Queen Victoria

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. From 1 May 1876 she also held the title Empress of India. She was the only child of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and came to the throne at 18 when her uncle William IV died. She reigned for 63 years and 216 days, longer than any British monarch before her. Only her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II has since reigned longer. The period is called the Victorian era. During it, Britain went through the later stages of the Industrial Revolution, fast urbanisation, the spread of the railway and telegraph, and growing reform of Parliament. The British Empire also expanded to its greatest extent in the nineteenth century, adding territory across Africa and Asia and in the Pacific.

Victoria's reign helped shape the modern constitutional monarchy. In 1837 the sovereign still had real political influence. By 1901 the Crown was mostly a symbol of national and imperial unity, and in politics it mainly advised and warned through its dealings with prime ministers such as Lord Melbourne, Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone. In 1840 she married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. They had nine children, and those children married into royal families across Europe, which earned Victoria the nickname "the grandmother of Europe". Through these marriages the haemophilia she carried passed into the royal families of Russia and Spain. After Albert died in 1861 she went into long, deep mourning and largely withdrew from public life. This led to a short rise in republican feeling. Her public standing then recovered, and her Golden Jubilee (1887) and Diamond Jubilee (1897) became major celebrations of empire.

This article covers Victoria's upbringing under the "Kensington System", her accession, her marriage and family, and her relations with her ministers. It also covers the main domestic, foreign and imperial events of her reign, including Ireland, her years as a widow, the attempts on her life and her later years, death and succession. Further sections deal with her private life and writings, her links to Victorian society and culture, her legacy and the many places named after her, and how historians and artists have portrayed her.

Birth, ancestry and early life

Victoria was born into a Hanoverian royal family that had a problem with its succession. Princess Charlotte of Wales was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. When she died in childbirth in November 1817, none of the king's twelve surviving children had a legitimate child who was still alive. Several of his middle-aged, unmarried sons quickly found wives. One of them was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the widowed Princess of Leiningen and sister of Charlotte's widower, Prince Leopold. The duchess was pregnant by 1819, and the couple moved so that Victoria, a potential heir to the British throne, would be born in Britain. The baby was born at Kensington Palace in London on May 24, 1819. She was christened Alexandrina Victoria. The first name honoured her godfather, Tsar Alexander I of Russia. Through her mother she had two older half-siblings, Carl and Feodora of Leiningen.

Her father died of pneumonia at Sidmouth on 23 January 1820, when Victoria was eight months old. George III died six days later. The throne then passed to the Prince Regent as George IV. Next in line were his brothers Frederick, Duke of York, and William, Duke of Clarence, and then Victoria. The Duke of York died in 1827, and the young princess became second-in-line to the British throne. The daughters of the Duke of Clarence had died in infancy. When he became king as William IV in 1830, Victoria became heir presumptive.

The Kensington System

The widowed duchess had little money and spoke poor English. She came to depend on Sir John Conroy, an Irish-born army officer who had served her husband. Conroy was comptroller of the Duchess of Kent's household for the next nineteen years. Together they designed what historians call the Kensington System. This was a set of rules meant to make the princess weak and dependent and thus unlikely to adhere to her other relatives in the House of Hanover against her mother and Conroy. Victoria was never left alone with anyone except her mother, her tutor or her governesses. She slept in her mother's bedroom, and adults had to hold her hand on the stairs. She was kept isolated from other children, and her mother and Conroy recorded everything she did and chose who she could meet. Her main companions were her half-sister Feodora and Conroy's daughter Victoire, whom Victoria disliked and suspected... reported their activities to John Conroy. The system was also meant to keep her away from the courts of George IV and William IV. Its main effect was to make her strong-willed and suspicious of Conroy. In later life she called her childhood unhappy, and as soon as she became queen she shut Conroy out of her presence.

Education and influences

In 1824 Louise Lehzen, a Hanoverian clergyman's daughter, became Victoria's governess. Lehzen encouraged the princess to be strong, informed, and independent from the Duchess and Conroy's influence. Efforts to remove her failed because Victoria's royal uncles supported her. The Reverend George Davys taught the princess at home, where she learned history, geography and scripture. She also studied French, German, Italian and Latin, as well as music, drawing and riding. Lehzen later said that in 1830 Victoria first learned how close she was to the throne by studying a royal family tree. Her uncle Leopold, who became King of the Belgians in 1831, was a fatherly figure to her. He advised her in frequent letters. She began her journal in 1832 at the age of thirteen. Her mother read it regularly, so the early entries are guarded. In the 1830s Conroy and the duchess took her on tours of the Midlands, Wales, the north of England and the south coast. On these tours she met local dignitaries and received loyal addresses. William IV saw the tours as unauthorised royal progresses and disliked them.

Regency question and majority

Under the Regency Act 1830, the duchess would become regent if William IV died before Victoria turned 18. Conroy hoped to rule through the duchess. He pushed for the regency age to be raised to 21. In 1835, while Victoria was seriously ill at Ramsgate, he also tried to make her appoint him her private secretary, and she refused. William IV and the duchess openly disliked each other. At a banquet in August 1836 the king publicly said he hoped to live until Victoria came of age, so that the duchess would never become regent. Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837. William IV died 27 days later, on 20 June, and his efforts to place the Duchess in the role of regent were ultimately unsuccessful.

Accession and early reign (1837–1840)

Accession and the separation from Hanover

In the early hours of 20 June 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. She had turned 18 less than a month earlier, so no regency was needed. Later that morning the Privy Council was impressed by the graceful assurance of the new queen's demeanour. She also took steps to become independent of her mother's household. She made every attempt to keep her mother's household, including Lady Flora and Conroy, away from her in distant parts of Buckingham Palace.

The British crown and the Hanoverian crown now went to different people. Succession to the Hanoverian throne was regulated by semi-Salic law (agnatic-cognatic), which gave priority to all male lines before female lines, so Hanover passed to her uncle Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, the fifth son of George III. This ended the personal union between Britain and Hanover that had begun in 1714. During Victoria's reign, he was heir presumptive to the British throne until the birth of his great-niece Victoria, Princess Royal, in 1840.

Buckingham Palace and the coronation

Victoria was the first monarch to take up residence in Buckingham Palace, in July 1837, just three weeks after her accession. William IV had chosen to remain at Clarence House while the works were completed. Her coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on Thursday 28 June 1838, after a public procession through the streets from Buckingham Palace. Its budget was £70,000. Records of the time report that more than 400,000 people came to London in connection with the coronation. The ceremony took five hours and suffered from a lack of rehearsal. There were several mishaps: the coronation ring was painfully forced on to her wrong finger, and Lord Rolle, an elderly peer, fell down the steps while making his homage to the Queen.

Lord Melbourne and partisanship

The Whig prime minister William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (Lord Melbourne), became her chief political tutor and a near-daily companion. According to Britannica, Melbourne fostered the new queen's self-confidence and enthusiasm for her role; he also encouraged her to ignore or minimize social problems. Because of Melbourne, Victoria became an ardent Whig. Contemporaries already assumed she was a Whig. William IV and his wife Adelaide had strong Tory sympathies, whilst Victoria's mother was known to favour the Whigs. The Whig party exploited Victoria's name in its election campaign, suggesting that a monarch from a new generation would inevitably mean the progress of reform. Critics gave her the mocking nickname "Mrs Melbourne".

The crises of 1839

Her partisanship lay behind both crises of 1839. Lady Flora Hastings was a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent and had links to the Tories. Early in 1839 she developed a swollen abdomen, and gossip at court said she was pregnant, with Conroy suspected as the father. The charge was laid before Lord Melbourne, who communicated it to Sir James Clark, the queen's physician, and Lady Flora was subjected to the indignity of a medical examination. The examination cleared her. She died the following July, and it was then discovered that the physical appearances which first provoked suspicion against her had been due to enlargement of the liver. Her family published angry letters, and the scandal turned public opinion against the court.

The Bedchamber Crisis began in the middle of this affair. The Whig ministry had introduced a bill suspending the Constitution of Jamaica. In early May 1839 the bill passed by only five votes, and Melbourne resigned. Victoria asked the Conservative leader Sir Robert Peel to form a government. Peel stipulated that the Whig assistants to the queen, her ladies-in-waiting, be replaced with Tory women of his own political party. The queen imperiously refused, not without Melbourne's encouragement. Peel would not take office on those terms, and Melbourne returned. Melbourne was reinstated until the 1841 election, after which Peel was appointed Prime Minister and Victoria conceded to the replacement of six of her ladies-in-waiting. The two episodes made her look like a partisan sovereign and badly damaged the popularity she had enjoyed at her accession. Her marriage in February 1840 soon reduced Melbourne's influence (see the next section).

Marriage to Prince Albert

Courtship and wedding

Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was Victoria's first cousin. Both were born in 1819. Their uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, had long wanted them to marry, because he hoped to extend Coburg influence through a match between Albert and the heir to the British throne. Albert first visited England in 1836. Victoria was in no hurry to marry, but Albert impressed her greatly on his second visit in October 1839, and she proposed to him on 15 October, five days after he reached Windsor Castle. A reigning monarch could not receive a proposal, so royal custom meant that Victoria had to propose. They married on 10 February 1840 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, in London. Victoria wore a white satin gown trimmed with Honiton lace instead of the usual robes of state. Brides later copied it, and it helped make the white wedding a lasting marriage custom.

Albert's position and political role

The British public distrusted the match. Albert was German, had little money or rank, and was barely known in Britain. Parliament cut his proposed allowance from £50,000 to £30,000 a year and refused to give him precedence next to the queen. Victoria gave him precedence by letters patent, but he received no title and was not officially named Prince Consort until 1857. He also had no British peerage. Even so, the Regency Act of 1840 made him regent if the queen died while any of their children was under 18.

Albert at first complained that he was "only the husband, not the master in the house". Victoria kept him away from state business, and her household was still run by Baroness Lehzen. Early in 1841 Albert took the royal nursery out of Lehzen's control, and in September 1842 she left Britain for good. From then on, and especially during Victoria's nine pregnancies, Albert acted as her private secretary in all but name. He read and drafted papers, attended her meetings with ministers, and became her main political adviser. He worked closely with Robert Peel, whom Victoria had once disliked. His last important political act was in late 1861, when he softened the British dispatch during the Trent Affair (see the section on foreign relations and the American Civil War). On 25 June 1857 Victoria formally gave him the title Prince Consort.

