Cunk on Britain TV - Maud Gonne MacBride - Simon Schama TV - David Starkey TV - Lucy Worsley TV - Empire: Queen Victoria’s Empire TV - Victoria - The Young Victoria 2009 - Philip Ziegler - Queen Victoria’s Children TV - Queen Victoria’s Last Love TV - The Bloodlines of the Illuminati - Royal Babylon - Florence Becker Lennon - Marijuana: True History TV - A N Wilson TV - Young Victoria: Timewatch TV - Private Lives of the Monarchs TV - Victoria: A Royal Love Story TV - Royal Mob TV -
In the last episode we saw how Britain was invaded by the Victorians who fought and won the industrial revolution but not without losing their leader, Queen Victoria, who stopped happening just as the 20th century began. Cunk on Britain s1e4
The Famine Queen. Maud Gonne MacBride, Irish nationalist & actor
Spring 1851: The word Victoria enters the English language and a very small woman enters a very big building. She is four-foot-eleven yet somehow she fills it. Her moment is so pregnant for the future it seems holy. Victoria herself is flooded with religious awe. Neither she nor anyone else has ever seen anything like this building before: a greenhouse the size of a palace with a difference that this is from the beginning a People’s Palace. A popular magazine calls it the Crystal Palace ... A huge showcase for Britain’s industrial empire. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e2: Victoria and Her Sisters, BBC 2002
She was of course the most desirable catch in Europe ... Helped by that handsome, or as she put it, angelic German head, well she pretty much ran the show, virtually grabbing hold of her curly-haired intended and sprinting for the altar. It was Victoria who supplied the ring, asked Albert for a lock of his hair and wallowed in the kissing sessions. ibid.
Victoria simply melted away into the amazed bliss of conjugal love. ibid.
Victoria and Albert’s passion for each other was strictly a private matter. ibid.
Six million came to see the Show of Shows. ibid.
The Tories tried to form a government and Victoria wrecked their chances. Monarchy by David Starkey s3e5: Survival, Channel 4 2006
This left Albert a free hand to shape his own vision of monarchy. He arrived in a Britain transformed by the Reform Act. ibid.
Victoria was kept under constant surveillance. Lucy Worsley, Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changes History: Happy Families III, BBC 2013
A personality that was wilful and imperious. ibid.
Albert died at Windsor Castle – he was just forty-two. ibid.
In 1840 two twenty-year-olds became the most famous couple on Earth – the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg was a pivotal moment in British history. What began as an arranged marriage became the greatest royal love story of all time. Lucy Worsley, Victoria & Albert: The Royal Wedding, BBC 2018
She left us her thoughts – 141 volumes of them. ibid.
The Royal Couple celebrated with the most lavish wedding breakfast – more than a hundred dishes. ibid.
Death robbed the Queen of her beloved Prince Albert. Empires: Queen Victoria’s Empire III: The Moral Crusade, PBS 2001
Disraeli treated her not only as his monarch but as a woman and a woman of intelligence. ibid.
All marriage is such a lottery – the happiness is always an exchange – though it may be a very happy one – still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband’s slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl – and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to – which you can’t deny is the penalty of marriage. Victoria
A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one. Queen Victoria
He really is more and more careless. He was dragged into the dirt and mixed up in one of the most disgusting and scandalous trials on record. Victoria, letter to daughter 1870, re son Bertie
I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of Women’s Rights, with all its attendant horrors on which our poor feeble sex is bent. Forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety ... Were women to unsex themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection. Victoria
I never can, or shall, look at him [Bertie] without a shudder. Victoria
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! Victoria, diary entry
It was with some emotion ... that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful. Victoria
Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country. Victoria
The blessings of having children – but the anxieties and trouble not to say sorrow are quite as great as the blessings. Victoria
The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them. Victoria
We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist. Queen Victoria
What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I can not enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic. Victoria, letter to Princess Royal 15th June 1858
When day dawned, for we did not sleep much, and I behold that beautiful angelic face by my side it was more than I could express. Victoria
1819: A child is born in a London palace. Caught between two Royal uncles – the King of England and the King of the Belgians – she is destined to be a Queen and to rule a great empire. The Young Victoria 2009 starring Emily Blunt & Rupert Friend & Miranda Richardson & Jim Broadbent & Paul Bettany & Mark Strong & Harriet Walter & Paul Bettany & Thomas Kretschmann & Jesper Christensen et al, director Jean-Marc Vallee, caption
Even a palace can be a prison. ibid. Victoria
I am young and I am willing to learn. And I mean to devote my life to the service of my country and my people. I look for your help in this. I know I shall not be disappointed. ibid. Victoria’s first Privy Council
Never try to do good, your Majesty. ibid. Melbourne
A man who has no work becomes ridiculous. ibid. lady to Victoria
I will not have my role usurped! I wear the Crown! ibid. Victoria to Albert
I will love you until my last breath. ibid. Albert to Victoria
Even a politician can be honest sometimes. ibid. Melbourne
The Queen [Victoria] had become extremely unpopular, and she was viewed as being selfish, extravagant, just sulking in her castle, doing nothing for her country. Philip Ziegler, royal biographer
Victoria: A queen in a passionate marriage with Prince Albert. Yet behind closed doors their domestic life was a battlefield. But it wasn’t the only stormy relationship in Victoria’s life. Queen Victoria’s Children I: The Best Laid Plans, BBC 2013
A sixty-year war between the children and their mother. ibid.
The royal couples’ own experiences of family life had not been happy. ibid.
The first child, called Victoria but known as Vicky, was born in 1840. ibid.
Within a year of Vicky’s birth, Albert Edward known as Bertie, was born. ibid.
She also refused to breast-feed them. ibid.
Nine born over seventeen years. ibid.
The royal family was in a class of its own living in splendid isolation. ibid.
Albert adored the eldest, Vicky. ibid.
Victoria would consent to her children being beaten. ibid.
Victoria came to resent the children. ibid.
The children would become locked in decades of warfare with their mother. ibid.