Prince Albert was King in all but name, and had been for many years before 1861. ‘But ironically, his sudden death was the making of Victoria as a Queen. ‘Although it took her many years, she did recover from his death, went on to lead the nation and Empire and set her seal on a whole generation.’ SparkNotes: Queen Victoria: The Years of Mourning The Years of Mourning The Years of Mourning, page 2 page 1 of 2 Perhaps the most significant turning point in Queen Victoria's life was the death of Prince Albert in December 1861.

His death sent Victoria into a deep depression, and she stayed in seclusion for many years, rarely appearing in public. She mourned him by wearing black for the remaining forty years of her life. Albert's death came suddenly. In November 1861, he contracted typhoid fever. He lay sick in bed for several weeks, finally succumbing to the disease on December 14. He was only forty-two years old. Victoria was devastated. She wrote to her daughter Victoria shortly afterwards: "How I, who leant on him for all and everything—without whom I did nothing, moved not a finger, arranged not a print or photograph, didn't put on a gown or bonnet if he didn't approve it shall go on, to live, to move, to help myself in difficult moments?" The Queen turned mourning into the chief concern of her existence the next several years. The Prince's rooms in their residences were maintained exactly as he had them when he was alive. Her servants were instructed to bring hot water into his dressing room every day as they had formerly done for his morning shave.

She had statues made of him, displayed mementos of his around the royal palaces, and she spent most of her time secluded in Windsor Castle or in Balmoral up in Scotland, where she had formerly spent so many happy times with her husband. After the first year, her mourning came to be viewed by many in Britain as obsessive, and public unease arose about the Queen's state of mind and the state of the monarchy generally. This unease was aggravated by Victoria's refusal to appear in public except on the rarest occasions. She made her first public appearance only on October 13, 1863, and then only to unveil a statue of Albert at Aberdeen, Scotland. She appeared publicly in London on June 21, 1864, riding out through the streets in an open carriage. She did not personally appear to open Parliament until the 1866 session, and then only reluctantly. In 1866, Victoria developed a curious relationship with a Scottish servant of her household named John Brown.

Brown had been in service to the Queen for several years as a horse attendant, but in the mid-1860s Victoria came to look upon him not so much as a servant as a close friend. Brown was a Scottish highlander who was proud of his heritage. Furthermore, he was rough and informal in his manners, drank frequently, and had a thick Scottish accent. His treatment of the Queen was often surprisingly casual, an attitude which shocked those who saw them together. He was overheard calling her "woman" on at least one occasion. The Queen, however, adored Brown and spent hours at a time with him. She soon gave him control of her household, including unique access to the Queen. In July 1867, the Queen was scheduled to watch a military review in Hyde Park, but her appearance was canceled by her ministers after she had insisted that Brown stand by her side during the event. The royal children came to resent his closeness to their mother—especially during the Queen's illness in 1870 when Brown was permitted to see her, and her own children were not. Much gossip surrounded their unusual relationship. Some Britons began to refer to the queen, jokingly, as "Mrs.

Brown," others said that he was acting as her spiritual medium, continually contacting Prince Albert from the beyond. 1

Question: Who was Queen Victoria's husband?
Answer: Prince Albert