Victoria | queen of United Kingdom | Britannica.com queen of United Kingdom Albert, prince consort of Great Britain and Ireland Victoria, in full Alexandrina Victoria (born May 24, 1819, Kensington Palace, London, England —died January 22, 1901, Osborne, near Cowes , Isle of Wight ), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901) and empress of India (1876–1901). She was the last of the house of Hanover and gave her name to an era, the Victorian Age . During her reign the English monarchy took on its modern ceremonial character. She and her husband, Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha , had nine children, through whose marriages were descended many of the royal families of Europe . Queen Victoria, c. 1890. Overview of Queen Victoria’s reign. Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz Victoria first learned of her future role as a young princess during a history lesson when she was 10 years old.

Almost four decades later Victoria’s governess recalled that the future queen reacted to the discovery by declaring, “I will be good.” This combination of earnestness and egotism marked Victoria as a child of the age that bears her name. The queen, however, rejected important Victorian values and developments. Although she hated pregnancy and childbirth, detested babies, and was uncomfortable in the presence of children, Victoria reigned in a society that idealized both motherhood and the family. She had no interest in social issues, yet the 19th century in Britain was an age of reform. She resisted technological change even while mechanical and technological innovations reshaped the face of European civilization. Most significantly, Victoria was a queen determined to retain political power; yet unwillingly and unwittingly she presided over the transformation of the sovereign’s political role into a ceremonial one and thus preserved the English monarchy. When Victoria became queen, the political role of the crown was by no means clear; nor was the permanence of the throne itself. When she died and her son Edward VII moved from Marlborough House to Buckingham Palace , the change was one of social rather than of political focus; there was no doubt about the monarchy’s continuance. That was the measure of her reign.

Lineage and early life On the death in 1817 of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the prince regent (later George IV ), there was no surviving legitimate offspring of George III ’s 15 children. In 1818, therefore, three of his sons, the dukes of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge , married to provide for the succession. The winner in the race to father the next ruler of Britain was Edward, duke of Kent, fourth son of King George III. His only child was christened Alexandrina Victoria. After his death and George IV’s accession in 1820, Victoria became third in the line of succession to the throne after the Duke of York (died 1827) and the Duke of Clarence (subsequently William IV ), whose own children died in infancy. Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales Victoria, by her own account, “was brought up very simply,” principally at Kensington Palace , where her closest companions, other than her German-born mother, the Duchess of Kent, were her half sister, Féodore, and her governess, Louise (afterward the Baroness) Lehzen, a native of Coburg .

An important father figure to the orphaned princess was her uncle Leopold , her mother’s brother, who lived at Claremont, near Esher, Surrey, until he became king of the Belgians in 1831. Victoria’s childhood was made increasingly unhappy by the machinations of the Duchess of Kent’s advisor, Sir John Conroy. In control of the pliable duchess, Conroy hoped to dominate the future queen of Britain as well. Persuaded by Conroy that the royal dukes, “the wicked uncles,” posed a threat to her daughter, the duchess reared Victoria according to “the Kensington system,” by which she and Conroy systematically isolated Victoria from her contemporaries and her father’s family. Conroy thus aimed to make the princess dependent on and easily led by himself. Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? Strong-willed, and supported by Lehzen, Victoria survived the Kensington system; when she ascended the throne in 1837, she did so alone. Her mother’s actions had estranged her from Victoria and taught the future queen caution in her friendships. Moreover, her retentive memory did not allow her to forgive readily.

Accession to the throne In the early hours of June 20, 1837, Victoria received a call from the archbishop of Canterbury and the lord chamberlain and learned of the death of William IV, third son of George III. Later that morning the Privy Council was impressed by the graceful assurance of the new queen’s demeanour. She was small, carried herself well, and had a delightful silvery voice, which she retained all her life. The accession of a young woman was romantically popular. But because of the existence in Hanover of the Salic law , which prevented succession by a woman, the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover became separated, the latter passing to William IV’s eldest surviving brother, Ernest , the unpopular duke of Cumberland. The crown of Queen Victoria; in the Jewel House at the Tower of London. Tim Graham/Getty Images Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies The queen, who had never before had a room to herself, exiled her mother to a distant set of apartments when they moved into Buckingham Palace. Conroy was pensioned off. Only Lehzen, of whom Victoria was still in awe, remained close to the queen.

Even her beloved uncle Leopold was politely warned off discussions of English politics. “Alone” at last, she enjoyed her new-found freedom. “Victoria,” wrote her cousin, Prince Albert , who later married her, is said to be incredibly stubborn and her extreme obstinacy to be constantly at war with her good nature; she delights in Court ceremonies, etiquette and trivial formalities.…She is said not to take the slightest pleasure in nature and to enjoy sitting up at night and sleeping late into the day. It was, in retrospect, “the least sensible and satisfactory time in her whole life”; but at the time it was exciting and enjoyable, the more so because of her romantic friendship with Lord Melbourne , the prime minister . Melbourne was a crucial influence on Victoria, in many ways an unfortunate one. The urbane and sophisticated prime minister fostered the new queen’s self-confidence and enthusiasm for her role; he also encouraged her to ignore or minimize social problems and to attribute all discontent and unrest to the activities of a small group of agitators. Moreover, because of Melbourne, Victoria became an ardent Whig.

Victoria’s constitutionally dangerous political partisanship contributed to the first two crises of her reign, both of which broke in 1839. The Hastings affair began when Lady Flora Hastings, a maid of honour who was allied and connected to the Tories , was forced by Victoria to undergo a medical examination for suspected pregnancy. The gossip, when it was discovered that the queen had been mistaken, became the more damaging when later in the year Lady Flora died of a disease that had not been diagnosed by the examining physician. The enthusiasm of the populace over the coronation (June 28, 1838) swiftly dissipated. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Between the two phases of the Hastings case “the bedchamber crisis” intervened. When Melbourne resigned in May 1839, Sir Robert Peel , the Conservative leader, stipulated that the Whig ladies of the bedchamber should be removed. The queen imperiously refused, not without Melbourne’s encouragement. “The Queen of England will not submit to such trickery,” she said. Peel therefore declined to take office, which Melbourne rather weakly resumed.

“I was very young then,” wrote the queen long afterward, “and perhaps I should act differently if it was all to be done again.” The Albertine monarchy Victoria’s wedding to Prince Albert served as a stage for displays of political partisanship: very few Tories received invitations, and the Tories themselves rejected Victoria’s request that Albert be granted rank and precedence second only to her own. Victoria responded violently, “Monsters! You Tories shall be punished. Revenge! Revenge!” Marriage to Albert, however, lessened the queen’s enthusiasm for Melbourne and the Whigs. She admitted many years later regarding Melbourne that “Albert thinks I worked myself up to what really became rather foolish.” Albert thus shifted Victoria’s political sympathies; he also became the dominant figure and influence in her life. She quickly grew to depend on him for everything; soon she “didn’t put on a gown or a bonnet if he didn’t approve it.” No more did Victoria rule alone. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert riding in Windsor Park.

