'Victoria' (Alexandrina Victoria;
24 May 1819 –
22 January 1901) was the
Queen of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from
20 June 1837, and the first
Empress of India from
1 May 1876, until her death on
22 January 1901. Her reign lasted 63 years and seven months, longer than that of any other
British monarch. In general, the period centered on her reign is known as the
Victorian era.
The
Victorian era was at the height of the
Industrial Revolution, a period of significant social, economic, and technological progress in the United Kingdom. Victoria's reign was marked by a great expansion of the
British Empire; during this period it reached its zenith, becoming the foremost
Global Power of the time.
Victoria was the granddaughter of
George III, and was almost entirely of
German descent. She was the last British monarch of the
House of Hanover. Her son
King Edward VII belonged to the House of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Early life
Heir to the Throne
King George III's eldest son, the
Prince of Wales and future
King George IV, had only one child,
Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales. When she died in 1817 the remaining unmarried sons of King George III scrambled to marry and father children to guarantee the line of succession.
[1]
Victoria aged four
Thus it was that, at the age of 50,
Edward, the Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of George III, married
Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. And in
Kensington Palace, London on
24 May 1819, the only child of the couple, Victoria, was born.
Victoria was christened in the Cupola Room of Kensington Palace on
24 June 1819 by the
Archbishop of Canterbury (
Charles Manners-Sutton).
[2] Although christened Alexandrina Victoria - and from birth formally
styled ''Her Royal Highness Princess Victoria of Kent'' - Victoria was called Drina within the family.
[3] She was taught German, English, Italian, Greek, Chinese, and French, arithmetic, music and her favourite subject, history.
[4] Her teachers were the Reverend
George Davys and Baroness
Louise Lehzen, her governess.
[5] When she learned from Baroness Lehzen that one day she could be Queen she replied, "I will be good."
[6]
Victoria's father died of
pneumonia eight months after she was born and her grandfather, George III, died six days later. Her uncle, the Prince of Wales, inherited the Crown, becoming King George IV but he too died childless when Victoria was only 11 years old. The crown now passed to his brother, the
Duke of Clarence and St Andrews, who became King William IV.
William too had no surviving legitimate children. (Although he was the father of ten illegitimate children by his mistress, the actress
Dorothy Jordan). As a result, the young Princess Victoria became
heiress presumptive.
The law at the time made no special provision for a child monarch. Therefore, Victoria needed a Regent appointed if she were to succeed to the throne before coming of age at the age of eighteen. Parliament passed the ''
Regency Act 1830'', under which it provided that Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent and Strathearn, would act as Regent during the queen's minority. Parliament did not create a council to limit the powers of the Regent. King William disliked the Duchess and, on at least one occasion, stated that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so a regency could be avoided.
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
Princess Victoria met her future husband,
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, when she was just 16 years old in 1836.
[7] But it was not until a second meeting in 1839 that she said of him, " …dear Albert… He is so sensible, so kind, and so good, and so amiable too. He has besides, the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see."
[5] Prince Albert was Victoria's first cousin; his father was her mother's brother,
Ernst. As a Queen, Victoria had to propose to him. Their marriage proved to be very happy.
[9]
Early reign
Accession to the Throne
On
24 May 1837 Victoria turned 18, meaning that a regency was no longer necessary. On
20 June 1837, Victoria was awakened by her mother to find that William IV had died from
heart failure at the age of 71.
[10] In her diary Victoria wrote, "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma …who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conynham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen…"
[11] Victoria was now Queen of the United Kingdom.
[12] Her
coronation took place on
18 May 1838.
Under
Salic Law, however, no woman could be heir to the throne of
Hanover. And so she did not inherit the throne of Hanover, a realm which had shared a monarch with Britain since 1714, and it passed to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, who became King
Ernest Augustus I of Hanover.
Queen Victoria at her coronation
As the young queen was as yet unmarried and childless, Ernest Augustus also remained the
heir presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom until her first child was born in 1840.
[13]
At the time of her accession, the government was controlled by the
Whig Party, which had been in power, except for brief intervals, since 1830. The Whig Prime Minister,
Lord Melbourne, at once became a powerful influence in the life of the politically inexperienced Queen, who relied on him for advice. (Some even referred to Victoria as "Mrs. Melbourne".)
[14] However, the Melbourne ministry would not stay in power for long; it was growing unpopular and, moreover, faced considerable difficulty in governing the British colonies (see
Rebellions of 1837). In 1839 Lord Melbourne resigned.