Household reform and the model of monarchy

Albert worked with Baron Christian von Stockmar, a Coburg doctor and royal adviser. One of Stockmar's first tasks was to make the royal household more efficient, and over time he and Albert built a new system for running it. The old household was divided among several great officers of state, whose departments often overlapped. Albert brought it under central control, cut waste and sinecures, and put the private estates and the Duchy of Cornwall on a businesslike footing. The savings helped pay for private homes such as Osborne House, covered in the section on private life. Albert also set out a model of kingship that came to define the Victorian Crown. It was publicly above party, morally strict, focused on family, and hard-working. It stood in deliberate contrast to the Hanoverian courts of George IV and William IV.

Death

On 8 December 1861 the Court Circular first announced that Albert had been confined to his rooms for a week with a feverish cold and pains in his limbs. In late November he had travelled to Cambridge to confront the Prince of Wales over his affair with Nellie Clifden. He died at Windsor Castle on 14 December 1861, aged 42. His doctors included Sir James Clark and William Jenner, and reported the immediate cause of death as congestion of the lungs during typhoid fever. The death certificate gave the cause as "typhoid fever: duration 21 days". Victoria blamed his death on worry over their son's behaviour.

The queen would not allow an autopsy. Doubts about the diagnosis therefore grew, because Albert was also reported to have been ill for several years with digestive symptoms that point to a longer-term condition. In 2011 the historian Helen Rappaport studied the archival records, including the couple's letters, and argued that he had died of Crohn's disease. Others have suggested kidney failure or cancer, but without a post-mortem every such diagnosis is speculative. Typhoid is still a plausible explanation, and the rival theories include Crohn's disease and other chronic illnesses of the digestive tract. Albert's death began Victoria's long widowhood and seclusion.

Children and descendants

Victoria and Albert had nine children, born between 1840 and 1857. All nine lived to adulthood, which was unusual for the period. Most married into continental royal or princely houses:

• Victoria, Princess Royal (1840–1901), known as "Vicky", married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in 1858. He reigned as German Emperor Frederick III for 99 days in 1888, and their eldest son became Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (1841–1910), "Bertie", married Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863. He succeeded his mother as Edward VII.
• Alice (1843–1878) married Prince Louis of Hesse, later Grand Duke Louis IV, in 1862.
• Alfred (1844–1900), Duke of Edinburgh, married Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia in 1874. In 1893 he became reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
• Helena (1846–1923) married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein in 1866.
• Louise (1848–1939) married the Marquess of Lorne, later 9th Duke of Argyll, in 1871. The marriage was a rare match for a sovereign's daughter with a British subject.
• Arthur (1850–1942), Duke of Connaught, married Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia in 1879.
• Leopold (1853–1884), Duke of Albany, married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont in 1882.
• Beatrice (1857–1944) married Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885. The couple lived with the Queen, and Beatrice acted as her companion and secretary.

"Grandmother of Europe"

Victoria had 42 grandchildren. Many of them married into the reigning houses of Europe, which earned her the nickname "grandmother of Europe":

• Germany: Vicky's son became Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• Greece: Vicky's daughter Sophia became Queen of Greece as the wife of Constantine I.
• Russia: Alice's daughter Alix married Nicholas II of Russia in 1894 and became Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
• Romania: Alfred's daughter Marie became Queen of Romania.
• Norway: Edward VII's daughter Maud became Queen of Norway in 1905 as the wife of Haakon VII.
• Sweden: Arthur's daughter Margaret married the future Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden, though she died in 1920, before he became king.
• Spain: Beatrice's daughter Victoria Eugenie ("Ena") married Alfonso XIII of Spain in 1906.

Haemophilia

Victoria carried haemophilia, an X-linked bleeding disorder (X chromosome). No case is known in her ancestry, so the mutation is generally thought to have arisen spontaneously. Her son Leopold had the disease. His haemophilia contributed to his death following a fall at the age of 30, at Cannes in 1884.

Two of her daughters, Alice and Beatrice, were carriers:

• Through Alice: Alice's son Friedrich died in 1873 after a fall. Her daughter Irene passed the disease to her sons in the Prussian royal family. Her daughter Alexandra passed it to Tsarevich Alexei, born in 1904. His illness drew the Russian imperial couple to Grigori Rasputin.
• Through Beatrice: Ena carried the gene into the Spanish royal family, where two of her sons were affected.

Genetic analysis of the Romanov remains, published in 2009, identified the family's disorder as haemophilia B (genetics).

Pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing

Victoria disliked pregnancy and the frequent confinements that interrupted her work, and she wrote frankly about this in letters to her eldest daughter. She also found breastfeeding distasteful. Some biographers describe her as more at ease with her children once they were grown, and her relationships with several of them were strained.

Her experience of childbirth had a lasting effect on medicine. On 7 April 1853 she asked John Snow to administer chloroform analgesia for the delivery of her eighth child, Prince Leopold. Snow gave her chloroform again at the birth of Princess Beatrice in 1857. Before 1853, the use of ether and chloroform in childbirth had faced social, religious and medical opposition. The Queen's example did much to make obstetric anaesthesia acceptable.

The Prince of Wales and a divided family

Albert and the adviser Baron Stockmar set the Prince of Wales a demanding programme of education, and Bertie performed poorly in it. In 1861 he had an affair with the actress Nellie Clifden while at an army camp at the Curragh. Albert visited his son at Cambridge to reproach him only weeks before Albert's own death, and Victoria partly blamed Bertie for it. For decades afterwards she judged him unfit for responsibility and kept him away from most state business.

Her descendants' dynastic ties did not prevent war. In the First World War, her grandsons George V and Wilhelm II led opposing powers, while her granddaughter Alexandra was Empress of Russia. Leopold's son Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had been raised in Britain but sided with Germany.

The Crown and the constitution

Victoria came to the throne in 1837 with real political power, and she used it in a partisan way. Her early attachment to the Whigs under Lord Melbourne led to the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839, which is covered above. Over the next six decades the Crown's power to make and unmake governments declined. The franchise widened, and disciplined political parties made the result of a general election, not the sovereign's preference, decide who governed. In The English Constitution (1867), Walter Bagehot described the result in a well-known phrase: "The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn." Bagehot was describing the monarchy's "dignified" role in a parliamentary system in which the 'efficient secret' was the 'nearly complete fusion' of executive and legislative powers in the Cabinet. Historians note, however, that Bagehot was stating an ideal rather than a fact; in practice Queen Victoria often claimed—and sometimes even exercised—more power than was indicated by constitutional niceties.

Relations with prime ministers

Ten prime ministers served under Victoria. After Melbourne came Sir Robert Peel, whom she first resented and later admired. Her longest conflict was with Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary. With Prince Albert's help she tried to bring foreign policy under her control. In a memorandum of 1850 she asserted her "constitutional right" to dismiss the Foreign Secretary if he altered a despatch which had received her sanction. The dispute came to a head after Louis Napoleon's coup in France in December 1851. Palmerston endorsed the coup in a despatch that was submitted neither to the Queen nor to the Prime Minister, and Lord John Russell dismissed him. Palmerston became prime minister in 1855. Queen Victoria found it difficult to work with him but their relationship gradually improved. Her other prime ministers were the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Aberdeen (who led the Peelite–Whig coalition of 1852–1855), and later Rosebery and the Marquess of Salisbury. Salisbury's three ministries took up most of her last fifteen years, and she relied heavily on his judgement.

Disraeli and Gladstone

Benjamin Disraeli won the Queen's affection with flattery, personal attention and an imperial policy she approved of. He secured the Royal Titles Act of 1876, and the same year she made him Earl of Beaconsfield. William Ewart Gladstone was formal and lectured her, and she distrusted his Liberal and later Irish policies. Her dislike affected the choice of prime minister twice. After the Liberal victory of 1880 she tried to avoid Gladstone: in April 1880 Queen Victoria invited Lord Hartington to form a government, but he said that he was unable to meet her wishes. Lord Granville also declined after Gladstone made it clear that he would not serve under anybody else. She therefore had to send for Gladstone, who took office on 23 April. When Gladstone finally retired in March 1894, she did not ask him who would succeed him as Prime Minister and sent for Lord Rosebery; Gladstone wanted Lord Spencer. This was one of the last occasions on which a British sovereign made a real personal choice of prime minister.

The prerogative in practice

The royal prerogative was exercised on ministers' advice, but Victoria insisted that the advice reach her in full. She read the dispatch boxes closely, demanded to see drafts of important despatches, and objected when Cabinet decisions were presented as settled. She granted dissolutions of Parliament when prime ministers asked for them, while making her views known in private. Her patronage mattered most in church and army appointments. In 1868 she insisted on Archibald Campbell Tait as Archbishop of Canterbury, against Disraeli's own preference. She strongly protected the Crown's command of the army, which was held for nearly forty years (1856–1895) by her cousin the Duke of Cambridge as Commander-in-Chief. The prerogative could also be used against the wishes of the old establishment. In 1871 Gladstone's government abolished the sale of army commissions by royal warrant after the House of Lords had blocked the bill. By the end of her reign the monarch's influence came mainly from private persuasion, long experience and public prestige, not from the power to appoint or dismiss ministers. Her successors inherited this model of constitutional monarchy.

Domestic politics and reform

Victoria's reign brought large changes in who could vote and in what the state did. Her own part in these changes was usually indirect and often conservative. Ministers made reforms through Parliament, while the Crown advised, gave or held back its approval in private, and at times acted as a go-between.

Chartism and 1848

Chartism was a mass movement for manhood suffrage, the secret ballot and other democratic demands. It peaked in 1848, when revolutions spread across the continent and France's king, Louis-Philippe, fled to England. Before the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common on 10 April 1848, fears were so great that on the eve of the meeting, the Duke of Wellington stationed troops across London and the royal family were moved to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. In the event the rally passed peacefully. It was the last time the Chartists attempted to present a petition to Parliament. Victoria gave her full support to the government's policy of repression of the Chartists and believed the workers in her realm to be contented and loyal. Prince Albert bought two daguerreotypes of the meeting taken by William Edward Kilburn, which are among the earliest photographs of a crowd. They stayed in the Royal Collection until rediscovered in 1977.

Corn Laws and free trade

The Corn Laws were protective tariffs on imported grain. Robert Peel's Conservative government repealed them in 1846, and the issue split his party. The protectionist majority broke with the "Peelites", who later joined the Liberals. By then the Queen and Albert had moved past their earlier dislike of Peel and backed him. In 1846 she and Albert supported the repeal of the Corn Laws in order to relieve distress in famine-devastated Ireland. Albert watched the opening of the Commons debate from the gallery, and protectionists attacked this as a sign of royal partisanship. Repeal began Britain's long commitment to free trade.