© Photos.com/Thinkstock Marriage to Albert Attracted by Albert’s good looks and encouraged by her uncle Leopold, Victoria proposed to her cousin on October 15, 1839, just five days after he had arrived at Windsor on a visit to the English court. She described her impressions of him in the journal she kept throughout her life: “Albert really is quite charming, and so extremely handsome…a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist; my heart is quite going.” They were married on February 10, 1840, the queen dressed entirely in articles of British manufacture. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a youthful married couple. © Photos.com/Thinkstock Open Door policy Children quickly followed. Victoria, the princess royal (the “Vicky” of the Letters), was born in 1840; in 1858 she married the crown prince of Prussia and later became the mother of the emperor William II . The Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) was born in 1841.

Then followed Princess Alice, afterward grand duchess of Hesse, 1843; Prince Alfred, afterward duke of Edinburgh and duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 1844; Princess Helena (Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein), 1846; Princess Louise (duchess of Argyll), 1848; Prince Arthur (duke of Connaught), 1850; Prince Leopold (duke of Albany), 1853; and Princess Beatrice (Princess Henry of Battenberg), 1857. The queen’s first grandchild was born in 1859, and her first great-grandchild in 1879. There were 37 great-grandchildren alive at her death. Victoria never lost her early passion for Albert: “Without him everything loses its interest.” Despite conflicts produced by the queen’s uncontrollable temper and recurrent fits of depression, which usually occurred during and after pregnancy, the couple had a happy marriage. Victoria, however, was never reconciled to the childbearing that accompanied her marital bliss—the “shadow-side of marriage,” as she called it.

Victoria explained to her eldest daughter in 1858: What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic. At the beginning of their marriage the queen was insistent that her husband should have no share in the government of the country. Within six months, on Melbourne’s repeated suggestion, the prince was allowed to start seeing the dispatches, then to be present when the queen saw her ministers. The concession became a routine, and during her first pregnancy the prince received a “key to the secret boxes.” As one unwanted pregnancy followed another and as Victoria became increasingly dependent on her husband, Albert assumed an ever-larger political role. By 1845 Charles Greville, the observer of royal affairs, could write, “it is obvious that while she has the title, he is really discharging the functions of the Sovereign .

He is the King to all intents and purposes.” Victoria, once so enthusiastic about her role, came to conclude that “we women are not made for governing.” Relations with Peel The prince came into his own to negotiate with Peel a compromise on the bedchamber question after the Melbourne government had been defeated in the general election of 1841. The queen’s first interview with Peel went well, eased by Melbourne’s advice to his successor: The Queen is not conceited—she is aware there are many things she cannot understand and she likes to have them explained to her elementarily—not at length and in detail but shortly and clearly. If, as Lady Lyon once noted, “there was ‘a vein of iron’ which ran through the Queen’s extraordinary character,” the iron could bend; Victoria was able to revise her opinions and reevaluate her judgments.

Peel’s very real distress when in the summer of 1842 an attempt was made to assassinate the queen—together with the affinity between the prince and the new prime minister—soon converted the “cold odd man” of the queen’s earlier comment into “a great statesman, a man who thinks but little of party and never of himself.” Lord Aberdeen , the foreign secretary, also became a great favourite. “We felt so safe with them both,” she told King Leopold. The departure of the possessive Lehzen for Germany in 1842 signaled Albert’s victory in the battle between the two for Victoria’s loyalty and for power in the royal household. He became effectively the queen’s private secretary—according to himself, “her permanent minister.” As a result of Albert’s diligence and refusal to accept the obstacles that ministers threw in his path, the management of the queen’s properties was rationalized and her income thus increased. A visible sign of the prince’s power and influence was the building of the royal residences of Osborne, on the Isle of Wight, and Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

Albert, who taught the once party-loving Victoria to despise London, played a central role in the acquisition of both properties as well as in designing the homes he and Victoria erected on them between 1845 and 1855. Victoria described Osborne as “our island home” and retreated there frequently; it was, however, at Balmoral that she was happiest. The royal pair and their family were able to live there “with the greatest simplicity and ease,” wrote Greville. The queen soon came to hold the Highlanders in more esteem than she held any other of her subjects. She liked the simpler life of the Highlands , as her published journal was to reveal: she came to make the most of the thin stream of Scottish blood in her veins; also, so long as the sermons were short enough, she came to prefer the Scottish form of religious service. “You know,” she was to tell her prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone , “I am not much of an Episcopalian”; and she developed a comfort in the consolations of the Reverend Norman Macleod and also a delight in the plain speech of John Brown, the Highland servant who stalked with Albert and became her personal attendant.

The royal couple’s withdrawal to Scotland and the Isle of Wight bore witness to a new sort of British monarchy. In their quest for privacy and intimacy Albert and Victoria adopted a way of life that mirrored that of their middle-class subjects, admittedly on a grander scale. Although Albert was interested in intellectual and scientific matters, Victoria’s tastes were closer to those of most of her people. She enjoyed the novels of Charles Dickens and patronized the circus and waxwork exhibitions. Both Victoria and Albert, however, differed from many in the middle class in their shared preference for nudes in painting and sculpture. Victoria was not the prude that many claimed her to be. She was also no Sabbatarian: “I am not at all an admirer or approver of our very dull Sunday.” Victoria’s delight in mingling with the Scottish poor at Balmoral did little to raise the level of her social awareness. Although in 1846 she and Albert supported the repeal of the Corn Laws (protectionist legislation that kept the price of British grain artificially high) in order to relieve distress in famine-devastated Ireland, they remained much more interested in and involved with the building of Osborne and foreign policy than in the tragedy of Ireland.

Victoria, moreover, gave her full support to the government’s policy of repression of the Chartists (advocates of far-reaching political and social reform) and believed the workers in her realm to be contented and loyal. In 1848, rejoicing in the failure of the last great Chartist demonstration in London, the queen wrote: The loyalty of the people at large has been very striking and their indignation at their peace being interfered with by such worthless and wanton men—immense. The consequences of continental revolutions led her to conclude: Revolutions are always bad for the country, and the cause of untold misery to the people. Obedience to the laws and to the Sovereign, is obedience to a higher Power, divinely instituted for the good of the people, not the Sovereign, who has equally duties and obligations. Yet, revolution or no revolution, many of her people lived in “untold misery,” a fact Victoria rarely confronted. For both the queen and the prince consort the highlight of their reign came in 1851, with the opening of the Great Exhibition . Albert poured himself into the task of organizing the international trade show that became a symbol of the Victorian Age.

Housed in the architectural marvel of the Crystal Palace , a splendid, greenhouse-inspired glass building erected in Hyde Park , the Great Exhibition displayed Britain’s wealth and technological achievements to a wondering world. To Victoria the success of the Great Exhibition provided further evidence of her husband’s genius: “I do feel proud at the thought of what my beloved Albert’s great mind has conceived.” Profits from the Great Exhibition funded what became the South Kensington complex of colleges and museums. Albert has been credited with teaching Victoria the importance of remaining above party. Certainly he saw the danger in the Whig partisanship she openly displayed before their marriage; more clearly than Victoria he realized the fine sense of balance required of a constitutional monarch. Albert’s own actions, however, such as his much-criticized appearance in the gallery of the House of Commons during Peel’s speech on the first day of the Corn Laws debates (and thus his open and partisan show of support for Peel), revealed his political sympathies. Gladstone noted in 1846 that the Prince is very strongly Conservative in his politics and his influence with the Q. is over-ruling; through him she has become so attached to Conservative ideas that she could hardly endure the idea of the opposite Party as her ministers.