Leopold I of Belgium (the widower of Princess Charlotte) functioned as a principal advisor to his
niece, Queen Victoria, the
daughter of his
sister Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Queen Victoria's cousins, through Leopold, were
Leopold II of Belgium and
Empress Carlota of Mexico.
The Queen then commissioned Sir
Robert Peel, a
Tory, to form a new ministry, but was faced with a debacle known as the
Bedchamber Crisis. At the time, it was customary for appointments to the
Royal Household to be based on the
patronage system (that is, for the Prime Minister to appoint members of the Royal Household on the basis of their party loyalties). Many of the Queen's Ladies of the Bedchamber were wives of Whigs, but Sir Robert Peel expected to replace them with wives of Tories. Victoria strongly objected to the removal of these ladies, whom she regarded as close friends rather than as members of a ceremonial institution. Sir Robert Peel felt that he could not govern under the restrictions imposed by the Queen, and consequently resigned his commission, allowing Melbourne to return to office.
[15]
Marriage and assassination attempts
The Queen
married her first cousin, Prince Albert, on
10 February,
1840, in the
Chapel Royal of
St. James's Palace, London.
[16] Albert became not only the Queen's companion, but also an important political advisor, replacing Lord Melbourne as the dominant figure in the first half of her life.
During Victoria's first pregnancy, eighteen-year old
Edward Oxford[17] attempted to assassinate the Queen while she was riding in a carriage with Prince Albert in London. Oxford fired twice, but both bullets missed. He was tried for
high treason, but was acquitted on the grounds of
insanity. The shooting had no effect on the Queen's health or on her
pregnancy and the first of the royal couple's nine children, named
Victoria, was born on
21 November 1840.
Marriage of Victoria and Albert
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in a photo taken in 1854 before an evening Court.
Two further attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria occurred in May and July 1842:
On
29 May at
St. James's Park, John Francis fired a pistol at the Queen while she was in a carriage,
[18] but was immediately seized by Police Constable William Trounce. Francis was convicted of
high treason. The death sentence was commuted to
transportation for life.
On
13 June 1842, Victoria made her first journey by train, travelling from
Slough railway station (near
Windsor Castle) to Bishop's Bridge, near
Paddington (in
London), in a special royal carriage provided by the
Great Western Railway. Accompanying her were her husband and the engineer of the Great Western line,
Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
On
3 July, just days after Francis' sentence was commuted, another boy, John William Bean,
[19] attempted to shoot the Queen. Prince Albert felt that the attempts were encouraged by Oxford's acquittal in 1840. Although his gun was loaded only with paper and tobacco, his crime was still punishable by death. Feeling that such a penalty would be too harsh, Prince Albert encouraged Parliament to pass the Treason Act of 1842, under which aiming a firearm at the Queen, striking her, throwing any object at her, and producing any firearm or other dangerous weapon in her presence with the intent of alarming her, were made punishable by seven years imprisonment and
flogging. Bean was thus sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment; however, neither he, nor any person who violated the act in the future, was flogged.
A young Queen Victoria
Early Victorian politics and further assassination attempts
Peel's ministry soon faced a crisis involving the repeal of the
Corn Laws. Many Tories - by then known also as
Conservatives) - were opposed to the repeal, but some Tories (the "Peelites") and most Whigs supported it. Peel resigned in 1846, after the repeal narrowly passed, and was replaced by
Lord John Russell. Russell's ministry, though Whig, was not favoured by the Queen. Particularly offensive to Victoria was the
Foreign Secretary,
Lord Palmerston,
[20] who often acted without consulting the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, or the Queen.
In 1849, Victoria lodged a complaint with Lord John Russell, claiming that Palmerston had sent official dispatches to foreign leaders without her knowledge. She repeated her remonstrance in 1850, but to no avail. It was only in 1851 that Lord Palmerston was removed from office; he had on that occasion announced the British government's approval for President
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's
coup in France without prior consultation of the Prime Minister.
The period during which Russell was prime minister also proved personally distressing to Queen Victoria. In 1849, an unemployed and disgruntled Irishman named
William Hamilton attempted to alarm the Queen by firing a powder-filled pistol as her carriage passed along
Constitution Hill, London. Hamilton was charged under the 1842 act; he pleaded guilty and received the maximum sentence of seven years of penal transportation.
In 1850, the Queen did sustain injury when she was assaulted by a possibly insane ex-Army officer,
Robert Pate. As Victoria was riding in a carriage, Pate struck her with his gun, crushing her bonnet and bruising her. Pate was later tried; he failed to prove his insanity, and received the same sentence as Hamilton.