Extending the franchise

The Second Reform Act of 1867 was passed by Lord Derby's Conservative government, with Disraeli steering it through the Commons. It gave the vote to male householders in the boroughs and roughly doubled the electorate. Gladstone's Ballot Act 1872 brought in secret voting. The Third Reform Act of 1884 extended household suffrage to the counties, but the Conservative-dominated Lords blocked it until seats were redistributed. Queen Victoria was opposed to the extension of the franchise. She told Gladstone that the Lords reflected "the true feeling of the country" better than the Commons did. Even so, during October 1884 Queen Victoria intervened in what was rapidly becoming a constitutional crisis, urging the party leaders to meet and break the deadlock. The talks led to the "Arlington Street Compact", under which the bulk of MPs would be elected in single-member constituencies. The franchise act then passed, and the Redistribution of Seats Act followed in 1885.

Social and administrative legislation

Factory legislation continued throughout the reign, including the Factory Act of 1844 and the Ten Hours Act of 1847, which limited working hours for women and young people. Repeated cholera epidemics led to the Public Health Act 1848 and the broader Public Health Act 1875, both part of the growth of public health administration. The Elementary Education Act 1870, sponsored by W. E. Forster, set up school boards to provide elementary education where church schools did not. The Northcote–Trevelyan Report (1854) led over time to entry into the civil service by open competitive examination. Edward Cardwell's army reforms included abolishing the purchase of commissions in 1871. After the Lords obstructed the bill, Gladstone carried this out by royal warrant. The Queen was reluctant to issue it, and her cousin the Duke of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, resisted many of the reforms.

Women's rights and social views

Victoria ruled in her own right but strongly opposed women's suffrage and the wider women's rights movement. In 1870 she complained to Gladstone of her "strongest aversion for the socalled & most erroneous 'Rights of Woman.'" Later that year she wrote to Theodore Martin, Albert's official biographer, about "this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights,' with all its attendant horrors". That letter was a reaction to news "that Viscountess Amberley had become president of the Bristol and West of England Women's Suffrage Society". Her letters were published only after her death, so her views had little direct public effect during the suffrage campaign. On other social questions she was no Sabbatarian, saying she was "not at all an admirer or approver of our very dull Sunday." She also gave her patronage to animal welfare.

Foreign relations and wars

Dynastic diplomacy

Victoria's family connections made dynastic diplomacy part of British foreign relations during her reign. In 1843 she and Albert visited King Louis-Philippe at the Château d'Eu in Normandy. No British and French sovereigns had met since the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. The king made a return visit to Windsor in 1844, and the meetings came to stand for an early entente cordiale between Britain and France. After the revolution of 1848 Louis-Philippe went into exile in England. Relations with his eventual successor, Napoleon III, were close during the Crimean alliance. Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie came on a state visit to Windsor in April 1855, and that August Victoria and Albert visited Paris for the Exposition Universelle. Links with Prussia were closer still. Victoria's eldest daughter Vicky married Prince Frederick William of Prussia in January 1858. Vicky shared his liberal outlook and hoped that Prussia, and later the German Empire, would become a constitutional monarchy on the British model. Victoria and Vicky wrote to each other constantly, and their letters became an important private channel between the two courts.

The Crimean War

In the Crimean War (1853–1856), Russia fought an alliance of Britain, France, Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire. Victoria followed the campaign closely. She visited wounded soldiers, presented campaign medals in person, and supported Florence Nightingale's nursing work. One lasting result was the Victoria Cross. Victoria had instructed the War Office to strike a new medal that would not recognise birth or class, and Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, became one of the strongest advocates for the creation of a simple, egalitarian award. The royal warrant was signed on 29 January 1856 and backdated to 1854 to recognise acts of valour during the Crimean War. At the first investiture in Hyde Park on 26 June 1857, Victoria invested 62 of the 111 Crimean recipients.

The American Civil War and the Trent Affair

Britain declared itself neutral in the American Civil War in May 1861. That neutrality was tested in November, when USS San Jacinto, commanded by Union Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British mail packet RMS Trent and removed, as contraband of war, two Confederate envoys, James Mason and John Slidell. Britain sent troops to Canada and put the Royal Navy on alert. On 30 November 1861 the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, sent Victoria a draft memorandum to the United States complaining strongly about the federal government's actions. Albert intervened on 1 December 1861, despite his failing health. At Victoria's request, Albert softened Russell's dispatch and gave the Americans a way out by allowing Seward to deny that Wilkes had acted under instructions. President Abraham Lincoln ended the crisis by releasing the envoys. It was Albert's last political act, because he died on 14 December. After Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Victoria wrote a personal letter of condolence to his widow, Mary Todd Lincoln.

The Eastern Question, Bismarck and Germany

Victoria's views on the Eastern Question were strongly anti-Russian. The Ottoman suppression of the Bulgarian uprising in 1876 led Gladstone to campaign against Turkey. Victoria instead backed Disraeli's policy of propping up the Ottoman Empire as a barrier against Russian expansion. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 she pressed her ministers to act firmly against Russia and more than once threatened to abdicate. The Treaty of San Stefano (March 1878) greatly enlarged Russian influence in the Balkans. The Congress of Berlin (June–July 1878) revised that settlement, and Britain gained the administration of Cyprus. Disraeli returned claiming "peace with honour", and Victoria made him a Knight of the Garter.

Victoria's feelings about German unification were mixed. In 1864 she helped stop Palmerston and Russell from going to war over Schleswig-Holstein on Denmark's side, even though her daughter-in-law Alexandra was Danish. Her dealings with Otto von Bismarck were usually tense. During the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck accused the queen and Vicky of being ardently francophile, and the newspapers soon picked up the story. In the 1880s the two clashed over a proposed marriage between Vicky's daughter Viktoria and Prince Alexander of Battenberg. Bismarck even credited the queen with a deliberate design of alienating Russia and Germany in the hope of bringing about an Anglo-German alliance against the tsar. In April 1888, during the brief reign of her dying son-in-law Frederick III, Victoria went to Charlottenburg Palace and met Bismarck in person. Contemporary reports described the conversation as friendly.

Empire and the title Empress of India

Crown rule in India

In May 1857 sepoys of the East India Company's Bengal army mutinied at Meerut, starting the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The rising spread across much of northern India and was put down only in 1858. Parliament answered it with the Government of India Act 1858. The Act transferred the territories, revenues and powers of the East India Company to the Crown. It also created the office of Secretary of State for India, assisted by a Council of India of fifteen members. The old dual system of the Company's Court of Directors and the Board of Control was abolished, and the Secretary of State became a Cabinet minister answerable to Parliament. The change was announced in a royal proclamation dated 1 November 1858 and addressed to "the Princes, Chiefs, and people of India". Victoria influenced its wording. She wanted it to express "feelings of generosity, benevolence and religious toleration", and the text promised non-interference in religion and equal treatment under the law. Charles Canning read it at Allahabad and afterwards took the title of Viceroy as the Crown's personal representative. The period of direct Crown rule in India, known as the British Raj, lasted until 1947.

Empress of India

The Company was formally dissolved in 1874. The prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, then offered the Queen the title "Empress of India". The idea was not new: Lord Ellenborough had suggested it in 1843. Parliament passed the Royal Titles Act 1876, which received royal assent on 27 April 1876, and Victoria took the new style from 1 May 1876. In Britain the measure was controversial. Critics called it theatrical, and Disraeli was attacked for encouraging imperial display. The Indian form of the title, Kaisar-i-Hind, was coined by the orientalist G. W. Leitner. The title was proclaimed in her absence at the first Delhi Durbar, an "Imperial Assemblage" organised by the Viceroy, Lord Lytton. It ran from 23 December 1876 to 5 January 1877, and the proclamation itself was made on 1 January 1877. Lytton told the Queen that the ceremony was meant to place her authority on "the ancient throne of the Mughals". Victoria never visited India. Even so, she took a strong personal interest in it, which later showed in her Indian household (see Household, confidants and court life).

Imperial expansion

The empire grew greatly during her reign. The First Opium War (1839–1842) with China ended with the cession of Hong Kong Island. The Second Opium War (1856–1860) added Kowloon, and the New Territories were leased in 1898. In Central Asia, Britain fought two wars in Afghanistan (1839–1842 and 1878–1880) to block Russian influence. The first included the disastrous retreat from Kabul. Upper Burma was annexed after the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885, and from 1886 all of Burma was governed as a province of British India. Britain occupied Egypt in 1882. Then General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum in January 1885, and Victoria held Gladstone's government responsible for not relieving him in time; she rebuked ministers by sending telegrams that were not in cipher, so the contents could easily become public. The Sudan was reconquered after the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and was placed under Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1899. In the Scramble for Africa of the 1880s and 1890s, Britain took large territories in West, East and southern Africa.

Self-government in the settler colonies

In the settler colonies, by contrast, power was handed to local responsible governments. In 1857 Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital of the Province of Canada. The British North America Act 1867 then united the provinces in the Dominion of Canada. The Australian colonies approved a federal constitution in referendums held between 1898 and 1900. The British Parliament passed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act on 5 July 1900, and Victoria gave royal assent on 9 July. On 17 September 1900, sitting in council at Balmoral, she proclaimed the Commonwealth. It came into being on 1 January 1901, three weeks before her death, uniting the six colonies as states of Australia.

The Second Boer War

In October 1899 war broke out with the Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the Second Boer War. During "Black Week" (10–17 December 1899) the British Army lost three battles, at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso, with 2,776 men killed, wounded or captured. The government replaced Redvers Buller with Lord Roberts as commander-in-chief. Around this time the Queen told Arthur Balfour: "We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist." At New Year 1900 she sent tins of chocolate to the troops in South Africa, and she followed the campaign closely. Contingents came from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the British force eventually grew to nearly half a million men. The war was still going on when she died, and it ended in 1902.

Victoria and Ireland

Victoria reigned over Ireland as part of the United Kingdom created by the Act of Union of 1800. Over her reign she visited the country only four times. Ireland was the part of her realm where her personal popularity was most contested, and nationalist memory came to identify her with the Great Famine and with opposition to self-government.

The Great Famine

When potato blight struck Ireland in 1845, the government was responsible for relief policy, but the Crown took part in private fund-raising. The British Relief Association was founded in London at the start of 1847, and Victoria donated £2,000 to the British Relief Association in January 1847. This made her the largest single donor to famine relief. At the urging of the prime minister, Lord John Russell, she also issued two "Queen's Letters" in March and October 1847 that asked for collections in British churches. The queen's first letter raised £170,571, but the second raised only £30,167. Royal protocol held that no donor should appear more generous than the sovereign. According to a later account, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I offered £10,000 in aid but was requested to reduce this to £1000 to avoid embarrassing the Queen. In later folk memory she was said to have given only £5, a story that is a myth. The famine killed about a million people, and at least as many emigrated.

