Queen Victoria

Horvath Tina E-R

Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. She adopted the
additional title of Empress of India on 1 May 1876. Known as the Victorian era, her reign of 63
years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors. It was a period of
industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was
marked by a great expansion of the British Empire

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (the fourth son of
King George III), and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After both the Duke and his
father died in 1820, she was raised under close supervision by her mother and her comptroller,
John Conroy. She inherited the throne aged 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without
surviving legitimate issue. Though a constitutional monarch, privately, Victoria attempted to
influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon
who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their children
married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet "the
grandmother of Europe" and spreading haemophilia in European royalty. After Albert's death in
1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her
seclusion, republicanism in the United Kingdom temporarily gained strength, but in the latter
half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of
public celebration. She died on the Isle of Wight in 1901. The last British monarch of the House
of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

In the early part of her reign, she was influenced by two men: her first Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne, and then her husband, Prince Albert, whom she married in 1840. Both men taught
her much about how to be a ruler in a 'constitutional monarchy', in which the monarch had very
few powers but could use much influence.

Her marriage to Prince Albert produced nine children between 1840 and 1857. Most of her
children married into other Royal families of Europe.

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.

On June 20th 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.

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 British 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.

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.

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.”

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”.

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
British court. She described her impressions of him in the journal she kept throughout her life:
“Albert really is quite charming, and so excessively 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.

Soon after that 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.

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.”

The Queen began new royal traditions when she attended the first State Opening of Parliament in
the new Palace of Westminster.

The original building had been demolished by fire in 1834. The Queen arrived in the Irish State
Coach, which had been built the year before and processed through Parliament before making
her speech. The protocols and traditions established then have been followed by every British
monarch since.

Victoria, with the assistance of Albert, created a newly visible constitutional monarchy to stem a
growing republican movement in Britain.

Victoria became patron of 150 institutions, including dozens of charities, while Albert supported
the development of educational museums. The couple went on civic visits to industrial towns
such as Leeds, and attended military reviews to support the armed forces. Together they helped
stem criticism that the Royal Family didn't earn its keep.

The Victoria Cross was introduced by Queen Victoria to honour acts of great bravery during the
Crimean War. It was awarded on merit instead of rank.

The Crimean War was fought by an alliance of countries including Britain against Russia. The
Queen was suspected of secretly supporting the Russian Tsar. However, she allayed suspicions
by taking an interest in the nursing of wounded soldiers. She also awarded the first Victoria
Crosses personally to 62 men at a ceremony at Hyde Park in 1857. It was the first time officers
and men had been decorated together.

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 British 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. 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.

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 British 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.

The Queen was frantic with worry after her son and heir Edward fell ill with typhoid.

It came a year after the founding of the French Third Republic, which had provoked anti-
monarchist feeling in Britain. When Edward recovered, the Queen used a carefully orchestrated
event to boost royal support. She gave a public thanksgiving service and appeared to crowds on
the Buckingham Palace balcony. It marked the queen's gradual return to public life.

Victoria became the Empress of India to tie the monarchy and Empire closer together.

She accepted the title on the advice of her seventh prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, whose
political advice she relied on. She approved of his imperialist policies, which established Britain
as the most powerful nation in the world. Her popularity in Britain soared as she became a
symbol of empire towards the end of her reign.
The Queen received Indian servants to mark her Golden Jubilee year. She promoted one, Abdul
Karim, to become her personal teacher or ‘Munshi’.

Karim instructed Victoria in Urdu and Indian affairs and introduced her to curry. He was just 24
but Victoria was fascinated by India, the country she ruled but would never visit. Politicians and
members of the royal household resented his position but despite this, Victoria gave him honours
and lands in India and took him with her on visits to the French Riviera.

Victoria's Jubilee bolstered her reputation. Her face was emblazoned on products from mugs to
jars of mustard to mark the occasion.

The Jubilee celebrations focussed on the Queen but also affirmed Britain's place as a global
power. Soldiers from the British Empire marched in processions through London. Victoria held a
feast, attended by 50 foreign kings and princes, along with the governing heads of Britain's
overseas colonies and dominions.

A day of global celebrations was planned for Victoria. The elderly Queen presided over a
number of events though her mobility was limited.

Victoria embraced technology by sending a telegram thanking her subjects across the empire.
She attended a procession to St Paul's Cathedral. Street parties were held across Britain, while
Sydney Harbour in Australia was lit up with illuminations. In India, 19,000 prisoners were
granted a pardon.

Victoria died after weeks of ill health. Her son and heir Edward VII and her grandson Emperor
Wilhelm II of Germany were at her deathbed.

The Queen ruled over an Empire that covered a quarter of the globe with 400 million subjects,
but she never forgot the men who supported her. She requested that Albert's dressing gown and a
plaster cast of his hand be placed in her coffin. She also asked for a lock of John Brown's hair
and his picture to be put in her hand. Lastly she left orders that Abdul Karim be among the
principal mourners at her funeral. She was an indomitable monarch who, even at the end, was
adept at getting her own way.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks3-gcse-history-queen-victoria-monarchy/z73rnrd
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Victoria-queen-of-United-Kingdom/Widowhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria