UK Royals (Commonwealth Union)_It has been more than 100 years since Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were married, yet their relationship remains one of the most well known in British royal history.
Queen Victoria’s and Prince Albert’s love is perhaps one of the strongest in royal history.
Albert was Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (present-day Bavaria and Thuringia, Germany) and Victoria’s first cousin. Despite being born three months apart, they had little contact as children but knew of their family’s desire to see them married one day.
The couple had a brief encounter at Victoria’s 17th birthday celebration in April 1836 when she was heir to the British throne. The cousins were introduced by Leopold I (1790 – 1865), King of the Belgians who was their uncle. In their memoirs, both of them record that they almost instantly fell in love.
Like any lovestruck teen, she wrote in her diary, of his ‘beautiful nose and sweet mouth with fine teeth,” of his ‘goodness and sweetness’ and how clever and intelligent she thought he was. Albert was not used to late nights and was forced to leave balls early as he felt sleepy and faint, leaving his young cousin to dance into the night.
After Victoria acceded to the throne in 1837, tradition dictated that no one could propose to a reigning monarch and therefore, Victoria proposed to Albert during his second visit in October 1839 at Windsor Castle in Berkshire.
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By 1839, Victoria who was basking in her freedom declared herself as reluctant to marry. That October, she was smitten with Albert visiting England. In her diary, she wrote: “It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful”
Following royal protocol, just five days later, Victoria proposed.
“Oh! to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert, was too great delight to describe! he is perfection, perfection in every way”.
A royal wedding was held on 10 February 1840 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. Victoria became pregnant almost immediately, and gave birth nine months later. The future Edward VII (Bertie) was born the next year. The physical attraction between Albert and Victoria was clear – they had nine children between 1840 and 1857.
Victoria, with her multiple pregnancies, reluctantly shared some of her official duties with Albert. Initially, Albert was not popular with the British public. Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, where he was from, was seen to be a small and unknown place, barely larger than a small English county. Albert stood in for his wife and advised her on matters of importance and became well-loved by the British public, since Victoria spent many early years of their marriage pregnant. His organisation of the Great Exhibition was perceived as a crowning achievement.
The two became locked in an endless power struggle with Victoria having violent outbursts, something that ran in the family with her grandfather, George II1 who during his 60-year reign struggled with a period of mental illness. Albert was told by Royal doctors, not argue with his wife in case his fears of her inheriting these behaviours came true.
Victoria and Albert were married for 21 years, remaining together until his death at the age of 42 after doctors diagnosed him with typhoid fever. The Queen was distraught at his passing and her diaries describe how reliant the couple were on each other practically, politically and emotionally. For the rest of her life, following his death, the Queen wore black in mourning earning the nickname the ‘widow of Windsor’.
Victoria would never recover from his death. For the rest of her life, she dressed in black and hardly appeared in public. She was known to surround herself with memorabilia to remind her of her late husband even taking his dressing gown to bed with her each night. Continuing to have hot water for shaving brought up on a daily basis as if he were alive. In a letter 15 months after his death, The Queen wrote: “The poor Queen… can only hope never to live to old age but be allowed to rejoin her beloved great and loyal husband before many years elapse”.
Having suffered with cataracts ruining her eyesight, and from rheumatism in her legs, Victoria’s health was on the decline. She died on 22nd January 1901, at the age of 81. She was buried next to her husband in the Royal Mausoleum, Frogmore at Windsor Great Park, just half a mile from Windsor Castle.