The label "the Famine Queen" came much later. It dates from her fourth and final visit to Ireland as an old lady in 1900, when the revolutionary Maud Gonne published an article under that title. Gonne accused Queen Victoria of failing to help "the survivors of sixty years of organized famine." The historian Christine Kinealy has argued that Victoria's donation was real, but that she showed little lasting personal concern for Ireland.

Royal visits

The first visit, from 2 to 12 August 1849, came while the famine was ending. It was proposed by the Lord Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, who wanted to draw attention away from the disaster. The royal party visited Cork, Dublin and Belfast and landing on 3 August at Cobh (then spelt "Cove"), which was renamed Queenstown in her honour. The crowds were large and enthusiastic. However, the visit took place under heavy security, and one newspaper editorial compared the celebrations to "illuminating a graveyard".

The second visit, in 1853, was tied to the Great Industrial Exhibition in Dublin. The third, in August 1861, took the family to Killarney and to the Curragh, where the Prince of Wales was in military training. That visit helped establish Killarney as a tourist destination. After Prince Albert's death later that year, Victoria stayed away for almost four decades. Unionist hopes for a permanent royal residence in Ireland, comparable to Balmoral in Scotland, came to nothing.

Her last visit, from early to late April 1900, took place during the Second Boer War and was meant partly to encourage Irish recruitment. On 1 April the Irish Guards had been formed by order of Queen Victoria to honour the Irish troops fighting in the Boer War. The eighty-year-old queen, who was nearly blind, wore shamrock and reviewed the Curragh garrison. She also attended a gathering of tens of thousands of schoolchildren in Phoenix Park. Advanced nationalists boycotted or protested the visit.

Home Rule and nationalism

Victoria's views on Ireland hardened as Irish nationalism grew. The Fenians, or Irish Republican Brotherhood, staged a failed rising in 1867, and their bombing campaigns in Britain made her treat Irish agitation as mainly a matter of law and order. In 1872 Arthur O'Connor pointed an unloaded pistol at her and demanded the release of Fenian prisoners (see Assassination attempts). In 1869 she reluctantly accepted Gladstone's disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, but she would not accept his later policy of Home Rule. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill was defeated in the Commons in 1886. The second passed the Commons in 1893 and was then rejected by the House of Lords. Victoria saw Home Rule as a threat to the Union and the empire, and she welcomed the Liberal split and the Liberal Unionist alliance with the Conservatives. One account says she was not opposed to every kind of devolution, only to immediate Home Rule. Her open preference for Unionism and her long absence from Ireland cut into her standing among Catholic nationalists. Nationalists in turn used her image as a symbol of British rule, as the 1900 protests showed.

Widowhood and seclusion

Prince Albert died at Windsor Castle on 14 December 1861, aged 42, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children. Victoria made mourning the centre of her life. She wore only black until her own death 40 years later. Albert's rooms were kept as they had been while he was alive. Hot water was brought in every morning, as it had been for his morning shave. She believed that worry over the Prince of Wales's affair with an actress in 1861 had hastened Albert's death, and she said he had been "killed by that dreadful business". This made her already difficult relationship with her eldest son worse. Because she kept away from public view, she became known as "the Widow of Windsor". Rudyard Kipling later used the phrase as the title of one of his barrack-room ballads.

Withdrawal and criticism

In the years after 1861 the Queen went on with her official government work: she read dispatches, corresponded with ministers and approved appointments. She did, however, remain secluded in her royal residences — Windsor Castle, Osborne House and Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands. She withdrew from London society, and for years refused to open Parliament in person or appear at public ceremonies. In 1866 she opened Parliament in person for the first time since her bereavement, but she would not wear the crown or state robes, and she gave her consent only reluctantly. At first the public sympathised with her, but her popularity fell as the seclusion went on. The press criticised her more and more, and the absence of royal ceremony drew public mockery. In March 1864 a protester stuck a notice on the railings of Buckingham Palace that advertised the building as "to be let or sold" because its occupant's business had declined. Her growing reliance on her Highland servant John Brown also fuelled gossip (see "Household, confidants and court life").

Republican agitation, 1870–1872

Hostility to the monarchy peaked in 1870–1871. Republican sentiment was rising, partly because of the declaration of the French Republic, and at home because of an economic slump and working-class disillusionment with the Reform Act of 1867. The declaration of the French Republic followed the fall of Napoleon III in France in 1870. In the summer of 1871 an anonymous pamphlet entitled What Does She Do With It? appeared, questioning how the Queen spent her Civil List income. It was published under the pseudonym "Solomon Temple" and is usually attributed to G. O. Trevelyan. Gladstone took it seriously and ordered copies secretly for the cabinet. On 6 November 1871 the MP Sir Charles Dilke gave a speech in Newcastle upon Tyne criticising the cost of the monarchy. In it Dilke called for a parliamentary audit of the Civil List and suggested that a republic might be preferable if it could be shown to be free from corruption. Republican clubs were founded in several British towns at this time. This was the high point of British republicanism in the nineteenth century.

The mood changed quickly. The Prince of Wales fell ill in the autumn of 1871 and spent two months feverish and delirious at Sandringham, looked after by the royal physicians William Jenner and William Gull. The illness was typhoid fever, the disease believed to have killed his father, and the crisis came close to the tenth anniversary of Albert's death. The whole country followed daily updates on his condition. After he recovered, a thanksgiving service was held at St Paul's Cathedral on 27 February 1872. The Queen rode through London in an open procession, and the service drew huge crowds. The service marked her return to public life and turned public opinion back in favour of her and the monarchy. Two days later, Arthur O'Connor's attempt on her life produced a further wave of public sympathy (see "Assassination attempts").

Memorials to Albert

Much of Victoria's energy during these years went into commemorating Albert. Work on the neo-Romanesque Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore, in the Home Park at Windsor, began in March 1862, and the building was consecrated in December 1862, although its decoration was not finished until August 1871. In London, the Royal Albert Hall became the practical part of a memorial to the Prince Consort. The hall was renamed in Albert's honour when the Queen laid its foundation stone in 1867, and it was officially opened on 29 March 1871. Opposite it in Kensington Gardens stands the Albert Memorial, officially the Prince Consort National Memorial. It was designed by George Gilbert Scott in the Gothic Revival style, and its £120,000 cost was met by public subscription. The Queen opened the memorial in July 1872. John Henry Foley's gilt bronze statue of the seated prince was added a few years later and faces south towards the hall. Statues, memorial chapels and institutions named after Albert also spread across Britain and the empire.

Disraeli and the return to public life

Benjamin Disraeli did more than anyone to draw the Queen back into public life. He was prime minister briefly in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. He won her trust through flattery, a gossipy correspondence, and his sympathy for her grief and for Albert's memory. He also tied the Crown closely to national and imperial greatness. The relationship ended her long dislike of the Conservatives and contrasted sharply with her frosty dealings with Gladstone (see "The Crown and the constitution"). His most visible act on her behalf was the Royal Titles Act 1876, which made her Empress of India (see "Empire and the title Empress of India"). By the late 1870s the Queen was appearing in public more often. She never again lived in London for long periods, but her popularity recovered steadily towards the jubilees of 1887 and 1897.

Household, confidants and court life

John Brown

John Brown (8 December 1826 – 27 March 1883) was a Scottish personal attendant and favourite of Queen Victoria for many years after working as a gillie for Prince Albert. He came from Aberdeenshire and worked on the Balmoral Estate before it was leased to Victoria and Albert. In the years of deep mourning after 1861, her daughter Alice encouraged her to take up pony-cart rides again, and Brown was appointed as a full-time servant to the Queen. He came to Osborne House first in 1864. His blunt manner and the way he controlled access to the Queen caused gossip in the household and resentment among the other servants. Behind her back she was referred to as 'Mrs Brown.' Her children disapproved, but Victoria waved the talk away as "ill natured gossip of the higher classes." She gave him many gifts, and she even had 'The Devoted Service Medal' struck for him. This was partly a reward for his part in stopping Arthur O'Connor in 1872 (see Assassination attempts). There were rumours of a secret marriage, but there is no evidence that Brown and Victoria were lovers. Brown died at Windsor Castle in 1883. Victoria wrote that her life had become "trying and sad" for the second time.

Abdul Karim, "the Munshi"

For her Golden Jubilee, the Queen wanted Indian servants. In 1887, the year of Victoria's Golden Jubilee, Karim was one of two Indians selected to become servants to the Queen. The other was Mohammed Buksh. On 23 June 1887, two Indians served Queen Victoria breakfast in Frogmore House at Windsor. Karim soon rose from waiting at table. He gave Victoria daily lessons in Hindustani, and he became her 'munshi' in 1889. In later years Victoria signed in Urdu. She gave him houses at Balmoral, Windsor and Osborne, and land near Agra. She commissioned portraits of him, and all photos of him waiting at table were destroyed. He also advised her on Indian issues and the woes of the Muslim minority, which irritated the prime minister and the viceroy. Abdul was awarded the Eastern Star and made a Commander of the Victorian Order.

Hostility in the household was openly based on race and class. Ponsonby complained to the royal physician, James Reid, that "the advance of the Black Brigade is a serious nuisance". People spread rumours that he was linked to radical Muslim groups and that he was a spy. In 1897 the household absolutely refused to dine with him and threatened to resign. The Queen denounced her courtiers as racist, and sent them stern memos on how to behave. That year became known in the Household as "the year of the Munshi." The Queen won, and Karim stayed. After she died, all the letters from the Queen to him were destroyed and the family was sent packing to India by Edward VII. Karim died on 20 April 1909, aged 46, in Agra.

Private secretaries and ladies-in-waiting

Queen Victoria did not have an official Private Secretary until she appointed General Charles Grey to the office in 1861. Lord Melbourne informally served as Private Secretary while Prime Minister from 1837 to 1840. Henry Ponsonby followed Grey on 8 April 1870. He was also Keeper of the Privy Purse from 1878, and he left office after a stroke in 1895. Arthur Bigge then succeeded him. As private secretary, Ponsonby became the main source of communication between Her Majesty and those who wished to seek her opinion or permission. He dealt with prime ministers and also reprimanded her adult children. The historian David Cannadine wrote that Ponsonby "effectively created the post of Private Secretary to the Sovereign in its modern guise."