Like the queen, Albert believed that the sovereign had an important and active role to play in British politics. The fluid political situation operating during the prince’s lifetime made such an active role seem possible. After the repeal of the Corn Laws (1846) there was a period, not ending until the election of 1868, when politics tended to consist of a series of temporary alliances between splinter groups and no single group could guarantee its extended control over the House of Commons : the golden age of the private member, a condition rendering active political intervention by the crown not only possible but sometimes even necessary. There was a role for the cabinet maker, especially in helping to compose coalitions. Its significance must not, however, be overemphasized; although Victoria probably would not have admitted it, the queen’s role, albeit “substantial,” was always “secondary.” Foreign affairs The tradition also persisted that the sovereign had a special part to play in foreign affairs and could conduct them alone with a secretary of state . Victoria and Albert had relatives throughout Europe and were to have more. Moreover, they visited and were visited by other monarchs.

Albert was determined that this personal intelligence should not be disregarded and that the queen should never become (as his own mentor the Baron Stockmar had indicated) “a mandarin figure which has to nod its head in assent or shake it in denial as its Minister pleases.” The result was a clash with Lord Palmerston , the foreign secretary, who could look back on a career of high office beginning before the royal couple was born. The prince distrusted Palmerston’s character, disapproved of his methods, thought his policy shallow, and disagreed with his concept of the constitution. Even after Victoria insisted to Palmerston in 1850, “having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the minister,” the foreign secretary continued to follow policies disapproved of by both Albert and Victoria, such as his encouragement of nationalist movements that threatened to dismember the Austrian Empire. Finally, after Palmerston expressed his approval of the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III ) in 1851 without consulting the queen, the prime minister, Lord John Russell , dismissed him. Within a few months the immensely popular Palmerston was back in office, however, as home secretary.

He would serve twice as prime minister. After Albert’s death Victoria’s disapproval of Palmerston diminished; his conservative domestic policy and his insistence that Britain receive its due in world affairs accorded with her own later views. On the eve of the Crimean War (1854–56) the royal pair encountered a wave of unpopularity, and Albert was suspected, without any foundation, of trying to influence the government in favour of the Russian cause. There was, however, a marked revival of royalist sentiment as the war wore on. The queen personally superintended the committees of ladies who organized relief for the wounded and eagerly seconded the efforts of Florence Nightingale : she visited crippled soldiers in the hospitals and instituted the Victoria Cross for gallantry. With the death of Prince Albert on December 14, 1861, the Albertine monarchy came to an end. Albert’s influence on the queen was lasting. He had changed her personal habits and her political sympathies. From him she had received training in orderly ways of business, in hard work, in the expectation of royal intervention in ministry making at home, and in the establishment of a private (because royal) intelligence service abroad. The English monarchy had changed.

As the historian G.M. Young said, “In place of a definite but brittle prerogative it had acquired an undefinable but potent influence.” Widowhood After Albert’s death Victoria descended into deep depression—“those paroxysms of despair and yearning and longing and of daily, nightly longing to die…for the first three years never left me.” Even after climbing out of depression, she remained in mourning and in partial retirement. She balked at performing the ceremonial functions expected of the monarch and withdrew to Balmoral and Osborne four months out of every year, heedless of the inconvenience and strain this imposed on ministers. After an initial period of respect and sympathy for the queen’s grief, the public grew increasingly impatient with its absent sovereign. No one, however, could budge the stubborn Victoria. Queen Victoria. EB Inc. Although Victoria resisted carrying out her ceremonial duties, she remained determined to retain an effective political role in the period after Albert’s death and to behave as he would have ordained. Her testing point was, then, her “dear one’s” point of view; and this she had known at a particular and thereafter not necessarily relevant period in English political life.

Her training and his influence were ill suited to the “swing of the pendulum” politics that better party organization and a wider electorate enjoined after the Reform Bill of 1867. And since she blamed her son and heir for Albert’s death—the prince consort had come back ill from Cambridge, where he had gone to see the Prince of Wales regarding an indiscretion the young prince had committed in Ireland —she did not hesitate to vent her loneliness upon him or to refuse him all responsibility. “It quite irritates me to see him in the room,” she startled Lord Clarendon by saying. The breach was never really healed, and as time went on the queen was clearly envious of the popularity of the Prince and Princess of Wales. She liked to be, but she took little trouble to see that she was, popular. It was despite, yet because of, Albert that Victoria succumbed to Benjamin Disraeli and thus made herself a partisan in the most famous political rivalry of the 19th century.

Albert had thought Disraeli insufficiently a gentleman and remembered his bitter attacks on Peel over the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; the prince, on the other hand, had approved of Gladstone , Disraeli’s political rival. Yet Disraeli was able to enter into the queen’s grief, flatter her, restore her self-confidence, and make the lonely crown an easier burden. Behind all his calculated attacks on her affections there was a bond of mutual loneliness, a note of mystery and romanticism, and, besides, the return to good gossip. Disraeli, moreover, told the queen in 1868 that it would be “his delight and duty, to render the transaction of affairs as easy to your Majesty, as possible.” Since the queen was only too ready to consider herself overworked, this approach was especially successful. Gladstone, on the other hand, would never acknowledge that she was, as she put it, “dead beat,” perhaps because he never was himself; Disraeli, however, tired easily. The contrast between Disraeli’s gay, often malicious , gossipy letters and Gladstone’s 40 sides of foolscap is obvious.

And there was no Albert to give her a neat précis. Gladstone, moreover, held the throne as an institution in such awe that it affected his relations with its essentially feminine occupant. His “feeling” for the crown, said Lady Ponsonby, was “always snubbed.” The queen had no patience with Gladstone’s moralistic (and, she believed, hypocritical) approach to politics and foreign affairs. His persistent and often tactless attempts to persuade her to resume her ceremonial duties especially enraged her. Over the problem of Ireland their paths separated ever more widely. Whereas “to pacify Ireland” had become the “mission” of Gladstone’s life, the queen (like the majority of her subjects) had little understanding of, or sympathy for, Irish grievances. She disliked disorder and regarded the suggestion of Irish Home Rule as sheer disloyalty. The proposal of an Irish “Balmoral” was repugnant to her, especially when it was suggested that the Prince of Wales might go in her place. To avoid the Irish Sea , she claimed to be a bad sailor; yet she was willing in her later years to cross the English Channel almost every year.