Ireland
The young Queen Victoria fell in love with
Ireland, choosing to holiday in
Killarney in
Kerry. Her love of the island was matched by initial Irish warmth towards the young Queen. In 1845, Ireland was hit by a
potato blight that over four years cost the lives of over one million Irish people and saw the emigration of another million. In response to what came to be called the
Irish Potato Famine (''An Gorta Mor''), the Queen personally donated 2000
pounds sterling to the starving Irish people.
[21]
The policies of her minister Lord John Russell were often blamed for exacerbating the severity of the famine, killing a million Irishmen, which adversely affected the Queen's popularity in Ireland.
Victoria was a strong supporter of the Irish. She supported the
Maynooth Grant and made a point, on visiting Ireland, of visiting the seminary.
Victoria's first official visit to Ireland, in 1849, was specifically arranged by
Lord Clarendon, the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the head of the British administration, to try both to draw attention off the famine and also to alert British politicians through the Queen's presence to the seriousness of the crisis in Ireland. Notwithstanding the negative impact of the famine on the Queen's popularity, she still remained sufficiently popular for nationalists at party meetings to finish by singing ''God Save the Queen''.
[22]
However, by the 1870s and 1880s, the monarchy's appeal in Ireland had diminished substantially, partly as a result of Victoria's refusal to visit Ireland in protest of the
Dublin Corporation's decision not to congratulate her son, the
Prince of Wales, on both his marriage to Princess
Alexandra of Denmark and on the birth of the royal couple's oldest son, Prince
Albert Victor.
Victoria refused repeated pressure from a number of prime ministers, lords lieutenant and even members of the Royal Family, to establish a royal residence in Ireland.
[23] Lord Midleton, the former head of the Irish unionist party, writing in his memoirs of 1930 ''Ireland: Dupe or Heroine?'', described this decision as having proved disastrous to the monarchy and British rule in Ireland.
Victoria paid her last visit to Ireland in 1900, when she came to appeal to Irishmen to join the British Army and fight in the
Second Boer War. Nationalist opposition to her visit was spearheaded by
Arthur Griffith, who established an organisation called ''
Cumann na nGaedhael'' to unite the opposition. Five years later Griffith used the contacts established in his campaign against the queen's visit to form a new political movement,
Sinn Féin.
Widowhood
Albert's death
Albert, the Prince Consort, died of
typhoid fever on
14 December 1861, due to the primitive sanitary conditions of Windsor Castle. His death devastated Victoria,
[24] who entered a state of
mourning and wore black for the remainder of her life. She avoided public appearances and rarely set foot in London in the following years. Her seclusion earned her the name "Widow of
Windsor." She blamed her son
Edward, the Prince of Wales, for his father's death, since news of the Prince's poor conduct had come to his father in November, leading Prince Albert to travel to Cambridge to confront his son.
Victoria's self-imposed isolation from the public greatly diminished the popularity of the monarchy, and even encouraged the growth of the republican movement. Although she did undertake her official government duties, she chose to remain secluded in her royal residences,
Balmoral in Scotland,
Osborne House on the
Isle of Wight and
Windsor Castle. During this time, one of the most important pieces of legislation of the nineteenth century — the
Reform Act 1867 — was passed by Parliament. Lord Palmerston was vigourously opposed to electoral reform, but his ministry ended upon his death in 1865. He was followed by Earl Russell (the former
Lord John Russell), and afterwards by Lord Derby, during whose ministry the Reform Act was passed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a staunch supporter of the expansion and preservation of the
British Empire. He introduced the
Royal Titles Act, which created Queen Victoria
Empress of India, putting her at the same level as the Russian Tsar.
John Brown
As time went by Victoria began to rely increasingly on a manservant from Scotland,
John Brown.
[25] A romantic connection and even a secret marriage have been alleged, but both charges are generally discredited. However, when Victoria's remains were laid in the coffin, two sets of mementoes were placed with her, at her request. By her side was placed one of Albert's dressing gowns while in her left hand was placed a piece of Brown's hair, along with a picture of him. Rumours of an affair and marriage earned Victoria the nickname "Mrs Brown".
[26] The story of their relationship was the subject of the 1997 movie ''
Mrs. Brown''.
Later years
Golden Jubilee and an assassination attempt
In 1887, the British Empire celebrated Victoria's
Golden Jubilee. Victoria marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession,
20 June 1887, with a banquet to which 50 European kings and princes were invited. Although she could not have been aware of it, there was a plan - ostensibly by Irish anarchists - to blow up Westminster Abbey while the Queen attended a service of thanksgiving. This assassination attempt, when it was discovered, became known as
The Jubilee Plot. On the next day, she participated in a procession that, in the words of
Mark Twain, "stretched to the limit of sight in both directions". By this time, Victoria was once again an extremely popular monarch.