The ladies of the court were graded by rank:

• Mistress of the Robes: always a Duchess. During Queen Victoria's reign, the Mistress of the Robes was a political appointment and changed when the political party of the government changed. This was the issue at the root of the Bedchamber Crisis of 1839.
• Ladies of the Bedchamber: always wives of peers. They served two to three waits a year from twelve to thirty days at a time.
• Women of the Bedchamber: usually daughters of peers.
• Maids of Honour: two were always in attendance, and each received a gift of £1,000 when she married.

The Queen was often closer to her dressers than to these aristocratic ladies. Annie MacDonald, for example, replaced Marianne Skerrett as the queen's confidante when Skerrett retired in 1862.

Etiquette and formality

In the Queen's later decades, her widowhood and isolation at Balmoral and Osborne gave the court a reputation for being rigid and dull. Courtiers communicated with her largely through written memoranda. They were expected not to start a conversation with her, and they had to stay standing in her presence. Meals were notoriously fast: Marie Mallet complained that "the service was so rapid that a slow eater such as myself never had time to finish even a moderate helping." Mallet served first as a Maid of Honour and later as a Woman of the Bedchamber. Her letters from court between 1887 and 1901 are among the main eyewitness accounts of this routine.

Assassination attempts

Victoria survived eight separate attacks over four decades. Maclean's was the last of eight attempts by separate people to kill or assault Victoria over a period of four decades. Most took place while she rode in an open carriage near Buckingham Palace in London. None of the attackers belonged to an organised conspiracy. Several were judged mentally disordered, and their trials changed the law of treason and of the insanity defence.

Early attempts, 1840–1850

The first attack came on 10 June 1840, a few months after her marriage. Edward Oxford, an unemployed eighteen-year-old, fired a duelling pistol at the Queen who was five months pregnant at the time, only to miss from a short distance. He was tried for high treason and acquitted as insane. In the trial that followed, Oxford was found to be insane, as he believed he was acting on behalf of a secret society called "Young England," which in truth, was a creation of his own imagination. He was held in asylums for decades and later emigrated to Australia.

In 1842 there were three attacks in five weeks. On 29 May, John Francis pointed a pistol at the royal carriage but did not fire. The following day, Victoria drove the same route, though faster and with a greater escort, in a deliberate attempt to provoke Francis to take a second aim and catch him in the act. As expected, Francis shot at her, but he was seized by plain clothes policemen, tried, and convicted of high treason. Francis's death sentence was commuted to transportation for life on 1 July. Two days later, in a similar attack, John William Bean fired a pistol at the Queen, but it was loaded only with paper and tobacco. Bean was a young man with a spinal deformity. Edward Oxford, who had shot at Victoria in 1840, felt that the attempts were encouraged by his acquittal on the grounds of insanity two years before.

On 19 May 1849 William Hamilton, an unemployed Irishman, fired a pistol loaded only with powder at her carriage on Constitution Hill. He was sentenced to seven years' transportation. The only attack that injured her came on 27 June 1850. An ex-soldier named Robert Pate hit her over the head with an iron-tipped cane while she was leaving Cambridge House, where she had been visiting her dying uncle, the Duke of Cambridge. Victoria was left with a bruise and a black eye, not to mention a scar that she sported for quite some time afterwards. Pate had been a lieutenant in the Hussars. Pate was given the maximum sentence of seven years and was transported to Tasmania.

The Treason Act 1842

Under the existing law, any assault on the sovereign counted as high treason, so even a harmless attack carried the death penalty. Bean's assault, though physically harmless, was still punishable by death. Feeling that such a penalty was too harsh, Albert encouraged Parliament to pass a law recognising lesser crimes against the monarch, such as intent to alarm. The resulting Treason Act 1842 created a lesser offence of attacking or alarming the sovereign. Originally, an attempt to assault or alarm the monarch was made punishable by flogging and up to seven years' imprisonment. The aim was to deter attention-seekers by taking away the notoriety of a treason trial. Bean was sentenced to 18 months in gaol. No-one who violated the act was ever flogged.

O'Connor and Maclean

On 29 February 1872, two days after the thanksgiving service for the Prince of Wales's recovery from typhoid, 17-year-old Arthur O'Connor got into the grounds of Buckingham Palace. He was a great-nephew of the Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor. He pointed a pistol at the Queen's carriage and demanded the release of Fenian prisoners. This was more of a stunt than a true assassination attempt — his pistol was unloaded and broken. Her servant John Brown seized him and was later given a gold medal for it. O'Connor was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a birching.

Then there was 28-year-old Roderick Maclean, who shot at Victoria (and, as you'll have guessed by now, missed) outside Windsor Station on March 2, 1882. Two boys attacked Maclean with their umbrellas and assisted in detaining him. These were Eton schoolboys. At his trial for high treason, Maclean was found "not guilty, but insane" by a jury after five minutes' deliberation, and he spent the rest of his life in Broadmoor. Victoria was angry that someone who had plainly fired at her could be called "not guilty". The verdict prompted the Queen to ask for a change in English law so that those implicated in cases with similar outcomes would be considered as "guilty, but insane"; this led to the Trial of Lunatics Act 1883. The Act's special verdict found that the accused had done the act but was insane at the time. That wording remained in use until the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964.

Security and public response

The attacks led to more mounted escorts and plain-clothes police on royal routes. They did not end her practice of driving in open carriages. Each failed attempt tended to bring a wave of loyal addresses and public sympathy. After the 1840 attack, cheering crowds gathered on her rides through Hyde Park. The 1872 attack came during the recovery in her popularity after the republican agitation of 1870–1871. After the 1882 shooting she remarked that being shot at was worth it to see how much she was loved. Historians have since argued that the attempts helped her, building an image of a vulnerable but courageous sovereign who appeared in public despite the danger.

Jubilees and later years

Golden Jubilee (1887)

For the first time since the start of her long seclusion, the jubilee of 1887 drew Victoria back into large public ceremonies. The Golden Jubilee was celebrated on 20 and 21 June 1887 to mark the 50th anniversary of her accession on 20 June 1837. On 20 June the day began quietly with breakfast under the trees at Frogmore, the resting place of her late husband, Prince Albert. She then travelled by train to London for a banquet at Buckingham Palace. The guests included fifty foreign kings and princes and the governing heads of Britain's overseas colonies and dominions. The next day, she rode in an open, gilded state coach drawn by six horses and escorted by Indian cavalry to Westminster Abbey. She wore a bonnet instead of a crown. On her return to Buckingham Palace she appeared on the balcony to the cheers of the crowd, and the evening ended with another banquet and fireworks in the palace garden. Because so many of her relatives sat on or near European thrones, the 1887 Golden Jubilee emphasised Victoria's role as the grandmother of Europe. The Indian cavalry escort and the colonial guests also gave it an imperial character, and that theme became much stronger ten years later.

Diamond Jubilee (1897)

On 23 September 1896 Victoria passed her grandfather George III as Britain's longest-reigning monarch, but she asked for celebrations of the milestone to wait until June 1897, the 60th anniversary of her accession. She was the first British monarch to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee. The anniversary itself, 20 June, was a private occasion marked with a service in St George's Chapel, Windsor. The public celebration came two days later. It was planned as a Festival of the British Empire, proposed by Joseph Chamberlain, who promoted the idea of a global celebration fit for a monarch ruling over 450 million people. 22 June 1897 was declared a bank holiday in India as well as in Britain and Ireland.

Unlike the 1887 event, which had centred on European royalty, the Diamond Jubilee was built around the empire. Contingents of colonial troops marched in the procession, and the premiers of the self-governing colonies came to London. Canadian Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier led the Canadian delegation, while communities across Canada held their own civic celebrations. The procession went to St Paul's Cathedral, where a short Service of Thanksgiving was held outside the building because Victoria could no longer manage the steps. Eleven colonial prime ministers attended. The colonial premiers' presence in London was also used for a Colonial Conference on imperial defence and trade. Celebrations went on for days: on 23 June, 10,000 schoolchildren gathered outside Buckingham Palace to greet the queen, and the festivities continued for another week with a state banquet and a garden party.

Renewed popularity and imperial symbolism

The two jubilees completed Victoria's recovery from the unpopularity of the 1860s and early 1870s (see #Widowhood and seclusion). She had largely withdrawn from public life after Albert's death in 1861, and her Golden Jubilee was seen as an important opportunity to reconnect with the nation. By the last decades of her reign, the main popular image of Victoria was of the sombre "Widow of Windsor" presiding over an Empire on which "the sun never set." Jubilee medals, souvenirs, public holidays and local festivities spread this image from Canada to India and Australia. The image of the aged queen-empress became a focus of loyalty across the nation and empire. The jubilees also set the pattern for later royal milestones, with events such as royal walkabouts, fireworks displays and nationwide parties.

Declining health

Victoria's physical strength declined steadily through the 1890s. Rheumatism in her legs made walking difficult, so she increasingly used a wheelchair, and she was unable to climb the steps of St Paul's in 1897. Cataracts gradually clouded her eyesight. As a result, her correspondence and journal were more and more often read to her or written with help, especially by her daughter Princess Beatrice. Family losses added to her strain in her last years. These included the death of Beatrice's husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg, in 1896 and the death of her son Alfred in 1900. Her eldest daughter, Vicky, was also seriously ill with cancer at the time. She spent Christmas 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, as she had throughout her widowhood. By then rheumatism had disabled her legs and cataracts had clouded her eyesight. Her final illness and death in January 1901 are covered in #Death, funeral and succession.

Death, funeral and succession

Final illness and death

Victoria usually spent Christmas at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and she did so again in 1900. By then rheumatism in her legs had left her disabled, and cataracts clouded her eyesight. In early January 1901 she felt weak and unwell. By the middle of the month she was drowsy and confused, and she was confined to her bed. Her family was called to Osborne. On 19 January the royal yacht Alberta carried the Prince of Wales across the Solent, and on 21 January her eldest grandson, the German Emperor Wilhelm II, arrived. Victoria died at half-past six on the evening of Tuesday 22 January 1901, aged 81. Her children who were able to attend were at her bedside, and so was Wilhelm.

Funeral

In 1897 Victoria had written instructions for her funeral. It was to be a military funeral, as befitted a soldier's daughter and the head of the army, and it was to be white rather than black. She also ruled out black horses. On 25 January her body was lifted into the coffin by her son and successor Edward, her son Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and Wilhelm II. She was dressed in white and wore her wedding veil. Mementoes were placed in the coffin with her, among them a dressing gown that had belonged to Prince Albert, and a lock of John Brown's hair together with a ring connected with him. These last were placed where the family would not see them.