In all, she made but four visits to Ireland, the last in 1900 being provoked by her appreciation of the gallantry of the Irish regiments in the South African War . The news of Gladstone’s defeat in 1874 delighted the queen. “What an important turn the elections have taken,” she wrote. It shows that the country is not Radical. What a triumph, too, Mr. Disraeli has obtained and what a good sign this large Conservative majority is of the state of the country, which really required (as formerly) a strong Conservative party! If, years before, Melbourne, almost despite himself, had made her a good little Whig, and if Albert had left her, in general, a Peelite, temperamental and subsequently doctrinal differences with Gladstone helped make it easy for Disraeli to turn Victoria into a stout supporter of the Conservative Party. One of the bonds shared by Victoria and Disraeli was a romantic attachment to the East and the idea of empire.

Although she supported Disraeli’s reform of the franchise in 1867, Victoria had little interest in or sympathy with his program of social reform; she was, however, entranced by his imperialism and by his assertive foreign policy. She applauded his brilliant maneuvering, which led to the British purchase of slightly less than half of the shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 (a move that prevented the canal from falling entirely under French control), especially since he presented the canal as a personal gift to her: “It is just settled; you have it, Ma’am.” The addition of “Empress of India” in 1876 to the royal title thrilled the queen even more. Victoria and Disraeli also agreed on their answer to the vexing “Eastern question”—what was to be done with the declining Turkish empire? Even the revelation of Turkish atrocities against rebelling Bulgarians failed to sway the sovereign and her prime minister from their position that Britain’s best interests lay in supporting Turkey , the “Sick Man” of Europe. The fact that Gladstone took the opposing view, of course, strengthened their pro-Turkish sympathies.

With the outbreak of a Russo-Turkish war in 1877, however, Disraeli found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to restrain his bellicose sovereign, who demanded that Britain enter the war against Russia . At the Congress of Berlin in 1878 Disraeli emerged triumphant: Russian influence in the Balkans was reduced, and Britain gained control of the strategically located island of Cyprus . The queen was ecstatic. Victoria’s delight in Disraeli’s premiership made further conflict with Gladstone inevitable. When in September 1879 a dissolution of Parliament seemed imminent , the queen wrote to the Marchioness of Ely (who was, after the Duchess of Argyll, perhaps her most intimate friend): Dear Janie,…I hope and trust the Government will be able to go on after the Election, as change is so disagreeable and so bad for the country; but if it should not, I wish the principal people of the Opposition should know there are certain things which I never can consent to.… I never COULD take Mr. Gladstone…as my Minister again, for I never could have the slightest particle of confidence in Mr.

Gladstone after his violent, mischievous, and dangerous conduct for the last three years. After the blow fell with the Conservative Party’s defeat in 1880, Victoria sent for Lord Hartington . Mr. Gladstone she could have nothing to do with, for she considers his whole conduct since ’76 to have been one series of violent, passionate invective against and abuse of Lord Beaconsfield, and that he caused the Russian war. Nevertheless, as Hartington pointed out, it was Gladstone whom she had to have. She made no secret of her hostility, she hoped he would retire, and she remained in correspondence with Lord Beaconsfield (as Disraeli had become). Gladstone, indeed, said that he himself “would never be surprised to see her turn the Government out, after the manner of her uncles.” The queen abhorred Gladstone’s lack of Disraelian vision of Britain’s role in the world.

Over the abandonment of Kandahar in Afghanistan, in 1881, for example, Sir Henry Ponsonby had never seen her so angry: “The Queen has never before been treated,” she told him, “with such want of respect and consideration in the forty three and a half years she has worn her thorny crown.” Victoria convinced herself that Gladstone’s government, dominated (she believed) by Radicals, threatened the stability of the nation: No one is more truly Liberal in her heart than the Queen, but she has always strongly deprecated the great tendency of the present Government to encourage instead of checking the stream of destructive democracy which has become so alarming.…She will not be a Sovereign of a Democratic Monarchy. Nevertheless, Victoria did act as an important mediating influence between the two houses to bring about the compromise that resulted in the third parliamentary Reform Act in 1884. Victoria never acclimatized herself to the effects of the new electorate on party organization. No longer was the monarchy normally necessary as cabinet maker; yet, the queen was reluctant to accept her more limited role. Thus, in 1886 she sought to avoid a third Gladstone ministry by attempting to form an anti-Radical coalition.

Her attempt failed. Irish Home Rule, not the queen, would defeat the “People’s William.” Last years In the Salisbury administration (1895–1902), with which her long reign ended, Victoria was eventually to find not only the sort of ministry with which she felt comfortable but one which lent a last ray of colour to her closing years by its alliance, through Joseph Chamberlain , with the mounting imperialism that she had so greatly enjoyed in Disraeli’s day when he had made her empress of India. The South African War (1899–1902) dominated her final years. The sufferings of her soldiers in South Africa aroused the queen to a level of activity and public visibility that she had avoided for decades. With a demanding schedule of troop inspections, medal ceremonies, and visits to military hospitals, Victoria finally became the exemplar of a modern monarch. Victoria absorbed a great deal of the time of her ministers, especially Gladstone’s, but after 1868 it may be doubted whether, save in rare instances, it made a great deal of difference. She may have postponed an occasional evil day; she certainly hampered an occasional career.

And sometimes that “continuous political experience,” which Walter Bagehot remarked as a long-lived monarch’s greatest asset, was invaluable: in stopping “red tapings,” as the queen called them, or in breaking a logjam. Meanwhile—“a comparatively late growth”—she had gained the affection of her subjects. The sheer endurance of her reign in a time of swift change deepened her symbolic value and hence heightened her popularity. Lord Salisbury observed in the House of Lords (January 25, 1901) after her death that: She had an extraordinary knowledge of what her people would think—extraordinary, because it could not come from any personal intercourse. I have said for years that I have always felt that when I knew what the Queen thought, I knew pretty certainly what views her subjects would take, and especially the middle class of her subjects. The queen, as the Jubilees of 1887 and 1897 showed, was popular. Gone were the days when pamphlets were circulated asking what she did with her money. More and more fully with advancing years, she was able to satisfy the imagination of the middle class—and the poorer class—of her subjects.

She remained, nevertheless, either aloof from or in opposition to many of the important political, social, and intellectual currents of the later Victorian period. She never reconciled herself to the advance of democracy, and she thought the idea of female suffrage anathema . The sufferings of an individual worker could engage her sympathy; the working class, however, remained outside her field of vision. After Albert’s death Victoria had little contact with intellectual and artistic subjects and so remained happily unaware of the unsettling new directions being explored in the world around her. Her reign was shaped by the new technology—without the railroad and the telegraph, her extended stays in Osborne and Balmoral would have been impossible—yet she never welcomed innovation . Many of the movements of the day passed the aged queen by, many irritated her, but the stupendous hard work that Albert had taught her went on—the meticulous examination of the boxes, the regular signature of the papers. To the very end Victoria remained a passionate and strong-willed woman. Those who were nearest to her came completely under her spell; yet all from the Prince of Wales down stood in considerable awe.

