Queen

Victoria

• She spoke several languages

Perhaps in part due to her strict schooling under the ‘Kensington system’, Victoria proved herself to be a
remarkably adept linguist. As well as being fluent in both English and German, she also spoke French,
Italian and Latin.

As her mother and governess both hailed from Germany, Victoria grew up speaking the language and at
one stage reportedly even had a German accent, which had to be erased by tutors. When she later
married her German cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the couple regularly spoke
German together. Although Albert was fluent in English, he and Victoria could often be heard talking –
and indeed arguing – in German when in private.

Later in life, Victoria also experimented with some of the exotic languages from across her vast empire.
Following the arrival of Indian servants at Windsor Castle in August 1887, she was taught Hindustani and
Urdu phrases by her favourite Indian attendant, Abdul Karim. The queen recorded in her diary: “I am
learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants. It is a great interest to me for both the
language and the people, I have naturally never come into real contact with before”.

• Her relationship with her prime ministers wasn’t always easy
Over the course of the six decades she sat on the throne, Victoria saw many prime ministers come
and go. Yet while she established a remarkably close bond with some, others failed spectacularly to
win her favour.
Victoria’s first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, was keen to flatter, instruct and influence the young
queen from the very beginning. The pair were so close that Victoria claimed to love him “like a
father”. However, this intense friendship with ‘Lord M’ made the queen unpopular with many – she
was criticised for being politically partisan and was even mockingly called her “Mrs Melbourne”.
Later in her reign, Benjamin Disraeli similarly pulled out all the stops to win Victoria’s favour with
charm and flattery. His tactics clearly worked, as the queen told her eldest daughter [also named
Victoria] that he would “do very well” and was “full of poetry, romance and chivalry”. Other
ministers, however, received a much less enthusiastic response from her majesty: she found Lord
John Russell stubborn and rude and referred to Lord Palmerstone as a “dreadful old man”. As
foreign secretary, Palmerstone had invoked Victoria’s wrath by ignoring Albert’s suggested
amendments to dispatches and apparently attempting to seduce one of her ladies-in-waiting.
Victoria found Gladstone similarly infuriating, and with her characteristically sharp tongue dismissed
him as a “half-crazy and in many ways ridiculous, wild and incomprehensible old fanatic”.

5) Queen Victoria’s husband was Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha – her first cousin, who she married in
February 1840. The royal couple first met four years earlier, a few days before Victoria’s 17th
birthday party.

6) Victoria and Albert had a whopping nine children together – their names were Victoria, Edward,
Alice, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, Leopold and Beatrice.

7) Albert died in December 1861, when the Queen was 42 years old. The Queen never recovered
from his death, and dressed in black as a sign of mourning for the rest of her life.

8) Ruling for over 60 years, Victoria would become the longest reigning British Monarch, and Queen
of the biggest empire in history. During her time as Queen, the British Empire included Australia,
New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and India.

9) There are lots of famous places and sites around the world named after this famous British
Queen, such as the state of Queensland in Australia, Victoria Falls in Zambia and Zimbabwe, the city
of Victoria in Canada, and Victoria Square in Athens, Greece.

10) After a long and eventful life, Queen Victoria died in January 1901, aged 81. She was buried
beside her husband Albert at Frogmore Mausoleum near Windsor.










1. Her first name wasn't Victoria.
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Born in Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819, Queen Victoria was originally named Alexandrina
Victoria, after her godfather, Tsar Alexander I, but always preferred to go by her second name, or
the nickname 'Drina. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession for the British crown, behind
the four eldest sons of George III, including her three uncles and her father, Edward.

2. She was the first member of the Royal family to live at Buckingham Palace.
Shortly after her accession to the throne, Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace, which was
previously owned by her late uncle King William IV. This made Queen Victoria the first reigning
monarch to take up residence at Buckingham, though her move did not come without its struggles.
As the royal family's website puts it, "Her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 soon showed up the
Palace's shortcomings."

The Palace was in need of extreme renovations if it was going to be a family home as Queen Victoria
intended it to be. Victoria put in the work, adding an entirely new wing, and years later, Buckingham
continues to serve as a place of royal business and the London residence of Queen Elizabeth.

3. She was barely five feet tall.
The monarch was four inches shorter than Queen Elizabeth II.

4. She became Queen when she was 18.
At 6 a.m. on June 20, 1837, Victoria was woken from her bed at and informed that her uncle, King
William IV, had suffered a heart attack and died during the night. Less than a month after turning
18, Victoria was Queen.

5. Growing up, she was under constant supervision.
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Less than a year after Queen Victoria's birth, her father, Edward, Duke of Kent (the fourth son of
George III) died of pneumonia, leaving the young princess to be raised by her mother. Following his
death, Victoria's mother, Duchess Victoria, was prepared to rule alongside her daughter if Victoria's
uncle died and she ascended to the throne before she was officially of age. For this reason, Victoria's
mother used a strict code of discipline to shape the Queen-to-be. Later known as the "Kensington
System," it involved a strict timetable of lessons to improve Victoria's morality and intellect.

This meant she rarely got to interact with children her own age because of the demands on her
time. Princess Victoria was under constant adult supervision and was also made to share a bedroom
with her mother until she became Queen.

