Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India, tends to be remembered today as a rather dour, jowled old lady with a stately and rather humourless personality.
Dedicated to her patriotic duty, she is seen as the embodiment of 19th-century (or ‘Victorian’) values at a time when Britain was the leading world power and hub of a vast empire. Yet that’s only part of her story, and some of what we take for granted about her is not as accurate as we might believe.
Early life
To begin with, her first name wasn’t even Victoria. Born in Kensington Palace, London on 24 May 1819, she was christened Alexandrina Victoria in honour of Tsar Alexander of Russia, one of her godparents. In the normal run of things, she should never have inherited the throne at all.
Alexandrina Victoria was the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent, who was himself only the fourth son of George III. If any of the king’s elder children had produced a legitimate heir they would have had a better claim to rule, but not one of them did so, so the crown came to Victoria.
It was a considerable surprise to the young heir when she finally realised how close to the throne she was. She immediately burst into tears before promising to be good.
Queen Victoria’s father had died when she was eight months old so her upbringing was presided over by her uncle, the future Leopold I of Belgium, and her mother, Maria Louisa Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the Duchess of Kent.
Another important early influence was Victoria’s Hanoverian governess, Louise Lehzen. German was the language Victoria spoke as a child and, indeed, she never spoke English perfectly.
It was generally observed that the young Victoria was a slow learner. Though small – she never grew to be more than five feet tall – she was slim and pretty and the Duke of Wellington for one considered her delightful.
She exhibited a frivolous nature and was fond of animals: the most famous of her pets was a King Charles spaniel called Dash, but she also kept horses, two Blue Persian cats and another dog, called Lootie, who was the first Pekinese brought to the West.
Things she didn’t like included bishops, because of ‘their wigs and aprons’, and this was a phobia she never really conquered.
Coronation and Marriage
Having survived typhoid at the age of 16, Victoria became queen in 1837 when her uncle William IV died. The first thing the 18-year-old monarch did was order that her bed be moved out of her mother’s room in Kensington Palace in order to escape her domination.
Shortly afterwards she became the first British monarch to take up residence at Buckingham Palace, then still unfinished.
Though today we imagine Victoria being held in the highest respect during her lifetime she was not popular at the start of her reign. She was hissed by the crowd at the Ascot races on one occasion and survived seven assassination attempts.
More than once she had a narrow escape when shots were fired at her as she passed in her carriage. In 1850 a retired hussar managed to give her a ‘sharp blow’ on the head with his cane.
Victoria had a passionate nature and this sometimes revealed itself in her involvement in public affairs. She had serious clashes with several of her prime ministers, notably Gladstone (whom she called a ‘half-mad firebrand’) and Palmerston.
She even threatened to abdicate when it appeared the government might go to war with the USA. She got on rather better with Lord Melbourne (a surrogate father-figure) and Benjamin Disraeli, whose flattery proved highly effective.
In 1840 Victoria proposed to and married her handsome German cousin Albert. Victoria was head over heels in love and sensitive to any criticism of the match. When her beloved was snubbed by the Tories she wrote in her diary: ‘Poor dear Albert, how cruelly are they ill-using that dearest Angel! Monsters! You Tories shall be punished. Revenge, revenge!’