The coffin, draped in white, lay at Osborne until 1 February. Then a gun carriage took it through East Cowes to Trinity Pier, and the Alberta carried it across the Solent to Gosport, passing a long line of warships. The new king followed on another yacht. The body stayed on board overnight. The next day it went by train to London, where the cortège crossed the capital to Paddington before the rail journey to Windsor. The state funeral took place on 2 February 1901 in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and was one of the largest gatherings of European royalty ever held. At Windsor station the Royal Horse Artillery horses that were meant to pull the gun carriage became unmanageable. A guard of naval ratings from HMS Excellent took over and pulled the coffin up to the castle with ropes. This began the tradition of sailors drawing the State Gun Carriage at later royal and state funerals. The procession was also one of the first major British public events recorded on film. After the service the body lay in state in the Albert Memorial Chapel under military guard. On 4 February it was buried beside Albert in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore in Windsor Home Park.

Succession and change of dynasty

Her eldest son, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, succeeded her as Edward VII at the age of 59. Victoria was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son took his dynastic name from his father's line, so his accession began the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on the British throne. During the First World War anti-German feeling ran high, and in 1917 Edward's son George V changed the royal house's name to Windsor. Her death came only weeks into the new century and is conventionally taken as the end of the Victorian era.

Length of reign

She reigned from 20 June 1837 to 22 January 1901, a total of 63 years and 216 days (23,226 days). In 1896 she had passed George III to become the longest-reigning monarch in British history. She held the record for more than a century. Her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II passed it on 9 September 2015, and Elizabeth's reign eventually lasted 70 years and 214 days.

Private life, interests and writings

Journals and correspondence

Victoria kept a daily journal from 1832, when she was thirteen. Her mother gave her the first volume in August 1832, on the journey to Powis Castle in Wales, so that she could record the educational tours she was making around the country. At first the journal was not private. Louise Lehzen taught her how to keep it, and her mother read it every day until she became queen. She kept writing until ten days before her death, 69 years later. Counting her letters as well, she is estimated to have written more than two thousand words a day, or about sixty million words over her lifetime. She expected the journal to be read by others. In an entry of 24 January 1843 she wrote that she was "vain enough to think may perhaps some day be reduced to interesting memoirs". She instructed Princess Beatrice to rewrite the journal after her death, leaving out or changing passages she thought unsuitable to keep. Beatrice made a transcript covering 1837, the year of the accession, to 1901, in 111 volumes. As she worked she also cut details she considered trivial and passages that might offend other family members. On the Queen's instructions, the originals were destroyed once they had been copied. George V and Queen Mary tried to stop her burning them, but could not persuade her. Only 13 original volumes survive, covering 1832 to 1836. For the years 1832 to 1840 there are also typescript copies made earlier by Lord Esher for his book The Girlhood of Queen Victoria. These copies show how much Beatrice changed. For example, Victoria's account of watching Albert shave just after their wedding does not appear in Beatrice's copy. The Royal Archives hold the collection, and in 2012 it was put online in partnership with the Bodleian Libraries.

Published books

Victoria was the only reigning British monarch of her century to publish a book of her own. Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands (1868) was a set of extracts edited by Sir Arthur Helps covering her holidays in Scotland with Albert. The first edition sold twenty thousand copies. Further editions followed, and a sequel, More Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, appeared in 1884. It covered her widowhood and was dedicated to the memory of her servant John Brown. The domestic, unguarded tone of both books helped show the public a monarch who was usually out of sight during her seclusion.

Private homes

Victoria and Albert wanted homes that belonged to them personally and not to the Crown. They bought the Osborne estate on the Isle of Wight from Lady Isabella Blachford in 1845. They leased it first and then bought it for £28,000. The old house was too small, so Albert, helped by Thomas Cubitt, the builder of Belgravia, designed a large Italianate house. It was built between 1845 and 1851. In Scotland the couple first leased Balmoral in 1848. They bought the freehold of the 17,400-acre estate in 1852 for £31,500, paid for with a legacy from the eccentric barrister John Camden Neild. The old house was demolished and replaced with a new Balmoral Castle in Scottish Baronial style, finished in 1856. Victoria was strongly attached to the Highlands, with their deer-stalking, picnics, simple cottage life and the company of local servants. She spent 53 late-summer holidays in a row at Balmoral from 1848 onwards. The long stays at Balmoral and Osborne during her widowhood are covered in the section on her seclusion.

Art, music, theatre and animals

At the age of eight Victoria began weekly drawing lessons with the painter Richard Westall. She later had lessons from Edward Lear, who was invited to Osborne in July 1846. After that she was taught for 22 years by the Scottish landscape painter William Leighton Leitch. As newlyweds, she and Albert learned to etch from professional artists including George Hayter and Edwin Landseer, and in the 1840s they etched 93 plates between them. The Royal Collection holds more than 4,000 of her drawings, watercolours, etchings and lithographs, dating from 1828 to 1892, when her eyesight began to fail. Most of her subjects were family, pets and Highland scenery. In music, she started singing lessons the year before her accession with the operatic bass Luigi Lablache, and she liked Italian opera all her life. She was also a keen theatregoer: she went to operas and ballets and often sketched the scenes and performers she admired. From 1848 she held private theatricals at Windsor. She and Albert were patrons of the new art of photography, collected portraits, and allowed photographs of the royal family to be sold widely. She was devoted to dogs, from her childhood spaniel Dash to Albert's greyhound Eos and the collies and Pomeranians of her old age.

Religion

As sovereign Victoria was Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and she took a close interest in appointing bishops and deans. Her own faith was a simple, undogmatic Protestantism. In Scotland she worshipped at Crathie Kirk, a Church of Scotland parish church near Balmoral, and from 1873 she took communion there. Some Anglicans criticised this. She disliked ritualism, the movement to bring Roman Catholic-style ceremonial into Anglican worship, and she supported the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, which was intended to curb it. She tended to favour the Broad Church wing of the established Church.

Victoria and Victorian society

"Victorian" as an era and a set of values

Victoria reigned for more than six decades. Over that time her name came to stand for the whole period, roughly 1837–1901, and for a set of values linked with it: domesticity, respectability, religious seriousness and moral restraint. Much of this image was built deliberately in the 1840s and 1850s. Prince Albert's reforms of the court, covered in the section on her marriage, replaced the louche reputation of George IV's court with a public picture of a devoted married couple raising a large family. Paintings, engravings and later photographs showed the royal family in settings that the expanding middle class recognised as its own. The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that the Victorian age placed great importance on family, and family life was epitomised by the popular Queen Victoria, her husband Albert and their nine children. The "Victorian" label later came to mean prudishness, especially after the reaction against the era in the early twentieth century. Historians now treat it as a description of an idealised public image, not of how society actually behaved.

The Great Exhibition and royal patronage

The best-known example of royal patronage of science and industry was the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was the creation of Prince Albert and the civil servant Henry Cole, and it aimed to celebrate modern design and promote Britain as an industrial and imperial power. It took place in the purpose-built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park between 1 May and 15 October 1851. As president of the Royal Commission, Albert organised 13,937 exhibitors from over 30 countries to bring more than 100,000 products to London. Few people came at first. The Commission then introduced "shilling days", when entry was reduced from five shillings to one shilling, Monday to Thursday. Cheap railway excursions also brought visitors from the provinces. Six million people, equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time, visited the Great Exhibition. Queen Victoria herself went almost every day of its run.

The exhibition made a £186,000 profit. The commissioners used it to buy land in South Kensington for an area of museums, colleges and learned institutions, nicknamed "Albertopolis". The profits were used to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. After Albert's death, the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences was renamed by Queen Victoria the Royal Albert Hall at its foundation. Through this network of museums and colleges, the monarchy became closely linked with technical education and the applied arts.

Technology and the public monarchy

Victoria's reign coincided with the later stages of the Industrial Revolution, and the royal family was quick to adopt new technology. On 13 June 1842, Queen Victoria travelled from Slough in Berkshire to London Paddington and became the first British monarch to travel by train. The train was hauled by the locomotive Phlegethon, driven by Daniel Gooch and assisted by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Albert had encouraged her to try it. She wrote that the ride was smoother than a carriage, but she insisted that her trains never went more than 30 miles per hour. After that the railways carried the court regularly between Windsor, London, Osborne and Balmoral. Steam power changed travel by sea as well: the paddle-steamer royal yacht Victoria and Albert took the couple on state and private voyages from the 1840s.

The electric telegraph let the Crown speak almost instantly to a wider public. In 1858 Victoria exchanged messages with President James Buchanan over the first transatlantic cable. At the Diamond Jubilee in 1897 she sent a message of thanks by telegraph from Buckingham Palace to every part of the empire. Photography mattered even more. Victoria and Albert collected photographs, supported the Photographic Society founded in 1853, and had their family photographed often. In 1860 John Jabez Edwin Mayall's carte-de-visite portraits of the royal family went on public sale and sold in very large numbers. For the first time, ordinary people could own a likeness of the sovereign. The illustrated press, led by the Illustrated London News, did the same work through mass-produced engravings.

Customs associated with the royal family

Several customs that later seemed typically Victorian spread partly through reports about the royal household. The decorated indoor Christmas tree was a German custom. Queen Charlotte had already set one up at Windsor in 1800, but it stayed mainly an aristocratic practice until the press began reporting the royal trees. In 1848 the Illustrated London News published a drawing of the royal family celebrating around a tree bedecked with ornaments. The popularity of decorated Christmas trees grew quickly. The image travelled abroad too: in 1850 Godey's Lady's Book in the United States printed the first widely-circulated picture in America of a decorated Christmas evergreen; it was a repurposed 1848 engraving of the British Royal Family. The commercial Christmas card started in 1843, when Henry Cole, who later worked with Albert on the exhibition, commissioned a printed design from John Callcott Horsley. Victoria's white satin dress at her 1840 wedding was copied over the following decades, and it helped make the white wedding dress standard in British and American marriages.