A breach of the rules could still make a fearsome change in the kindly, managing great-grandmother in black silk dress and white cap. The eyes would begin to protrude, the mouth to go down at the corners. Those who suffered her displeasure never forgot it, nor did she. Yielding to nobody else’s comfort and keeping every anniversary, she lived surrounded by mementos, photographs, miniatures, busts, and souvenirs in chilly rooms at the end of drafty corridors, down which one tiptoed past Indian attendants to the presence. Nobody knocked; a gentle scratching on the door was all that she permitted. Every night at Windsor Albert’s clothes were laid out on the bed, every morning fresh water was put in the basin in his room. She slept with a photograph—over her head—taken of his head and shoulders as he lay dead. Queen Victoria had fought a long rearguard action against the growth of “democratic monarchy”; yet, in some ways, she had done more than anyone else to create it. She had made the monarchy respectable and had thereby guaranteed its continuance—not as a political power but as a political institution.

Her long reign had woven a legend , and, as her political power ebbed away, her political value grew. It lay, perhaps, more in what the electorate thought of her, indeed felt about her, than in what she ever was or certainly ever believed herself to be. Paradoxically enough, her principal contribution to the British monarchy and her political importance lay in regard to those “dignified” functions that she was accused of neglecting rather than to the “business” functions that, perhaps sometimes, she did not neglect enough. The queen died after a short and painless illness. “We all feel a bit motherless today,” wrote Henry James , “mysterious little Victoria is dead and fat vulgar Edward is King.” She was buried beside Prince Albert in the mausoleum at Frogmore near Windsor . Young said, She had lived long enough. The idol of her people, she had come to press on the springs of government with something of the weight of an idol, and in the innermost circle of public life the prevailing sentiment was relief. Her essential achievement was simple.

By the length of her reign, the longest in English history until that of Elizabeth II , she had restored both dignity and popularity to a tarnished crown: an achievement of character, as well as of longevity. Historians may differ in their assessment of her political acumen , her political importance, or her role as a constitutional monarch. None will question her high sense of duty or the transparent honesty, the massive simplicity, of her royal character. A Wedding Dress of Spitalfields Silk | Spitalfields Life A Wedding Dress of Spitalfields Silk April 29, 2011 by the gentle author At Kensington Palace is preserved a modest white satin dress of Spitalfields silk of one hundred and seventy years old, made for a tiny woman with a miniscule waist, barely five feet tall and just twenty years of age. Lain upon the table in the former dining room of Princess Margaret and sequestered from natural light behind closed curtains, it has a delicacy that is almost ethereal, as if it were a gown left behind by a sylph or a passing fairy – but in fact this was the dress that Queen Victoria wore when she wed Prince Albert on 10th February 1840.

Just four months earlier, Victoria had set eyes upon her grown-up cousin for the first time only yards from where I had come to view her dress. And as I was led through the echoing passages at the Palace – where Spitalfields Life was granted special access to see this garment sewn of cloth woven in Spitalfields – I came into a fine stair hall known as the Stone Steps at the core of the building. Victoria was born in a room at the top of these steps, which as a child she was not permitted to climb or descend without another holding her hand, such were the stifling restrictions known as the Kensington System imposed upon the young queen by her mother. Although Victoria had been crowned at eighteen, until she married she could not move out to live independently at Buckingham Palace. Yet upon these steps on 10th October 1839, Victoria was aroused by a vision of such rapture that it changed her life -“At half past seven I went to the top of the staircase and received my two dear cousins Ernest and Albert, – whom I found grown and changed and embellished. It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert who is beautiful….

so excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate mustachios and slight but very slight whiskers, a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist.” This was the man who would father her twelve children, and five days after their meeting she proposed to him. When Victoria chose the dress to marry Albert, she broke from the lavish precedent of George IV’s eldest daughter Princess Charlotte who had married in a heavy dress of silk net embroidered with silver. Victoria might have been expected to wear red velvet robes trimmed with ermine and a gown of ostentatious wealth for her marriage, but instead she chose to wear a simple white satin dress that was within the aspiration of any woman of means – a decision that reflected her wish not to emphasise the difference in status between herself and her groom. The dress was made in two pieces, a skirt and bodice sewn of the finest gauge of ivory silk satin woven in Spitalfields. The simple bell-like skirt was supported by layers of petticoats and Victoria wore a corset of whalebone beneath the bodice.

White Honiton lace ruffles adorned her sleeves, with a band of lace at her neckline, while a lace overskirt and train of lace completed the dress. The graceful simplicity of Victora’s youthful conception broke with tradition, expressive of her confident independent spirit, yet it initiated the custom for the white wedding dresses that we know today. Although plainest among the wedding dresses in the royal collection, Victoria’s is the most radical in its assertion of the wearer’s personality, expressive of her personal desire not to outshine Albert, while equally, in her selection of Spitalfields silk and Honiton lace, celebrating the accomplishment of the native textile industry. A gesture of consummate diplomacy when there were those who might criticise her choice of a foreign husband. But beyond these declared intentions, through its lack of decoration, Victoria’s dress has a human quality as a piece of clothing, emphasised here in the place where she lived, and where one day she walked out of the door forever to commence her new life with Albert. “10th February 1840, Got up at a quarter to nine, Mamma came and brought me a nosegay of orange flowers.

Wrote my journal, had my hair dressed and the wreath of orange flowers put on. Saw Albert for the last time alone, as my bridegroom. Dressed. I wore a white satin gown with a very deep flounce of Honiton lace, imitation of old. I wore my Turkish diamond necklace and earrings and Albert’s beautiful sapphire brooch…” Once she arrived at Buckingham Palace after her marriage – Victoria wrote - “I went and sat on the sofa in my dressing-room with Albert, and we talked together there from ten minutes to two till twenty minutes past two.” Only this silk gown and its creases were witness to that intimate half hour when Albert and Victoria were first alone together as husband and wife. But we know she carried the affectionate memories of the day, because Victoria continued to wear the train of Honiton lace from the wedding dress for the rest of her life and, even after Albert’s death, as an old lady in black, she wrapped herself in the white lace that enshrined her tenderest emotions. Standing alone in the small dining room of the apartment in Kensington Palace, I cast my eyes upon the one hundred and seventy year old gown gleaming upon the table for one last time.

This dress of Spitalfields silk was an instrument of liberation for Victoria, to leave the restrictions of her childhood and her past, to enter the arms of the man she loved, and to walk out in the wide world of potential that lay before her. Marriage of Victoria and Albert by George Hayter, 1840 Top: Queen Victoria in her Wedding Dress by Franz Winterhalter, 1840 With grateful thanks to Joanna Marshner, Senior Curator, Kensington Royal Palace . ‘Revenge’: Victoria Dead After Explosion? — Season 4 Episode 20 recap | TVLine 100 Revenge fans, did that really just happen? Though promos for Sunday’s episode touted a massive explosion at Grayson Manor, there was one key detail ABC chose to leave out: Victoria ignited the blast with herself still inside! RELATED May Sweeps Scorecard 2015: Weddings, Deaths, Breakups, Sex, Resurrections, Firings and More! So… is that it? Did the Queen of the Hamptons really conclude that killing herself, and presumably framing Amanda, would make her the winner of Revenge‘s ongoing war?