A silver double florin of Queen Victoria, dated 1887, with (from the top, clockwise) the arms of England, Ireland, England (again) and Scotland on the reverse.
Diamond Jubilee
On
22 September 1896, Victoria surpassed
George III as the longest reigning monarch in English, Scottish, and British history. The Queen requested all special public celebrations of the event to be delayed until 1897, to coincide with her
Diamond Jubilee. The
Colonial Secretary,
Joseph Chamberlain, proposed that the Diamond Jubilee be made a festival of the British Empire.
The Prime Ministers of all the self-governing dominions and colonies were invited. The Queen's Diamond Jubilee procession included troops from every British colony and dominion, together with soldiers sent by Indian Princes and Chiefs as a mark of respect to Victoria, the Empress of India. The Diamond Jubilee celebration was an occasion marked by great outpourings of affection for the
septuagenarian Queen. A service of thanksgiving was held outside St. Paul's Cathedral. Queen Victoria sat in her carriage throughout the service. Queen Victoria wore her usual black mourning dress trimmed with white lace.
[27]
Death
Following a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent
Christmas at
Osborne House on the
Isle of Wight. She died there from a
cerebral hemorrhage on
22 January 1901, at the age of 81. At her deathbed she was attended by her son, the future King, and her oldest grandson,
Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. As she had wished, her own sons lifted her into the coffin. She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil. Her funeral occurred on
2 February, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in the
Frogmore Mausoleum at
Windsor Great Park. Since Victoria disliked black funerals, London was instead festooned in purple and white.
In fact, when she was laid to rest at Frogmore Mausoleum, it began to snow.
[28] Victoria had reigned for a total of 63 years, seven months and two days — the longest reign in British history.
Succession
Victoria's death brought an end to the rule of the
House of Hanover in the United Kingdom. As her husband belonged to the House of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, her son and heir
Edward VII was the first British monarch of this new house.
Legacy
Queen Victoria's reign marked the gradual establishment of modern constitutional monarchy. A series of legal reforms saw the House of Commons' power increase, at the expense of the Lords and the monarchy, with the monarch's role becoming gradually more symbolic. Since Victoria's reign the monarch has had only, in
Walter Bagehot's words, "the right to be consulted, the right to advise, and the right to warn".
As Victoria's monarchy became more symbolic than political, it placed a strong emphasis on morality and family values, in contrast to the sexual, financial and personal scandals that had been associated with previous members of the House of Hanover and which had discredited the monarchy. Victoria's reign created for Britain the concept of the 'family monarchy' with which the burgeoning middle classes could identify.
Internationally Victoria was a major figure, not just in image or in terms of Britain's influence through the empire, but also because of family links throughout Europe's royal families, earning her the affectionate nickname "the grandmother of Europe". An example of that status can be seen in the fact that three of the main monarchs with countries involved in the
First World War on the opposing side were themselves either grandchildren of Victoria's or married to a grandchild of hers. Eight of Victoria's nine children married members of European royal families, and the other,
Princess Louise, was married to the Marquis of Lorne, a future
Governor-General of Canada.
Victoria was the first known carrier of
haemophilia in the royal line, but it is unclear how she acquired it. It may have been a result of a
sperm mutation, her father having been 52 years old when Victoria was conceived. She may also have acquired it from her mother, though there is no known history of
haemophilia in the maternal side of her family. Victoria herself was a carrier, as were her daughters
Princess Alice and
Princess Beatrice.
Prince Leopold was affected by the disease. The most famous haemophilia victim among her descendants was her great-grandson,
Alexei, Tsarevich of Russia and some of the sons of King
Alfonso XIII and Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain.
As of 2007, the European monarchs and former monarchs descended from Victoria are: the
Queen of the United Kingdom (as well as her husband), the
King of Norway, the
King of Sweden, the
Queen of Denmark, the
King of Spain, the
former King of the Hellenes and the
former King of Romania (deposed). The
pretenders to the thrones of
Serbia,
Russia,
Prussia and Germany,
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,
Hanover,
Hesse,
Baden and
France (Legitimist) are also descendants.
Queen Victoria experienced unpopularity during the first years of her widowhood, but afterwards became extremely well-liked during the 1880s and 1890s. In 2002, the
British Broadcasting Corporation conducted a poll regarding the
100 Greatest Britons; Victoria attained the eighteenth place.
Innovations of the Victorian era include
postage stamps, the first of which — the
Penny Black (issued 1840) — featured an image of the Queen, and the
railway, which Victoria was the first British Sovereign to ride.
