Queen Victoria: A Journey Through English Monarchy

Victoria's early life and reign

Alexandrina Victoria was a famous and important queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was born on 24 May 1819 in London and she became Queen on 20th June 1837, when she was only 18, and three years later she married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and they have had nine children. She has reigned for 63 years and seven months, so that age has been known as Victoria Era.
As a matter of fact, in this period the dominions of the UK increased a lot, in fact in 1876 Victoria became Empress of India.

Victoria's legacy and successors

She had about 70 premiers, 10 of them for the UK and the first one was William Lamb. She died on 22 January 1901 and she’s the second longest-reigned monarch, just beaten by Elizabeth II who was the British Queen from the 2 July of 1953 to the 8 September 2022. She reigned a total of 70 years.

Queen Victoria was also considered the last heir of the Hannover dynasty.
In 1902, Queen Victoria’s first son, Edward VII, was crowned as the new king of England and a new dynasty had begun: the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. To be honest, it was not really clear what was the real surname of the Prince because it was not used to be used, so Queen Victoria ordered some genealogical researches and it was found out that the real surname was Wettin.

However, during the first world war, precisely in 1917, the name of the dynasty was changed in Windsor by king George V because the royal family though the name easily recalled her Germanic origin. He decided to mix the surnames and he also took inspiration from the Windsor castle in order to obtain a more English sounding name for the dynasty.

The important role of Prince Albert

Albert Edward was not only Queen Victoria’s son but also Prince Albert’s, who was born in the Schloss Rosenau, in the German territory.

In 1857, he officially obtained the title of Prince Consort, although at court he had been already considered as such since he was well educated and kind.

At first, Prince Albert was not really appreciated by the English gentlemen because of his origins and his shyness but the influence of the baron Stockmar, who was king Leopold’s councillor, he reached to become an important mentor for the Queen. He even replaced the role of the baroness Lehzen and Lord Melbourne.

Under his influence, Victoria tried also to slowly reconnect herself with her mother, the duchess of Kent. They finally found some harmony when the duchess died on March of 1861.
Prince Albert tried profoundly to comfort the Queen but he started to be really fragile because he had stomach cancer.

On the 9th December of the same year, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever.
On the other hand, the Prince was weakened, as well, by the new of his cousin’s death and the scandalous relationship between Edward and the Irish actress Nellie Clifden.
It was for a sudden pulmonary congestion that Prince Albert died on the 14th of December 1861.

Queen Victoria lived deeply her mourning: she will be always dress with dark clothes, she stopped public apparitions and London visits so that she was called Widow of Windsor and the imagine of the power of the crown started to crumble.