| Queen Victoria |
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Alexandrina Victoria was the only child of the fourth son of King George III: Edward, duke of Kent. Her mother was Victoria Maria Louisa of Saxe-Coburg, sister of King Leopold of the Belgians.
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| Queen Victoria © 1999-2000 www.arttoday.com |
She tested the limits of her royal powers when the government of Lord Melbourne, the Whig who had been her mentor, fell the next year. She refused to follow precedent and dismiss her ladies of the bedchamber so that the Tory government could replace them. Her refusal brought back the Whigs until 1841.
She'd met her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when they were both seventeen. When they were twenty, he returned to England, and Victoria, in love with him, proposed marriage. They were married on February 10, 1840.
Their first child, a daughter, was born in November 1840, and the Prince of Wales, Edward, in 1841. Three more sons and four more daughters followed.
Victoria had traditional views on the role of the wife and mother, and though she was Queen and Albert was Prince Consort, he shared government responsibilities at least equally. His death in 1861 devastated her; her prolonged mourning lost her much popularity.
Eventually coming out of seclusion, she maintained an active role in government until her death in 1901. Her reign, the longest of any British monarch, was marked by waxing and waning popularity -- and suspicions that she preferred the Germans a bit too much always diminished her popularity somewhat. By the time she had assumed the throne, the British monarchy was more figurehead and influence than it was a direct power in the government, and her long reign did little to change that.
During her lifetime she published her Letters, Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands and More Leaves.
The marriage of her daughters into other royal families, and the likelihood that her children bore a mutant gene for hemophilia, both affected the following generations of European history.
| Children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert: |
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- Victoria, Princess Royal, married Frederick III of Germany and mother to Kaiser Wilhelm.
- Albert Edward -- later British King as Edward VII.
- Alice, married the Duke of Hesse
- Alfred: Duke of Edinburgh and of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
- Helena, married Prince Kristian of Schleswig-Holstein
- Louise, married the Marquis of Lorne
- Arthur, Duke of Connaught
- Leopold, Duke of Albany
- Beatrice, married Prince Henry of Battenberg
| Also on this site |
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- Queen Victoria -- Eminent Women of the Age by James Parton. A biography of Victoria published in 1868 and reproduced on this site in full, formatted for the web.
- Queen Victoria Resources: many links on this site, on About and on the Web
- Queen Victoria Quotations
- British Women's History
- Women Heads of State - Resources
- Elizabeth I of England - Resources
| Bibliography |
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- Queen Victoria: Lytton Strachey, trade paperback, reprint 1997.
- Queen Victoria: A Personal History: Christopher Hibbert, hardcover, March 2000.
- Queen Victoria's Gene: Haemophilia & the Royal Family: D. M. Potts, Paperback, 1999.
- Remaking Queen Victoria: Margaret Homans and Adrienne Munich, paperback, 1997.
- Queen Victoria's Secrets: Adrienne Munich, trade paperback, 1998.
- Queen Victoria: Elizabeth Longford, Paperback, 2000.
- Her Little Majesty: The Life of Queen Victoria: Carolly Erickson, hardcover, 1997.
- Uncommon Woman: The Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm: Hannah Pakula, trade paperback, 1997.
- Beloved & Darling Child: Last Letters Between Queen Victoria & Her Eldest Daughter, 1886-1901: Agatha Ramm, trade paperback, 1998.
- Prince Leopold: The Untold Story of Queen Victoria's Youngest Son: Charlotte Zeepvat, hardcover, 1998. Also paperback, 2000.
- My Mistress the Queen: The Letters of Frieda Arnold, Dresser to Queen Victoria: Benita Stoney and Heinrich C. Weltzien, hardcover, 1995.
Text copyright 1999-2006 © Jone Johnson Lewis.