Legacy and commemoration

Place names

Victoria's name was given to places across the British Empire, often in deliberate tributes from colonial authorities. In Australia, the Port Phillip District was separated from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria, which became a state at federation in 1901. In Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company post of Fort Victoria (1843) grew into Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Regina, capital of Saskatchewan, takes its name from her Latin title. It was named in 1882 by her daughter Princess Louise, whose husband, the Marquess of Lorne, was then Governor General. Explorers also named major features of Africa after her. David Livingstone named Victoria Falls on the Zambezi in 1855, and John Hanning Speke named Lake Victoria in 1858. In India, the Victoria Terminus in Bombay (now Mumbai), designed by Frederick William Stevens, was completed in 1887, the year of her Golden Jubilee. It was renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in 1996 and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Many other towns, streets, parks, hospitals and railway stations in Britain and the former colonies carry her name.

Monuments and statues

Statues of Victoria were put up in town squares, parliament grounds and colonial capitals across the empire, many of them after her death in 1901. The largest is the Victoria Memorial in London, located at the end of The Mall, by the sculptor Sir Thomas Brock. Designed in 1901, it was unveiled on 16 May 1911, though it was not completed until 1924. It was the centrepiece of an ambitious urban planning scheme, which included the creation of the Queen's Gardens to a design by Sir Aston Webb, and the refacing of Buckingham Palace. The scheme created a processional route that runs from Admiralty Arch along The Mall to a "rond point" before the palace. Its gates came from the dominions: Canada Gate was commissioned in 1905, along with two smaller gates presented by Australia and South Africa. The central pylon is of Pentelic marble, and individual statues are in Lasa marble and gilt bronze. It has been called the largest commemorative monument in the British Isles, which inspired King George V to knight the sculptor on the spot on its unveiling in 1911. Another large memorial is the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta (Kolkata), proposed by the Viceroy Lord Curzon and opened in 1921.

Institutions, honours and holidays

Several honours she created are still awarded. The Victoria Cross was instituted in 1856 after the Crimean War. It is open to all ranks and remains the highest British award for gallantry in the presence of the enemy. The Royal Victorian Order was established in 1896 by Queen Victoria to reward personal service to the monarch. It was the first Order of Chivalry that was given at the sole discretion of the Sovereign; the government, at the time, having almost complete control over the distribution of honours. Its anniversary is 20th June, the day of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, and its motto is simply "Victoria". In museums, the South Kensington Museum became the Victoria and Albert Museum. Victoria laid the foundation stone of its new Aston Webb building in 1899, one of her last major public engagements. The name links her with Albert's cultural projects that grew out of the Great Exhibition.

In Canada, May 24 first became a public holiday in 1845 by declaration of the legislature of the Province of Canada. After Victoria's death in 1901, an act of the Canadian Parliament established Victoria Day as a legal holiday to be celebrated on May 24 or on May 25 when May 24 fell on a Sunday. In 1952, an amendment to the Statutes of Canada established the celebration of Victoria Day on the Monday preceding May 25. Since then the holiday has also marked the reigning Canadian monarch's official birthday. In Quebec the same Monday is officially renamed Journée nationale des Patriotes (National Patriotes Day).

Long-term effect on the monarchy and the Commonwealth

Victoria's reign left a model of constitutional monarchy that later sovereigns followed. In this model the Crown stays out of party politics in public and uses its influence privately, through the rights Bagehot identified (see The Crown and the constitution). Her two jubilees, and the state funeral she planned herself, set a pattern for large-scale royal ceremony. Later coronations, jubilees and funerals used the same mix of military pageantry, crowds and representatives from the empire. Through the title Empress of India and the jubilee gatherings of colonial premiers and troops, she made the Crown the shared symbol of the British Empire. This idea was later taken up in the Commonwealth of Nations, where the monarch became the symbolic head of an association of independent states. Her descendants still reign in the United Kingdom, and her reign remained the longest of any British monarch until Elizabeth II passed it in 2015.

Historiography and cultural depictions

Sources, editing and early biographies

Writing about Victoria has always depended on how her papers were managed after her death. She kept a journal from 1832, and published extracts from it during her lifetime in her Highland books (see Private life, interests and writings). The posthumous record was then deliberately shaped. Victoria had appointed her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, as literary executor. Over more than 30 years Beatrice copied the 122 diary volumes into 111 exercise books, altering or censoring anything liable to "affect any of the family painfully", and then burnt the originals. Most of the originals from 1840 onwards were destroyed, despite opposition from George V and Queen Mary. The scale of Beatrice's changes can be measured against typed transcripts made for Lord Esher, the first Keeper of the Royal Archives, which cover 1832–40. These record intimate details from the early days of the marriage that Beatrice left out. Esher, working with the schoolmaster A. C. Benson, also edited the first official selection of her correspondence. The resulting three volumes of letters, published in 1907, have been a main source for scholars ever since. The full series of The Letters of Queen Victoria ran to nine volumes published by John Murray between 1907 and 1932. Because the editors chose letters that showed a dutiful constitutional monarch, the first generation of biographies inherited that picture.

Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria (1921) set the tone for the interwar period. Strachey, a member of the Bloomsbury Group, established a new form of biography in which psychological insight and sympathy are combined with irreverence and wit. The book was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was ironic in tone and drew mainly on published sources. Strachey presented Albert as the political intelligence of the reign and the widowed queen as a figure of increasingly remote grandeur. Elizabeth Longford's Victoria R.I. (1964) was the first major scholarly life based on extensive research in the Royal Archives, and it set the standard for later work. Later biographers such as Christopher Hibbert, Stanley Weintraub, A. N. Wilson, Julia Baird and Lucy Worsley drew on wider archival material. A new phase began when the surviving journals were digitised and published online in 2012, the year of Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.

Changing interpretations

The main point of revision has been the "Widow of Windsor" stereotype: a reclusive, grieving figurehead who stayed above politics. That image fits with Walter Bagehot's description of a dignified monarchy, and it is reinforced by the selective editing of her papers. Against it, historians have pointed to the unpublished correspondence, which shows a monarch who lobbied ministers persistently and intervened in appointments and foreign policy. Her partisanship was especially marked in her support for Disraeli and her hostility to Gladstone and Irish Home Rule (see The Crown and the constitution). Debate continues over how much this activity actually changed outcomes, as opposed to simply recording strong opinions. Scholars also disagree about how far she shaped, or merely gave a symbol to, imperial expansion and the new imperial ideology of the 1870s–1890s. Feminist and cultural historians have studied her as a woman holding public power while officially promoting female domesticity, and have also looked at her sexuality, her experience of motherhood and her friendships with servants.

Stage and screen

For a time, her portrayal was restricted by censorship. In 1937 the Lord Chamberlain ruled that no British sovereign could be portrayed on the British stage until 100 years after his or her accession. Under this rule, Laurence Housman's play Victoria Regina could not be performed publicly in Britain until the centenary of her accession in 1937. On film, Herbert Wilcox's Victoria the Great (1937) starred Anna Neagle as Victoria, with Anton Walbrook as Prince Albert, and was followed by Sixty Glorious Years (1938). Both were celebratory productions released in the period of the 1937 coronation. Later films concentrated on her private relationships. In Mrs Brown (1997), directed by John Madden, the grieving queen's relationship with her Scottish servant John Brown, played by Billy Connolly, is the central subject. Judi Dench received an Academy Award nomination for her performance and played the role again in Victoria & Abdul (2017), opposite Ali Fazal as Abdul Karim. The Young Victoria (2009) follows her accession and courtship, with Emily Blunt as Victoria and Rupert Friend as Albert. In ITV's television series Victoria (2016–2019), created by Daisy Goodwin, Jenna Coleman played the queen. Together these works shifted popular memory away from the elderly widow and towards the young and emotionally expressive queen.

Painting, photography and literature

Her official image was carefully managed. Court portraits by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, including large family groups such as The Royal Family in 1846, showed the dynasty as glamorous and domestic, and were widely reproduced as engravings. Victoria was also among the first monarchs to use photography systematically. J. J. E. Mayall's carte de visite portraits of the royal family (1860) sold in very large numbers. Her official Diamond Jubilee photograph by W. & D. Downey fixed the late image of a small, black-clad matriarch. In literature she appears in fiction ranging from historical novels to fantasy and steampunk, where she often stands for the Victorian age as a whole. In popular memory the phrase "We are not amused", attributed to her but never reliably documented, still shapes the image of her as stern and humourless. Recent scholarship has used her own sketches and journals to challenge that image.