My hunch is that Victoria, like most “dead” characters on this show, somehow managed to survive the explosion — though you have to admit, that was a hell of a sequence. [Update: Click here to find out Victoria’s fate!] The episode’s final moments also featured the return of Mason Treadwell , who is understandably peeved that Amanda chose to unexpectedly out herself, thus rendering his planned tell-all fairly irrelevant. But, honestly, who has time to care about Mason when Victoria might be dead? Priorities, people! Elsewhere in the Hamptons this week… THE BIG C | During yet another scuffle with Stevie — this time over the changing of Carl’s birth certificate to reflect his true parentage — David revealed that he’s been diagnosed with lymphoma. His doctor caught it early, and he’s already beginning an aggressive course of treatment, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell Amanda. (Because that’s exactly what the Clarke family needs: more secrets!) At least he’ll have Stevie’s support, and possibly more, as he goes through this difficult process. HEAD WEST, YOUNG JACK | Jack Porter, Hollywood hotshot?

After a bit of soul searching and plenty of chiseled-chin scratching, Jack finally figured out his next move — and, unfortunately, it doesn’t involve Emily, or even the Hamptons for that matter. Jack announced plans to move to Los Angeles for a fresh start with Carl, which forced Amanda to (finally!) own up to her feelings. “I don’t deserve him,” she told Nolan… and Ben, who was apparently lurking in the shadows like some sort of gorgeous crazy person. The Hamptons’ newest detective was, unsurprisingly, disappointed to hear Amanda’s confession, though I think I speak for every single fan when I say it was about damn time. She did her best to stop Jack from taking off, but it seems that not even Amanda Clarke can overcome a powered-off phone. THE EX GAMES | Speaking of phones… Despite Louise’s best efforts to destroy her ex-husband’s happiness, she learned that it’s futile to challenge Nolan Ross — especially using technology. She attempted to record him confessing to attacking Victoria, or at least knowing about the attack, but all she ended up with was a reset cell phone.

In fact, the evening was a double-fail for ol’ Louise, because Nolan and Tony’s relationship is apparently stronger than ever. At least she has Margaux’s cold, unfeeling shoulder to rest her head on. That’s… something. Right? Revenge fans, let’s talk: Do you think Victoria is really dead? Is there still hope for Jack and Emily? And, ugh, what is it going to take for Ben to just go away forever? Drop a comment with your thoughts on the episode below. If you like TVLine, you'll LOVE our weekly newsletter. Click here to subscribe. Were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert both illegitimate? | Daily Mail Online Were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert both illegitimate? comments A film premiered last night shows the many plots to kill the young Queen Victoria. But her biographer reveals the real story behind this remarkable couple is even more sensational... The day is bright and sunny, and the youthful Queen Victoria, with the handsome young Prince Albert at her side, is trotting through a London park in an open carriage, when - BANG! A gun is fired. Prince Albert slumps over his wife, with blood pouring from him.

Victoria and the British Crown have been saved through his noble action, though he is wounded. This is a scene from the film The Young Victoria, which will be released this week, with Emily Blunt as the Queen and Rupert Friend as the Prince Consort. It is not an invented scene, but it is grossly exaggerated. Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend in The Young Victoria What actually happened was that Prince Albert saw a 'theatrical little man' wielding a pistol in the crowd as he and the Queen drove down Constitution Hill in London in her open droshky (low-wheeled carriage). To protect her, he bravely flung himself over his wife, turning his back to the gunman. In fact, the man pointing his gun was quickly overwhelmed by the crowds. There was no bloodshed and no one was hit by a bullet. On another occasion, when Prince Albert and the Queen were out driving, the Prince saw a different man pointing a gun at them, but it misfired.

He told Sir Robert Peel (the Prime Minister) that evening, that he had seen 'a man of the age from 26 to 30, with a shabby hat and of dirty appearance, stretch out his hand and snap a small pistol at the carriage window' from a distance of three or four feet. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share With what might seem insane bravery (it would not be allowed by security forces today), the Queen resolved to ride out again the following day to see if her would-be assassin might return. He did. The man was the son of a stage carpenter from Covent Garden, and his name was John Francis. And he did indeed pull the trigger, but it misfired once again. There was now enough evidence to arrest him. When it was suggested that he was mad, the Queen said: 'He was not in the least mad, but very cunning.' He was condemned to death, a sentence which was commuted to penal servitude. Two days later, the Queen was again shot at on her way to the Chapel Royal, this time by a hunchbacked dwarf named John Bean. In the event, he never posed any danger - his pistol was loaded with tobacco and paper.

These were only some of the attempts made upon the life of the young Queen Victoria. The last such attack was in 1850, when she was visiting her uncle Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. As her carriage squeezed through the gateway of his house in Piccadilly, her assailant, an officer in the 10th Hussars, Robert Pate, hit her with his walking stick. An illustration from 1840 titled 'Leap Year' shows Queen Victoria proposing to Prince Albert at Windsor Castle in 1839 He, too, was immediately set upon by the crowds, but this time she had been badly bruised and she bore a scar on her neck for ten years. It was suggested that she cancel a proposed visit to the opera that evening.

She retorted: 'If I do not go, it will be thought I am seriously hurt.' 'But you are hurt, ma'am.' 'Very well, then, every one shall see how little I mind it.' It is an extraordinary fact, as the great Victorian statesman Lord Shaftesbury noted in his journal, that 'the profligate George IV [Victoria's uncle] passed through a life of selfishness and sin without a single proved attempt to take it. This mild and virtuous young woman has, four times already, been exposed to imminent peril'. And although the screenplay of the new film (written by Julian Fellowes) invents the fact that Prince Albert was wounded, the incident in the droshky gives him the opportunity to explain to Victoria why he risked his life for hers. Of course it was a demonstration of his love - and that thrilled her above anything. But more than that, Albert told his young Queen that, while he was replaceable, she was not. For the truth is that, if anyone had succeeded in killing Queen Victoria before she gave birth, it is highly questionable whether the British monarchy would have survived at all.

Not one of her grandfather George III's fat, dissolute sons had managed to produce a robust heir. Her uncle George IV's daughter, Princess Charlotte, died aged 21 in 1817. King William IV, George IV's younger brother who inherited the throne, had ten children by the actress Mrs Jordan. Unfortunately, although they were a strapping, vigorous brood, who went on themselves to breed many an interesting descendant (such as John Julius Norwich the historian and even David Cameron who is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Mrs Jordan), none was legitimate. Another scene from The Young Victoria. Was there more to the Queen than meets the eye? It meant everything really hung on the dumpling-daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Kent - the princess who would become Queen Victoria. Her father died when she was in her infancy and it is almost impossible to conceive of the paranoia in court circles when she was young that she - and therefore the monarchy - might not survive. Her childhood was a nightmare - her mother kept Victoria under more or less constant supervision.

Even aged 18 she was still not allowed to go up and down stairs without someone holding her hand, and all her food was tasted for poison before she ate it. For a strong-minded girl and young woman, the constraints were all but intolerable. Victoria was kept prisoner by her mother in Kensington Palace. They shared a bedroom until the day she became Queen. She was supervised at every turn either by the Duchess of Kent or by her Governess, the Baroness Lehzen. She was never allowed out to play on her own. In fact, for Victoria, even to have visitors was all but unknown. Like a princess in a German fairy story, she was kept immured in case someone tried to kill her - there was, after all, an air of revolution in Europe and the immense poverty after the Napoleonic Wars made her an even more likely target. In reality, the charming Emily Blunt is not only too pretty to convey what the young Victoria was like; she is too mild-tempered. The actual Victoria was all but bursting with understandable frustration at the hour-by-hour supervision she was forced to endure. Moreover, the future Queen was dominated by the evil genius of Sir John Conroy, Comptroller of the Duchess's household.