Several places in the world have been named after Victoria, including two Australian States (
Victoria and
Queensland), the
capitals of British Columbia and (Regina)
Saskatchewan, Canada, the
capital of the Seychelles,
Africa's largest lake, and
Victoria Falls. ''See also
List of places named after Queen Victoria.''
Victoria Day is a
Canadian statutory holiday celebrated on the last Monday before or on May 24 in honour of both Queen Victoria's birthday and the current reigning Canadian Sovereign's birthday. While Victoria Day is often thought of as a purely Canadian event, it is also celebrated in some parts of Scotland, particularly in
Edinburgh and
Dundee, where it is also a public holiday.
Queen Victoria remains the most commemorated British monarch in history, with statues to her erected throughout the former territories of the
British Empire. These range from the prominent, such as the
Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace, which was erected as part of the remodelling of the façade of the Palace a decade after her death, to the obscure: in the town of
Cape Coast,
Ghana, a bust of the Queen presides, rather forlornly, over a small park where goats graze around her. Many institutions, thoroughfares, parks, and structures bear her name. ''See also
Victoria (disambiguation)''.
Post-colonial sensitivities have led to the removal of Victoria's image and name from some of these legacies. For instance, probably the grandest train station and terminus in Mumbai (Formerly Bombay) India, Victoria Terminus, has been renamed after the seventeenth century Maratha King Chhatrapati Shivaji. A famous engineering college in the same city, Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI) has been cleverly renamed after the queen mother of king Shivaji, Jijabai. The new name Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute retains the same well known abbreviation, VJTI. The statue of Queen Victoria sculpted by Irishman,
John Hughes, erected in front of
Leinster House in
Dublin in 1924, was removed in 1947 after years of criticism that it was inappropriate to have the British Queen's likeness stand in front of the
Oireachtas, the parliament of the
Irish Free State. After decades in storage the statue was given by
Ireland to
Australia and unveiled on
20 December 1987 to stand outside the
Queen Victoria Building in the centre of
Sydney, capital city of the Australian state of
New South Wales. There is also a statue of Queen Victoria in Victoria Square in
Adelaide, capital city of the Australian state of
South Australia,in
Brisbane, capital city of the Australian state of
Queensland in Queen's Square and in the Domain Gardens in Melbourne, the capital of the Australian State of Victoria. A bronze statue of Queen Victoria stands in the main street of the city of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. At Bangalore, India, the statue of the Queen stands at the beginning of MG Road, one of the city's major roads.
Titles, styles, coat of arms and cypher
Queen Victoria Family 1846
Titles and styles
★ '
24 May 1819–
20 June 1837': ''Her Royal Highness'' Princess Victoria of Kent
★ '
20 June 1837–
22 January 1901': ''Her Majesty'' The Queen
★
★ '
1 May 1876–
22 January 1901': ''Her Imperial Majesty'' The Empress of India
As the male-line granddaughter of a King of Hanover, Victoria also bore the titles of Princess of Hanover and Duchess of Brunswick and Lunenburg. In addition, she held the titles of Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duchess in Saxony, etc, as the wife of Prince Albert.
Coat of arms
Victoria's coat of arms were: ''Quarterly, I and IV Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or (for England); II Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules (for Scotland); III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent (for Ireland).'' This same coat of arms have been used by every subsequent British monarch.
Royal Cypher
Queen Victoria's Royal Cypher
Victoria's
Royal Cypher was the first to be used on a postbox. The letters are "VR" interlaced, standing for Victoria Regina. Although Victoria eventually used the cypher "VRI" (Victoria Regina Imperiatrix) when she became
Empress, this never appeared on postboxes. Victoria's cypher is the only one to appear on postboxes without a crown above it.
Issue
| Name | Birth | Death | Notes |
|---|
| The Princess Victoria, Princess Royal | 21 November 1840 | 5 August 1901 | Married 1858, Friedrich III, German Emperor and King of Prussia; had issue. |
| King Edward VII | 9 November 1841 | 6 May 1910 | Married 1863, Princess Alexandra of Denmark; had issue. |
| The Princess Alice | 25 April 1843 | 14 December 1878 | Married 1862, Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine; had issue. |
| The Prince Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke of Edinburgh | 6 August 1844 | 31 July 1900 | Married 1874, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia; had issue. |
| The Princess Helena | 25 May 1846 | 9 June 1923 | Married 1866, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg; had issue. |
| The Princess Louise | 18 March 1848 | 3 December 1939 | Married 1871, John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll; no issue. |
| The Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn | 1 May 1850 | 16 January 1942 | Married 1879, Princess Louise Margarete of Prussia; had issue. |
| The Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany | 7 April 1853 | 28 March 1884 | Married 1882, Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont; had issue. |
| The Princess Beatrice | 14 April 1857 | 26 October 1944 | Married 1885, Prince Henry of Battenberg; had issue. |
Ancestry
Biographic details
When Queen Victoria died in 1901, at the age of 81, her own sons lifted her into the coffin. She wore a white dress and her wedding veil. Because Victoria had disliked black funerals, London was decorated in purple and white. Her last words were "Oh that peace may come. Bertie!"
