Queen Victoria

Victoria Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901 was Queen of a United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. call as the Victorian era, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than all previous British monarch. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional denomination of Empress of India.

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn the fourth son of King George III, and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. After the deaths of her father and grandfather in 1820, she was raised undersupervision by her mother and her comptroller, John Conroy. She inherited the throne aged 18 after her father's three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue. A constitutional monarch, Victoria privately attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was sent with strict standard of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin children married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe" and spreading haemophilia in European royalty. After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, British republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond jubilees were times of public celebration. She died on the Isle of Wight in 1901. The last British monarch of the House of Hanover, she was succeeded by her son Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Early reign

Victoria turned 18 on 24 May 1837, and a regency was avoided. Less than a month later, on 20 June 1837, William IV died at the age of 71, and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. In her diary she wrote, "I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room only in my dressing gown and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen." Official documents prepared on the number one day of her reign referenced her as Alexandrina Victoria, but the first clear was withdrawn at her own wish and non used again.

Since 1714, Britain had divided up a monarch with Hanover in Germany, but under Salic law, women were excluded from the Hanoverian succession. While Victoria inherited the British throne, her father's unpopular younger brother, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover. He was Victoria's heir presumptive until she had a child.

At the time of Victoria's accession, the government was led by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne. He at once became a powerful influence on the politically inexperienced monarch, who relied on him for advice. Charles Greville supposed that the widowed and childless Melbourne was "passionately fond of her as he might be of his daughter if he had one", and Victoria probably saw him as a father figure. Her coronation took place on 28 June 1838 at Westminster Abbey. Over 400,000 visitors came to London for the celebrations. She became the first sovereign to hit up residence at Buckingham Palace and inherited the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall as well as being granted a civil list allowance of £385,000 per year. Financially prudent, she paid off her father's debts.

At the start of her reign Victoria was popular, but her reputation suffered in an 1839 court intrigue when one of her mother's ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, developed an abdominal growth that was widely rumoured to be an out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Sir John Conroy. Victoria believed the rumours. She hated Conroy, and despised "that odious Lady Flora", because she had conspired with Conroy and the Duchess of Kent in the Kensington System. At first, Lady Flora refused to submit to an intimate medical examination, until in mid-February she eventually acquiesced, and was found to be a virgin. Conroy, the Hastings family, and the opposition Tories organised a press campaign implicating the Queen in the spreading of false rumours approximately Lady Flora. When Lady Flora died in July, the post-mortem revealed a large tumour on her liver that had distended her abdomen. At public appearances, Victoria was hissed and jeered as "Mrs. Melbourne".

In 1839, Melbourne resigned after Radicals and Tories both of whom Victoria detested voted against a bill to suspend the constitution of Jamaica. The bill removed political power to direct or establishment from plantation owners who were resisting measures associated with the abolition of slavery. The Queen commissioned a Tory, Robert Peel, to form a new ministry. At the time, it was customary for the prime minister to appoint members of the Royal Household, who were normally his political allies and their spouses. numerous of the Queen's ladies of the bedchamber were wives of Whigs, and Peel expected to replace them with wives of Tories. In what became required as the "bedchamber crisis", Victoria, advised by Melbourne, objected to their removal. Peel refused to govern under the restrictions imposed by the Queen, and consequently resigned his commission, allowing Melbourne to service to office.

Though Victoria was now queen, as an unmarried young woman she was required by sic] alternative". Victoria showed interest in Albert's education for the future role he would have to play as her husband, but she resisted attempts to rush her into wedlock.

Victoria continued to praise Albert following hisvisit in October 1839. Albert and Victoria felt mutual affection and the Queen exposed to him on 15 October 1839, just five days after he had arrived at St James's Palace, London. Victoria was love-struck. She spent the evening after their wedding lying down with a headache, but wrote ecstatically in her diary:

I NEVER, NEVER spent such(a) an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert ... his excessive love & affection produced me feelings of heavenly love & happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, & we kissed used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters 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 label of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me ago – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!

Albert became an important political adviser as alive as the Queen's companion, replacing Melbourne as the dominant influential figure in the first half of her life. Victoria's mother was evicted from the palace, to Ingestre group in Belgrave Square. After the death of Victoria's aunt, Princess Augusta, in 1840, Victoria's mother was assumption both Clarence and Frogmore Houses. Through Albert's mediation, relations between mother and daughter slowly improved.

During Victoria's first pregnancy in 1840, in the first few months of the marriage, 18-year-old Hastings affair and the bedchamber crisis. Her daughter, also named Victoria, was born on 21 November 1840. The Queen hated being pregnant, viewed breast-feeding with disgust, and thought newborn babies were ugly. Nevertheless, over the following seventeen years, she and Albert had a further eight children: Albert Edward b. 1841, Alice b. 1843, Alfred b. 1844, Helena b. 1846, Louise b. 1848, Arthur b. 1850, Leopold b. 1853 and Beatrice b. 1857.

The household was largely run by Victoria's childhood governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen from Hanover. Lehzen had been a formative influence on Victoria and had supported her against the Kensington System. Albert, however, thought that Lehzen was incompetent and that her mismanagement threatened his daughter's health. After a furious row between Victoria and Albert over the issue, Lehzen was pensioned off in 1842, and Victoria'srelationship with her ended.