Members of William IV's court joked about the 'Conroyal Family' at Kensington Palace, and in later life Queen Victoria told the Duke of Wellington that one reason she hated Sir John was that she had witnessed 'some familiarities' between the Irish soldier and her mother. Victoria was an intelligent - if maddening - woman. Surely she guessed, or feared, that she was Conroy's daughter? The old Duke of Kent, her supposed father, was well 'past it' by the time Victoria was conceived. Moreover, there is the family's curious medical history which we now know, and which surely requires some explanation. Her grandfather, George III, notoriously suffered from the condition known as porphyria, whose symptoms included madness, flatulence, itchy skin and discoloured urine. When the present Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, saw the film of Alan Bennett's play The Madness Of King George, she asked: 'Isn't it hereditary?' A photograph of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert taken in May 1854 Well, the answer is, yes it is, yet not one of Queen Victoria's descendants has ever been recorded as having it. There is another curious medical fact.

We know Queen Victoria passed on haemophilia to her descendants. Seventeen generations of the family on Queen Victoria's mother's side have been investigated by scientists at the Royal Society of Medicine. Not one has haemophilia. Nor was there any haemophilia in the Royal Family before Victoria, so the finger really does point to Queen Victoria's father having been someone other than the Duke of Kent. It must have been the awful Sir John Conroy with that haemophiliac gene. The new film rightly shows his attempts to get Victoria to sign a deed making him the Regent, and her doughty resistance. Did he actually, as in the film, use physical violence on her? The scenes seemed horribly plausible to me, yet her courage in resisting him again reinforced my sense of the extraordinary providence which led us to possessing the matchless blessing of Victoria and Albert and the extraordinary legacy they left us. Strangely enough, there are interesting medical details on the side of Prince Albert, the German cousin Queen Victoria married, which suggest that he, too, may have been illegitimate.

His mother had been dismissed from the court of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha for having an affair with the Jewish chamberlain, the Baron von Mayern, a cultivated, musical, intelligent man. Both Albert's stupid, lecherous, drunken and supposed father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and his brother Ernst had hereditary syphilis, but there is no trace of this in the life of Albert who, like the Baron von Mayern, was intelligent, musical and cultivated. Unlike his own Saxe-Coburg relations, he was also a pillar of family rectitude and marital loyalty. But it is not just this extraordinary genetic inheritance of the young Victoria and her prince by which we can see what a slender thread the destiny of our British monarchy hangs. There were also the assassins. It would only have taken one accurate assassin to bring the line more or less to an end. I say more or less, since the crown would have passed to Ernest Augustus Duke of Cumberland, later King of Hanover, and it is hard to imagine that the English monarchy would have survived.

Emily Blunt arriving for the world premiere of the film in London Indeed, I believe that there are good genetic reasons for the survival of the British Royal Family - namely their good mixture of Irish and Jewish stock. Queen Victoria inherited the physical strength and political deviousness of her real father, the Irish Sir John Conroy, and Prince Albert inherited the cleverness of the Baron von Mayern. But even if you do not accept this rather basic genetic explanation of how the royal bloodline proved so resiliently adaptable - something phenomenal happened when the young Victoria chose as her husband one of the best things that ever happened to Britain: Prince Albert. That the monarchy survived the assassins can be attributed to God, or luck. That it survived the changing political climate of the 19th century when so many others went down must be down to Queen Victoria, and her remarkable relationship with Albert - the man who taught her so much. In the opening years of her reign, when she was an unmarried teenager, she made some silly mistakes, thinking for example that she could insult the Tory Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, by refusing his suggestions that a few members of his political persuasion should be represented at court.

She was booed in public and someone cruelly called out 'Mrs Melbourne' when she went to the opera with 'Lord M', the Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, whom she adored in a besotted teenaged-crush. Melbourne, however, was a man of the old Regency days, whose aristocratic hauteur made him a charming dinner companion but a rotten adviser about the condition of England in the late 1830s. Victoria was going to rule over a country which was the first great industrial power in the world. She needed to know about mill towns and coal mines and railways. She needed to be sympathetic to the aspirations of the middle classes. Albert, when he had married her, had great difficulty persuading his headstrong young Queen to adapt to the times, however obsessed she was with him sexually. But eventually he was able to persuade her to mould the constitutional monarchy to the changing politics of Britain. Robert Peel was the inventor of One Nation Toryism. His concern for the middle class, his desire to expand the franchise, and his worries about the conditions of the working classes were shared by Albert.

In the 20th century, when Europe was dominated by crazed dictatorships of Right and Left, the British monarchy stood for all its people. In times of war and in times of national crisis, the monarchy was a source of national unity, rather than being the source of bitter division as it was in Russia. That was very largely the political achievement of Prince Albert, who was also a true Renaissance man, a good composer, a keen sportsman and a patron of the arts. Who would have thought that such a man could have emerged from the tiny, tinpot Duchy of Coburg? From Victoria and Albert and their nine children descended the royal families of Prussia (later Germany), Russia, Spain, Denmark, Greece and Sweden. In so far as monarchy survives at all in Europe, it survives among those of their descendants who learned the lessons of Prince Albert's constitutional liberalism. The eldest child of Victoria and Albert, Crown Princess Vicky, became the mother of German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose militarist policies and determination to build up the German navy led to the outbreak of World War I.

Victoria's letters to her daughter, when Vicky went to Germany and got married, reveal the extent of Prince Albert's vision of a modern federalist Germany, based on democracy. It is one of the great political tragedies of history that Prince Albert died aged 42 and was unable to influence events in Germany and to control his mad grandson Kaiser Bill. I believe that if Prince Albert had lived as long as his wife, until the 20th century, there would have been no World War I, and the tragedies of the 20th century - its genocides, its Bolshevik and fascist tyrannies - would never have happened. The film, The Young Victoria, is a reminder of how incredibly lucky we all were that he lived at all, and of what an irreparable loss was caused by his death. Victoria was mocked for her everlasting mourning for her husband, but even today, most people have failed to see quite what a genius he was. Jenna Coleman gives a regal performance as Queen Victoria | Daily Mail Online comments She followed her first acting job in Emmerdale up with a breakout performance in Doctor Who.

And now Jenna Coleman is set to rule the small screen, as the latest clip for her new drama, Victoria, sees her asserting her regal authority as the monarch. Showing Victoria's first tentative steps as the famous British Queen, the 30-year-old star can be seen engaged in a highly pivotal yet intimate moment with her co-star, Rufus Sewell. Scroll down for video A regal performance: Jenna Coleman is set to rule the small screen, as the latest clip for her new drama, Victoria, sees her asserting her regal authority as the monarch Having just presented herself as the new monarch to the Lords of the land, and having had to fight her first pitched battle as the new Queen, the steely determination in Victoria is shown for the first time. RELATED ARTICLES Share 60 shares Walking through the corridors of Buckingham Palace shortly after becoming monarch, following the death of her uncle William IV, the unfamiliar and unknown title sits ill at ease with Victoria at first. Wearing a simple blue dress and a navy sash bearing the royal crest, Jenna cuts an eery likeness to the young queen. A guiding hand?