She surpassed her grandfather
King George III as the longest-lived British monarch when she reached the age of 81 years and 240 days on
19 January 1901, only three days before her death. She will be surpassed by Elizabeth II on
21 December,
2007 if she survives.
★ Victoria spent over three-quarters of her life as Queen, the highest ratio of any British monarch since the
Restoration in 1660.
She outlived three of her nine children, and came within seven months of outliving a fourth (her eldest daughter,
Vicky, who died of
spinal cancer in August 1901 aged 60). She outlived eleven of her 42 grandchildren (two stillborn, three as adults and six as children) three of her 88 great-grandchildren. As of September 2007, there were two surviving great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria: Count
Carl Johan Bernadotte of
Sweden and
Lady Katherine Brandram.
The Queen and all her female-line descendants are known to be members of
mitochondrial
haplogroup H.s
★ The design of the Queen's head on the first postage stamp was based upon the 1837 Wyon City medal engraved by a famous coin engraver William Wyon. The design of Queen Victoria's head is based on a sitting when she was a princess aged 15.
★ Queen Victoria was 20 when the Penny Black stamp was issued on
6 May 1840. Her profile on British stamps never aged; the design of her head remained the same for 60 years.
★ Prince Albert introduced
Christmas trees to the court and this was soon copied by Victoria's subjects.
★ Every day for forty years after her Prince Consort had died, the Queen ordered that his clothes be laid afresh on his bed in his suite at
Windsor Castle.
★ Queen Victoria was known to the
Blackfoot Nation as ''Ninaki'' or ''Chief Woman'', while the common expression for her was ''Great Mother''
[1].
★ After one of the attempts on her life, an armoured parasol was designed for her; it had a layer of chain mail between its cover and lining. The armour made it weigh more than three pounds, and it probably did not see any use.
★ Queen Victoria was the only world leader to respond positively to
messages that were sent to 19th century monarchs by
Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the
Bahá'í Faith, inviting them to establish a "
Most Great Peace".
★ Queen Victoria started the tradition of a bride wearing a white dress at her wedding. Before Victoria's wedding a bride would wear her best dress of no particular colour.
.
★ Queen Victoria was the first sovereign to take up residence at Buckingham Palace in 1837.
Cultural references
★ Impersonations of Queen Victoria have long had a certain popularity:
Claus von Bülow was notorious for his (among other things), and silent film star
Ramon Novarro's belied his dashing (onscreen) image. Such impersonations frequently involve a napkin and teacup, standing in for her familiar widow's cap and small crown.
★ Several movies and miniseries have been made about Queen Victoria's life, including ''
Victoria and Albert'', in which she is played by
Victoria Hamilton, ''
Victoria the Great'', and ''
Edward the Seventh'', played by
Annette Crosbie. She figures centrally in films such as 1950's ''
The Mudlark'' (glamourously played by
Irene Dunne) and 1997's ''
Mrs. Brown'' (
Judi Dench, more realistically dowdy). The German film ''
The Story of Vicky (Mädchenjahre einer Königin)'' (1954) plotted a highly fictionalised story about Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne and marriage to Prince Albert. The Queen was played by a sixteen-year-old
Romy Schneider.
★ Victoria has been used in smaller roles as a kind of
deus ex machina character, sympathetically in
Shirley Temple's ''The Little Princess'' (1939), to surprise effect in
Billy Wilder's ''
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes'' (1970), and comedically in
Gene Wilder's ''
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother'' (1975) and ''Shanghai Knights'' (2003). In ''
From Hell'' (2001), she appears in a scene with her physician,
William Gull, who is suggested to be
Jack the Ripper. She also makes appearances in the 2004 version of ''
Around the World in Eighty Days'' (in the original 1956 production, a newspaper detailing Phileas Fogg's progress is taken to the Queen, and what is presumably the royal hand is seen eagerly taking it up), and in the 2004 anime movie ''
Steamboy'', inaugurating
The Great Exhibition. The 1941
Nazi film ''Ohm Krüger'' notoriously portrays her as a whisky-soaked drunk.
