Life of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria was the matriarch of the British Empire. She epitomised the
values of the era and carved out a new role for the monarchy. During her 63-
year reign, a length surpassed only by our current Queen, Victoria presided over
the social and industrial transformation of Britain, as well
as expansion of the empire.
Victoria wasn’t expected to rule. Born on 24 May
1819 at Kensington Palace, she began life fifth in line to
the throne. Her father, Prince Edward, and
grandfather, King George III, both died the following
year, after which her uncle, George IV, acceded to the
throne. She became heir presumptive to her next
surviving uncle, William IV, who ruled from 1830.
However, he lacked an heir as his four legitimate children
died during infancy.
Victoria had an overprotective and unhappy
childhood. Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her
advisor Sir John Conroy, held to the ‘Kensington System’, a set of strict rules
named after their Kensington Palace home. So when Victoria became queen
upon the death of William IV in 1837, she relished the independence. Britain
was already a constitutional monarchy, in which she yielded little power but
significant influence – something she did not refrain from using.
Her first prime minister was Lord Melbourne. He became a trusted friend,
although his influence waned after Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert of Saxe-
Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Albert was the love of Victoria’s life and became, in
effect, her chief adviser and private secretary. He encouraged her to be
less partisan with parliament and assume the more ceremonial role that the
monarchy performs today. Meanwhile, the Victorian era became associated with
industrial expansion, championed by Prince Albert. One of his greatest
achievements was organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 at London’s Hyde
Park, which showcased the best in technology and design. He became known as
a great reformer, backing educational advances, the abolition
of slavery and workers’ welfare.
Albert and Victoria’s marriage was happy. As parents to
nine children, the pair placed a strong emphasis on morality
and family values, and thought it was better to set a good
example to their children rather than chastise. They enjoyed
seclusion at their new residences of Osborne House, on the
Isle of Wight, and Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands, where
they could live a private life not all that different from their
subjects.
When Albert died of typhoid in 1861, Victoria was
devastated and withdrew from public life, which made her unpopular with the
public. She began to fully resume duties between 1874 and 1882, encouraged
by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and her family.
It was during this later era of her reign that Victoria’s influence helped
bring peace and stability to Europe and the British Empire. She encouraged
ministers not to intervene in the Second Schleswig War of 1864 between
Prussia, Austria and Denmark. A letter to the German Emperor, Wilhelm I, also
helped avert a second Franco-German war in 1875. But what really boosted the
Queen’s popularity was imperial sentiment.
At the height of the empire, a quarter of the world’s land surface was
ruled by Victoria. She was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877. By the end of
her reign, Australia and Canada were dominions, South Africa was soon to
become a united nation, and large parts of Africa, the Far East and Oceania
were under British rule. Victoria also exerted a strong, albeit different, influence
over Europe. The queen was related to nearly all the ruling houses on the
continent, through her own relatives or her children’s marriages, giving rise to
the epithet ‘Grandmother of Europe’. Victoria died in 1901, aged 81, having
outlived Albert by 40 years.