Showing Victoria's first tentative steps as the famous British Queen, the 30-year-old star can be seen engaged in a highly pivotal yet intimate moment with her co-star, Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell) With her brown her tied back and framing her delicate features, the change in her character's outlook is easy to recognise. Following a terse exchagne with some of the nobles in her court, the young Queen is addressed by her full-name, Alexandrina Victoria, by Lord Melbourne (Rufus). However, it seems the young Queen is determined to present herself as the woman she wants to be, and asks Melbourne to call her simply Victoria. Call me Victoria: However, it seems the young Queen is determined to present herself as the woman she wants to be, and asks Melbourne to call her simply Victoria Her rise: Victoria charts the early life of the queen from her accession to the throne at 18 through to her marriage to Prince Albert (played by The Game's Tom Hughes). With a smile slowly creeping across his face, it's clear the Prime Minister approves of Victoria's determination to change her character and assert herself.

Victoria charts the early life of the queen from her accession to the throne at 18 through to her marriage to Prince Albert (played by The Game's Tom Hughes). Running across eight episodes, the series has been created and written by acclaimed novelist Daisy Goodwin, in her screenwriting debut, who will also serve as executive producer alongside Dan McCulloch (Indian Summers) and Damien Timmer (Poldark). Victoria is set to air on ITV later in 2016, although no definite air date is known. Award-winning drama? Running across eight episodes, the series has been created and written by acclaimed novelist Daisy Goodwin, in her screenwriting debut Politics, gossip and marriage: Queen Victoria's early reign Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837. Less than a month later on 20 June 1837, her uncle William IV died at the age of 71, and she became Queen of the United Kingdom. The British Empire was at the height of its power in Victoria's early reign, and she ruled over 450 million people, one quarter of the world’s population.

The United Kingdom though was already an established constitutional monarchy, with the sovereign holding little political power and Victoria's early years on the throne were spent developing her understanding of British politics. In the early part of her reign, she was influenced by two men. At the time of her accession, the government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne (played by Rufus Sewell in the series), who at once became a powerful influence on the politically inexperienced Queen. Victoria's reliance upon Lord Melbourne increased her support of the Whig party, and Melbourne ensured that the Queen was surrounded by ladies-in-waiting from notable Whig families, a situation that would lead to the so-called 'bedchamber crisis' after Melbourne, briefly, resigned in 1839. While the Queen's intimate friendship with Melbourne was the subject of much gossip, her reputation also suffered in 1839 when one of the court's ladies in waiting, Lady Flora Hastings was falsely accused of becoming pregnant by Sir John Conroy, a man the Queen openly despised. When the matter became a public scandal, the Queen was accused of spreading the false rumours and her early popularity with the public was severely dented.

Victoria had met her future husband Albert at the age of 17 before ascending to the throne, when her uncle played matchmaker between the two cousins. According to Victoria's diary, she enjoyed Albert's company from the moment they met, but the future Queen decided that she was too young to marry. In October 1839 Albert paid another visit, and just five days after he had arrived at Windsor, the Queen proposed. They were married on 10 February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace, London, with the besotted Queen writing in her diary of their wedding: '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!' Victoria desired that Albert receive the title King Consort, but was met by opposition from British officials who refused to see a German prince assume any part of the sovereign power. Prince Albert though was to become a hugely influential adviser to the Queen, with his interests lying in the arts, science, trade and industry.

He established the Great Exhibition of 1851, the profits from which helped to establish the famed South Kensington museums in London. Reptile Windsors and Royal Insider Reptile Windsors and Royal Insider archived 11-22-99 Reptile Windsors and Royal Insider Reply-To: Conspiracy Theory Research List From: Andrew Hennessey Subject: Reptile Windsors and Royal Insider -Caveat Lector- QUOTE [taped] from Christine Fitzgerald - Princess Diana's personal confidant - who then threatened to sue if the transcript of the tape - a tape made in front of witnesses - appeared published in David Icke's Book 'The Biggest Secret' "The Queen Mother... now that's a serious piece of wizardry. The Queen Mother is a lot older than people think To be honest, the Royal Family hasn't died for a long time, they have just metamorphosised. It's sort of cloning, but in a different way. They take pieces of flesh and rebuild the body from one little bit. Because it's Lizard, because it's cold blooded, it's much easier for them to do Frankenstein shit than it is for us.

The different bodies are just different electrical vibrations and they have got that secret, they've got the secret of the microcurrents, it's so micro, so specific, these radio waves that actually create the bodies. These are the energies I work with when I'm healing. They know the vibration of life and because they are cold-blooded, they are reptiles, they have no wish to make the Earth the perfect harmony it could be, or to heal the Earth from the damage that's been done. The Earth's been attacked for zeons by different extraterrestrials. It's been like a football for so long. This place was a bus stop for many dfferent aliens. All these aliens, they could Cope with everythng, including the noxious gases. They're landing all the time and coming up from the bowels of the Earth. They looked like reptiles orignally, but they look like us when they get out now through the electrical vibration, that life key I talked about. Tbey can manifest how they want to. All the real knowledge has been taken out and shredded and put back in another way.

The Queen Mother is "Chief Toad" of this part of Europe and they have people like her in each continent. Most people, the hangers on, don't know, you know, about the reptles. They are just in awe of these people because they are so powerful- "Balmoral is a 'very, very nasty place. That's somewhere they want to dig underground. They will find reptile fossils, it goes back that far. Don't think of people like the Queen Mother and Queen Victoria, as different people' Think of them as the same person which after a while has had to replace their coat. when the flesh dies, that energy. while it's dying, will be immediately up someone else's jacksy (backside) It's very vampire, worse than vampire. They are not going to come to you with hooked teeth and suck you're blood. Fear is their food, they can actually take fear and manifest it into a tangible thing. The key is the vibrational current. At that vibrational current, they can manifest anything from anything. its like a holographic image. We are all mineral and water vibrating. This is all an illusion we are living in. Ihat's the secret.

You know when the monarchy's fallen, it's not the end of it- They will manifest in another form. The reptiles have never been defeated and this is the closest they have come to it. The reason they are so threatened today is because the Earth is in such trouble and the mental power of people is returning. This is their most frightening time, but this is not going to kill them. There are long centuries before it's over yet. The difference this time is that it'll be more difficult for them and they are going to have to settle for less and the Earth people are going to get more. But even though these reptilian ones are fuckers, they are sad, pathetic beasts really, white humanity is galloping towards light. From David Icke's 'Biggest Secret' and taped interview with princess Diana's confidant Christine Fitzgerald Andrew Hennessey

Question: What was Queen Victoria’s comment upon witnessing an impersonation of herself?
Answer: We Are Not Amused