[29] Her daughter-in-law, the
Princess of Wales, reads a letter from Victoria to London Hospital governors, showing her concern for
John Merrick, in the 1980 film ''
The Elephant Man''.
★ Laurence Houseman’s play, ''Victoria Regina'', played at the
Lyric Theatre in 1935 and later on Broadway, where
Helen Hayes portrayed the Queen, with
Vincent Price in the role of Prince Albert.
★ ''
Monty Python's Flying Circus'' portrays Queen Victoria as a slapstick prankster and includes a sketch in which she says "We are not amused" in German accented English. Another Monty Python sketch contains a footrace in which all the contestants are dressed as Queen Victoria.
★ In a series of sketches portraying the
Phantom Raspberry Blower, a cross between
Jack The Ripper and
The Phantom Of The Opera, the
Two Ronnies dress an entire squad of policemen as Queen Victoria to act as body doubles for protection from the PRB.
The Statue of Queen Victoria in Cubban Park in
Bangalore, India
★ In the 2006 series of ''
Doctor Who'', Queen Victoria appears in the episode "
Tooth and Claw", where she is played by
Pauline Collins. In the episode, set in 1879, she is threatened by a
werewolf that wants to infect her and take control of her empire. It is suggested that a scratch from the werewolf is the source of haemophilia in many of her descendants.
Rose Tyler makes a bet with the
Doctor for £10 that she can get the Queen to say "We are not amused."
At the episode's conclusion, she founds the
Torchwood Institute, an integral feature of the spin-off series ''
Torchwood'', with various (fictional) speeches and proclamations by her available on the
Torchwood Institute website.
★ The BBC series ''
Blackadder Goes Forth'', set in
World War I, alludes humorously to Queen Victoria's heritage.
Captain Edmund Blackadder interrogates Captain
Kevin Darling whom he suspects to be a German spy. Captain Darling: "I'm as British as Queen Victoria!" Captain Blackadder: "So – your mother's German, your father's half German and you married a German?". She also appears in ''
Blackadder's Christmas Carol'' (1988), played by
Miriam Margolyes in a realistic-looking portrayal.
★ The
Kinks honour Queen Victoria and her empire in their 1969 song "
Victoria". The song has since been covered by
The Fall,
Cracker, and
Sonic Youth. Both The Kinks' and The Fall's versions were UK Top 40 hits.
★
Leonard Cohen refers to her in a mostly non-factual way in his 1964 poem "Queen Victoria and Me", and again in the 1972 song "Queen Victoria" (based on the poem). The song was later covered by
John Cale.
★
Queen Victoria's reign features in the
Paradox Interactive game, ''
Victoria, An Empire Under the Sun''. In this game a player guides a country through
colonisation, the
Industrial Revolution, warfare and various historic events.
★ In 2006, the Comics Sherpa online comic service started carrying a comic strip entitled ''The New Adventures of Queen Victoria'' using cut-out photographs and portraits of the Queen and others.
★ A 'Royal Diaries' book was written, documenting her childhood: ''Victoria, May Blossom of Britannia England'' in 1829 by Anna Kirwan.
★ After the release of the popular Victorian-era action film ''
Van Helsing'', several members of the cast reunited to lend their voices to an animated prequel, ''. Queen Victoria and her royal physician, Dr. Henry Jekyll, are principal characters in the animated film.
★ Queen Victoria invited
Martha Ann Ricks, on the behalf of Liberian Ambassador
Edward Wilmont Blyden, to Windsor Castle on
16 July 1892. Martha Ricks, a former slave from Tennessee, had saved her pennies for more than fifty years, to afford the voyage from
Liberia to England to see the Queen and thank the Queen for sending the British navy to patrol the coast of West Africa to prevent slavers from exporting Africans for the slave trade. Martha Ricks shook hands with the Queen and presented her with a Coffee Tree quilt, which Queen Victoria later sent to the
1893 World's Columbian Exposition for display. A mystery remains as to where the Coffee Tree quilt is today.
★
Emily Blunt has signed on to play Queen Victoria in the movie "The Young Victoria," which is scheduled for release in 2009. The film will be produced by
Martin Scorsese and
Graham King. The screenplay was written by
Julian Fellowes. It will revolve around the early years of Victoria's reign and her love affair with Prince Albert (
Rupert Friend). The role of Victoria's neurotic mother, the Duchess of Kent, is to be played by
Miranda Richardson.