6. She was multilingual.
The young queen was an adept linguist, fluent in both English and German. Her mother and
governess both had German roots, so Victoria grew up speaking the language and later used it
frequently when speaking to her German husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The
Queen also studied French, Italian, and Latin.

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The Real Story Behind Queen Victoria and Abdul
Toward the end of her reign, when servants from India arrived at Windsor Castle in 1877, her
attendant, Abdul Karim, taught the Queen many Hindu and Urdu phrases to better communicate
with her servants. "I am learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants," she wrote in
her diary, according to a book about the period, Victoria & Abdul. "It is a great interest to me for
both the language and the people, I have naturally never come into real contact with before."

7. She survived at multiple assassination attempts.
During her reign, several attempts were made at Queen Victoria's life, all of them unsuccessful. The
first notable attempt was made in 1840, when 18-year-old Edward Oxford fired at the Queen’s
carriage in London. Oxford was accused of high treason for his crime and was ultimately found not
guilty for reasons of insanity, according to the History channel's website. Two men tried to shoot her
in 1842, and in 1849, her carriage was attacked by William Hamilton, an unemployed Irish immigrant
who later pled guilty to the crime and was banished for seven years, History reports. One year later,
Robert Pate, a former soldier, used an iron-tipped cane to hit the Queen in the head, according to
Smithsonian Magazine.

The final notable attempt took place in March of 1882, when a Scottish poet named Roderick
Maclean shot at Queen Victoria's carriage with a pistol while leaving the Windsor train station.
According to Time, this was Maclean's eighth attempt at assassinating the Queen. Maclean was tried
for high treason and was found "not guilty, but insane," so Maclean was sentenced to live out his
days in an asylum until his death in 1921, the Guardian reports. Despite the chaos and fear that
followed the many assassination attempts, Queen Victoria became more and more popular with the
public after each attempt.

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8. She proposed to her husband.
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In the lead up to her 17th birthday party, then-Princess Victoria met her first cousin, Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Four years later, Victoria, now the monarch, proposed to Prince Albert on
October 15, 1839 and they were married on February 10, 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St. James's
Palace in London.

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The True Story of Victoria and Albert
Victoria was deeply in love with Albert and, once they were married, she claimed to be truly happy
for the first time in her life. After their wedding night, Queen Victoria wrote in her diary, "I never,
never spent such an evening!! My dearest dearest dear Albert ... his excessive love & affection gave
me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before!"

9. She began more than one popular wedding trend.
At the time of her wedding, it was common for wedding dresses to come in a variety of colors.
Queen Victoria, however, wished to show off the lace embroidery of her dress and requested it in
white. She also asked that none of her guests wear white so as not to draw attention away from her,
and she even had the pattern for her dress destroyed so that it could not be copied, according to
Vogue. Queen Victoria accessorized the dress—complete with an 18-foot train—with white satin
shoes, Turkish diamond earrings, and a sapphire brooch that belonged to Prince Albert. Over her
veil, the queen wore a wreath of myrtle and orange blossoms.

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10. And a popular Christmas one as well.
You can thank Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert for your Christmas tree. They
popularized the custom in 1848 when Albert sent decorated trees to schools and army barracks
around Windsor. An image of the royal family decorating a tree was also published that year,
inspiring other British families to do the same.

Victoria and Albert were very hands-on in the process. "Queen Victoria and Prince Albert brought
the tree into Windsor Castle on Christmas Eve and they would decorate it themselves," Royal
Collection curator Kathryn Jones explained to the BBC. "They would light the candles and put
gingerbread on the tree and the children would be brought in."

11. She and her husband had nine children.
Over the course of her life, Queen Victoria was mother to nine children with Prince Albert. Her sons
and daughters would later go on to marry into several other European monarchies, and would go on
to produce the Queen's 42 grandchildren.

12. She became the first known carrier of hemophilia, known as the "Royal disease."
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Queen Victoria was the first in her family to carry hemophilia B, a blood clotting disorder, but the
Queen herself was not a hemophiliac. Because of Victoria's vast lineage, the disorder was passed on
to the members of royal and noble families across Europe. A 2009 study in Science Magazine even
linked the hemophilia mutation to members of the Russian royal family, the Romanovs.

The disease claimed several of her descendants: Queen Victoria's son Leopold, the Duke of Albany,
died at age 30 after he slipped and fell, and two of Queen Victoria's grandsons— Friedrich and
Leopold—also bled to death due to the affliction. It is believed that the last royal carrier of the
disease was Prince Waldemar of Prussia, who died in 1945, Science Magazine reports.

13. She was the first monarch to ride a train.
The Victorian era was a time of rapid technological advancement and industrialization. Electricity
started to become more common and photography became a popular medium, and rail systems
spread across Britain. In 1842, Victoria became the first monarch to ride a train, according to PBS.
The ride from Slough, near Windsor Castle, to Paddington in West London took about 30 minutes to
complete. The 23-year-old Queen found the ride delightful and said the “motion was very slight, and
much easier than a carriage—also no dust or great heat,” according to People.

14. She is the second-longest reigning British monarch.
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Not long ago, Queen Victoria held the title of longest reigning British monarch, with a total reign of
63 years and seven months. In 2015, Queen Elizabeth II broke Queen Victoria's record and continues
to hold it today.

15. Her name lives on all over