Who WAS Queen Victoria?

by Two Chums on October 26, 2015

With all this talk about Queen Elizabeth II now being the longest reigning monarch in the United Kingdom, having just surpassed the length of Queen Victoria’s reign, we thought it might be fun to look at some facts about Queen Victoria. Besides the fact that hers was a love affair with her husband, Albert, which is what we often hear of this Queen, she accomplished a great deal in her lengthy reign.From our trusty History, com, we find that:

“On June 28, the 18-year-old Queen Victoria was crowned as monarch of the United Kingdom and Ireland in London’s Westminster Abbey. Some 400,000 visitors flocked to the city to witness the historic event, riding a worldwide wave of popular enthusiasm for the young queen. She would rule until her death in 1901, becoming the longest reigning monarch in British history (until Queen Elizabeth recently taking over that feat). At the time Victoria took the throne, the role that Buckingham Palace’s chief resident should play in British politics had become unclear, and the ongoing existence of the monarchy was by no means certain. Victoria’s rule would change that–during her long reign, Britain made its transition to a constitutional monarchy, even as Victoria’s influence on British society ensured the continuance of the crown itself. One hundred and seventy-five years after her coronation, explore a few facts about the queen who lent her name to an era.

She was barely five feet tall.

Queen Victoria’s outspoken nature and imposing reputation belied her tiny stature–the monarch was no more than five feet tall. In her later years, she also grew to an impressive girth. Some accounts claim she had a 50-inch waist by the end of her life, a conclusion supported by the impressive size of a nightgown and pair of bloomers (underwear) belonging to Victoria that were auctioned off in 2009.

She proposed to her husband, Prince Albert, and not vice versa.

Victoria first met her future husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, when she was 16. He was her first cousin, the son of her mother’s brother; their mutual uncle, the ambitious Leopold, engineered the meeting with the idea that the two should marry. Victoria enjoyed Albert’s company from the beginning, and with Leopold’s encouragement she proposed to Albert (as she was the queen, he could not propose to her) on October 15, 1839, five days after he arrived at Windsor on a trip to the English court. They were married the following year, both being the tender age of 20.

Victoria was totally besotted. The evening of her wedding she wrote ecstatically in her diary:

I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert … his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed each other again & again! His beauty, his sweetness & gentleness – really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband! … to be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!

Their marriage was passionate and produced nine children. On the other hand, Victoria was notoriously disenchanted by pregnancy and childbirth, calling it the “shadow-side of marriage.”

She was raised by a single mother, and later became a single mother herself.

Victoria was the only child of Edward, duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III. Her father died of pneumonia in 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, and she was raised primarily at Kensington Palace, where she lived with her mother, the German-born Victoria Saxe-Saalfield-Coburg, duchess of Kent. Third in line for the throne (after the duke of York, who died in 1827, and the duke of Clarence, third son of George III, who would become William IV), the future queen became estranged from her mother, who was driven by the influence of her advisor Sir John Conroy to isolate the young Victoria from her contemporaries as well as her father’s family. Instead, Victoria relied on the counsel of her beloved uncle Leopold, as well as her governess Louise (afterward the Baroness) Lehzen, a native of Coburg. When she became queen and moved to Buckingham Palace, Victoria exiled her mother to a distant set of apartments and fired Conroy. After Albert’s untimely death from typhoid fever in 1861, Victoria descended into depression, and even after her recovery she would remain in mourning for the rest of her life.

At least six serious assassination attempts were made against Victoria during her reign — most of which while she was riding in a carriage.

In 1840, an 18-year-old named Edward Oxford fired two shots at the young queen’s carriage while she was riding in London. Accused of high treason, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Another would-be assassin, John Francis, made not one but two attempts to shoot the queen in her carriage in 1842. That same year, young John William Bean tried to fire a gun loaded with paper and tobacco at the queen, but the charge was insufficient. Two more carriage attacks came in 1849 and 1850–the first by “angry Irishman” William Hamilton and the second by ex-Army officer Robert Pate, who hit the queen with his cane. Finally, in March 1882, a disgruntled Scottish poet named Roderick Maclean shot at Victoria with a pistol while her carriage was leaving the Windsor train station. It was supposedly Maclean’s eighth attempt to assassinate the queen; he was also found to be insane, and sentenced to life in an asylum. In the wake of an assassination attempt, Victoria’s popularity usually soared among the British public.”And, so the royal story goes on. To the onlooker, at least, it is full of joy and abundance. We can only hope that it is truly so!