References

1. Princess Feodora of Leiningenen.wikipedia.org
2. Queen Victoria - An Enduring Legacy - Victorian Childrenvictorianchildren.org
3. Louise, Baroness Lehzenen.wikipedia.org
4. John Conroyen.wikipedia.org
5. Kensington Systemen.wikipedia.org
6. Victoire Conroyen.wikipedia.org
7. Queen Victoria in her letters and journals - Royal Centralroyalcentral.co.uk
8. Victoria - Queen, United Kingdom, Accessionbritannica.com
9. Lady Flora Hastingsen.wikipedia.org
10. House of Hanoveren.wikipedia.org
11. Ernest Augustus, King of Hanoveren.wikipedia.org
12. back to the toppbs.org
13. First monarch to live at Buckingham Palacerct.uk
14. Coronation of Queen Victoriaen.wikipedia.org
15. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdomsocialstudiesforkids.com
16. Queen Victoriawestminster-abbey.org
17. Victoria - 1839 - The Bedchamber Plotglobalsecurity.org
18. Bedchamber crisisen.wikipedia.org
19. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gothaenglishmonarchs.co.uk
20. Wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Alberten.wikipedia.org
21. Timeline: Queen Victoria and Prince Albertroyal.uk
22. Prince Consort Albertencyclopedia.com
23. The Prince Consort and his Legacy: A Review of Jules Stewart's "Albert: A Life"victorianweb.org
24. Albert, Prince Consort facts for kidskids.kiddle.co
25. Christian Friedrich, Baron von Stockmar, Advisor to Queen Victoria and Prince Albertunofficialroyalty.com
26. The Death of His Royal Highness the Prince Consortncbi.nlm.nih.gov
27. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gothaen.wikipedia.org
28. What really killed Prince Albert?theconversation.com
29. Nellie Clifdenen.wikipedia.org
30. The fatal illness of Prince Albert - Hektoen Internationalhekint.org
31. Prince Leopold, Duke of Albanyen.wikipedia.org
32. (PDF) John Snow, MD: Anaesthetist to the Queen of England and Pioneer Epidemiologistresearchgate.net
33. Letter from Queen Victoria mentioning chloroform use in childbirthcollection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
34. Obstetric anesthesiologyen.wikipedia.org
35. Walter Bagehot 1826–77 English economist and essayistoxfordreference.com
36. The English Constitutionen.wikipedia.org
37. A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Q The Papers of ueen Victoriabsb-muenchen.de
38. Chapter V. Lord Palmerston — Queen Victoria by Lytton Stracheyamericanliterature.com
39. Lord Palmerstonspartacus-educational.com
40. Spencer Compton Cavendish, Marquis of Hartington and eighth Duke of Devonshire (1833-1908)historyhome.co.uk
41. Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshireen.wikipedia.org
42. UsefulNotes / William Gladstone - TV Tropestvtropes.org
43. RCIN 2932482 - The Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, 10 April 1848albert.rct.uk
44. The Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, 10 April 1848 - The Art of the Photogravurephotogravure.com
45. Victoria - Peel, Prime Minister, Reformsbritannica.com
46. The eternal English revolt - spikedspiked-online.com
47. William Gladstone and the 1884 Reform Act (Commentary)spartacus-educational.com
48. 1884 Reform Actspartacus-educational.com
49. Redistribution of Seats Act 1885en.wikipedia.org
50. Cambridge University Pressassets.cambridge.org
51. Celebrating Victoria Day - OUP Blog - Oxford University Pressblog.oup.com
52. Victoria of the United Kingdomen.wikiquote.org
53. Victoria Crossen.wikipedia.org
54. The History and Conception of the Victoria Crosshistoryisnowmagazine.com
55. List of Crimean War Victoria Cross recipientsen.wikipedia.org
56. Trent Affairen.wikipedia.org
57. Memorialising Albert - Prince Albert - Royal Collection Trustalbert.rct.uk
58. The trent affair and its aftermath - Civil War Diplomacyamericanforeignrelations.com
59. Victoria, Princess Royalletters-from-kingston.fandom.com
60. Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India 1819-1901: 1historyhome.co.uk
61. Lincoln & the Trent Affairthegettysburgexperience.com
62. Royal Musings: Queen Victoria meets with Bismarckroyalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com
63. Coronations and Colonial Control - Max Planck Lawlaw.mpg.de
64. Emperor of Indiaen.wikipedia.org
65. Royal Titles Act 1876en.wikipedia.org
66. Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1858: Crown Rulemodeldiplomat.com
67. VICTORIA: EMPRESS OF INDIA By Dr.Y.Samuel P.Wepisteme.net.in
68. Queen Victoria Titled “Empress of India”editions.covecollective.org
69. The Federation of Australia - Parliamentary Education Officepeo.gov.au
70. Proclamation Declaring the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Australiaen.wikipedia.org
71. Constitution - Federal Register of Legislationlegislation.gov.au
72. Black Weeken.wikipedia.org
73. The Boer War: The Opening Act in a Violent Century — History News Networkhistorynewsnetwork.org
74. www.abebooks.comabebooks.com
75. ‘The Widow’s Mite’: private relief during the Great Faminehistoryireland.com
76. Legacy of the Great Irish Famineen.wikipedia.org
77. The real story of Queen Victoria and the Irish Famineirishcentral.com
78. 1849 in Irelanden.wikipedia.org
79. 1900 in Irelanden.wikipedia.org
80. A ROYAL WELCOME?irishexaminer.com
81. Royal visits mark 20th century dawnirishtimes.com
82. Views fit for a queenirishexaminer.com
83. Ireland at the Turn of the Centuryhistoryireland.com
84. Visit to Ireland Medal 1900en.wikipedia.org
85. Queen Victoria’s final arrival in Ireland, 4th April 1900queenvictoriaroses.co.uk
86. The Tangled History of Ireland and the British Crownunofficialroyalty.com
87. The Widow of Windsorroyalcentral.co.uk
88. Queen Victoriaenglish-heritage.org.uk
89. Queen Victorialetters-from-kingston.fandom.com
90. Queen Victoria (1819-1901) Biography: Life, Reign and Legacyhumansofhistory.com
91. The Rowers of Vanity Fair/Dilke CW - Wikibooks, open books for an open worlden.wikibooks.org
92. Ceremony and Politics: The British Monarchy, 1871–1872cambridge.org
93. 1871 in the United Kingdomen.wikipedia.org
94. How a Royal Illness Spurred a Public Health Revolutionzocalopublicsquare.org
95. Royal Mausoleum, Frogmoreen.wikipedia.org
96. Royal Albert Hallen.wikipedia.org
97. Albert Memorialen.wikipedia.org
98. John Brown (servant)en.wikipedia.org
99. John Brownvictoriantrail.co.uk
100. Abdul Karim (the Munshi)en.wikipedia.org
101. Queen Victoria's devotion to the Munshi - History of Royal Womenhistoryofroyalwomen.com
102. www.thetvdb.comthetvdb.com
103. royal servantwww5.open.ac.uk
104. THE YOUNG SERVANT WHO SCANDALISED VICTORIA’S COURTpressreader.com
105. Victoria And Abdul: The True Story Of The Queen's Closest Confidant - Foreign Policy Associationfpa.org
106. Victoria & Abdul, The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant - Salaamsalaam.co.uk
107. Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoriaunofficialroyalty.com
108. The letters of Sir Henry Ponsonby - College of St Georgestgeorges-windsor.org
109. Social Victorians/People/Ponsonby - Wikiversityen.wikiversity.org
110. Queen Victoria’s Ladiesunofficialroyalty.com
111. Annie MacDonalden.wikipedia.org
112. A Feast for a Queenpasstheflamingo.com
113. Henry Ponsonbyen.wikipedia.org
114. Life with Queen Victoria - Marie Mallet's Letters from Court 1887-1901 by Victor Malletgoodreads.com
115. Roderick Macleanen.wikipedia.org
116. Eight Assassination Attempts on Queen Victoria - Historic UKhistoric-uk.com
117. Queen Victoria Survived 8 Assassination Attempts Over 63 Yearsexplorethearchive.com
118. Treason Act 1842en.wikipedia.org
119. The Eight Assassination Attempts on Queen Victoria Just Made Her More Powerfulsmithsonianmag.com
120. Who Tried To Assassinate Queen Victoria? Eight Attempts To Kill A Queen - Part 2imagininghistory.co.uk
121. Queen Victoria survived at least seven assassination attempts. - History Factshistoryfacts.com
122. Gordon Chesney Wilsonen.wikipedia.org
123. Trial of Lunatics Act 1883en.wikipedia.org
124. Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoriaen.wikipedia.org
125. A history of Jubileesroyal.uk
126. Queen Victoria - Golden Jubilee, 1887rct.uk
127. Queen Victoria’s Pioneering Jubileesroyalmint.com
128. A history of Royal Jubileeshrp.org.uk
129. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubileethecanadianencyclopedia.ca
130. Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubileehistory.com
131. Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoriaen.wikipedia.org
132. Queen Victoria - Diamond Jubilee, 1897rct.uk
133. Death and state funeral of Queen Victoriaen.wikipedia.org
134. This month in history: The death of Queen Victoria and accession of Edward VIIthegazette.co.uk
135. Death and state funeral of Queen Victoriamonarchies.fandom.com
136. Death of Queen Victoria: January 22, 1901 - The official blog of Newspapers.comblog.newspapers.com
137. Queen Victoria's funeral procession on the Isle of Wightcountypress.co.uk
138. Did you know... Queen Victoria’s Funeral 1901 — Portsmouth Cathedralportsmouthcathedral.org.uk
139. The Death of Queen Victoriarebeccastarrbrown.com
140. HMY Albertaen.wikipedia.org
141. HMS Excellent (shore establishment)en.wikipedia.org
142. The Funeral at Windsor of Queen Victoria. The Royal Windsor Website.com by ThamesWebthamesweb.co.uk
143. The 2nd of February 1901 AD, Queen Victorias Funeralinformation-britain.co.uk
144. Elizabeth IIbritannica.com
145. Passing the milestone: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning sovereign in Canada’s modern eracanada.ca
146. List of monarchs in Britain by length of reignen.wikipedia.org
147. Queen Victoria’s Diary — The Doll Carversthedollcarvers.com
148. Queen Victoria%27s journalsen.wikipedia.org
149. proquest.libguides.comproquest.libguides.com
150. A how-to guide for censoring Queen Victoriamacleans.ca
151. The secrets of Queen Victoriabritishheritage.com
152. Osborne Houseen.wikipedia.org
153. History of Osborneenglish-heritage.org.uk
154. Osborne Houseencyclopedia.com
155. Don Fox Family and Social History: Queen Victoria: Death and her Wild Abodes on the Balmoral Estatesdonaldpfox.blogspot.com
156. Queen Victoria as a Watercolouristrct.uk
157. Edward Lear and Queen Victorianonsenselit.com
158. Queen Victoriarct.uk
159. Young Queen Victoria and the Arts - Karin Fernaldkarinfernald.com
160. Victorian Christmas traditions · V&Avam.ac.uk
161. What was the Great Exhibition of 1851?londonmuseum.org.uk
162. Albertopolis: Prince Albert’s London legacylondonmuseum.org.uk
163. Great Exhibition - World History Encyclopediaworldhistory.org
164. Prince Albert's cultural vision and the history of South Kensington: What is Albertopolis?royalalberthall.com
165. The Queen celebrates the 175th Anniversary of the first Royal train journeyroyal.uk
166. British Royal Trainen.wikipedia.org
167. SLOUGH TRAIN STATION - Slough Museumsloughmuseum.co.uk
168. Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, 1848costumecocktail.com
169. Slough: Royal Family's special link to Slough train stationsloughobserver.co.uk
170. Queen Victoria’s Christmas Treedoinghistoryinpublic.org
171. Victoria Memorial, Londonen.wikipedia.org
172. Canada Gateen.wikipedia.org
173. Thomas Brock 100th anniversarywestminster-abbey.org
174. Royal Victorian Orderen.wikipedia.org
175. The Royal Victorian Order - The Royal Victorian Ordercentralchancery.org.uk
176. Anglo Boer War - Royal Victorian Orderangloboerwar.com
177. Victoria Day (Canada)ebsco.com
178. Victoria Daybritannica.com
179. Victoria Daythecanadianencyclopedia.ca
180. ‘Unsuitable for Publication: Editing Queen Victoria’ Yvonne M. Wardresidentjudge.com
181. Connected Historiesconnectedhistories.org
182. Lytton Stracheyen.wikipedia.org
183. Cultural depictions of Queen Victoriamonarchies.fandom.com
184. Anna Neagleen.wikipedia.org
185. 8 of the best movies and TV series about Queen Victoria - British Period Dramasbritishperioddramas.com
186. The 11 Best TV Shows & Movies About Queen Victoria - BritishTV.combritishtv.com
187. Victoria R.I. : Longford, Elizabeth, 1906-2002 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archivearchive.org