See also
★
List of coupled cousins
★
List of places named after Queen Victoria
★
Small diamond crown of Queen Victoria
★
Victorian architecture
★
Victorian era
★
Victorian fashion
★
Victorian morality
★
Victoria and Albert Museum
References
1. The Life and Times of Queen Victoria by Dorothy Marshall, p. 16.
2. Her godparents were the Prince Regent, the Emperor Alexander I of Russia (in whose honour she received her first name), Queen Charlotte of Württemberg and the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld
3. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 11.
4. Victoria: A Biography by Christopher Hibbert, pp. 13–15.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid, p. 27.
7. The Life and Times of Victoria by Dorothy Marshall, p. 60.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid, p. 76.
10. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 56.
11. Ibid, p. 57.
12. Ibid, p. 9.
13. Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard, pp. 14–15.
14. Victoria: A Biography by Christopher Hibbert, p. 44.
15. Ibid, p. 48.
16. Her bridesmaids were The Ladies Adelaide Paget, Sarah Child Villiers, Frances Cowper, Elizabeth West, Mary Grimston, Eleanora Paget, Caroline Gordon-Lennox, Elizabeth Howard, Ida Hay, Catherine Stanhope, Jane Pleydell-Bouverie and Mary Howard
17. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 161.
18. Ibid, p. 162
19. Ibid, p. 163
20. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, pp. 86–87.
21. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 226.
22. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, pp. 212–13.
23. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 391
24. The Life and Times of Victoria by Dorothy Marshall, p. 155.
25. Ibid, p. 168
26. Ibid, p. 170.
27. Victoria: A Biography by Christopher Hibbert, p. 171.
28. Queen Victoria by Giles St. Aubyn, p. 600.
29. Film in the Third Reich, , David Stewart, Hull, Simon & Schuster, 1973, SBN 671-21486-1
Books and additional materials
★ Auchincloss, Louis. ''Persons of Consequence: Queen Victoria and Her Circle''. Random House, 1979. ISBN 0-394-50427-5
★ Cecil, Algernon. ''Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers''. Eyre and Spottiswode, 1953.
★ Benson, Arthur Christopher & Esher (Viscount). ''The Letters of Queen Victoria: A Selection From Her Majesty's Correspondence Between The Years 1837 and 1861''. John Murray, 1908
★ Eilers, Marlene A. ''Queen Victoria’s Descendants''. 2d enlarged & updated ed. Falköping, Sweden: Rosvall Royall Books, 1997. ISBN 0-8063-1202-5
★ Farnborough, T. E. May (1st Baron). ''Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George the Third''. 11th ed. Longmans, Green, 1896.
★ Hibbert, Christopher. ''Victoria: A Biography''. George Rainbird Ltd, 1979. ISBN 0 7296 0207 9
★ Hicks, Kyra E. "Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria". Brown Books, 2007. ISBN 978-1-933285-59-7
★ Marshall, Dorothy. ''The Life and Times of Queen Victoria''. George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, 1972.
★ Packard, Jerrold, M. ''Victoria's Daughters''. St. Martin's Press, 1998. ISBN 0 312 24496 7
★ Potts, D. M. & W. T. W. Potts. ''Queen Victoria’s Gene: Haemophilia and the Royal Family''. Alan Sutton, 1995. ISBN 0-7509-1199-9
★ St. Aubyn, Giles. ''Queen Victoria: A Portrait''. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991. ISBN 1 85619 086 2
★
The Royal Household. (2004). "Victoria." Official Website of the British Monarchy.
★ "Queen Victoria." ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 11th ed. Cambridge University Press, 1911.
External links
★
''The letters of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty's correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861'': published by authority of His Majesty the king (1907) Volume I at archive.org
★
''The letters of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty's correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861'': published by authority of His Majesty the king (1907) Volume II at archive.org
★
The letters of Queen Victoria: a selection from Her Majesty's correspondence between the years 1837 and 1861'': published by authority of His Majesty the king (1907) Volume III at archive.org
★
"Victoria's Dark Secrets" (online chapbook)
★
''Speeches in Parliament, from her accession to the present time : a compendium of the history of Her Majesty's reign told from the throne'' (1882) at archive.org
★
''Leaves from the journal of our life in the Highlands, from 1848-1861: To which are prefixed and added extracts from the same journal giving an account of earlier visits to Scotland, and tours in England and Ireland, and yachting excursions'' (1868) at archive.org
★
''More leaves from the journal of a life in the Highlands, from 1862 to 1882'' (1885) at archive.org
★
Victorian style, 1837-1901
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