Queen Victoria
On 24 May 1919, a princess was born at Kensington Palace in London, England. Her name was Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent but she would go down in history as Queen Victoria.
Victoria’s birth saved Britain from a succession crisis as a lot of her uncles had children out of wedlock which meant they couldn’t inherit the British throne and the only other eligible heir was a princess her uncle George, Regent Prince and later King George IV had called Charlotte who died shortly giving birth to a stillborn baby. This placed her 5th in line of succession, behind her dad who was Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, her uncle William (later King William IV) and his brother George who we just mentioned. Her godfather was Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
Her dad’s death in 1820 saw her come 4th in line of succession and the death of her childless uncle Frederick placed her 3rd in line to the throne. Her uncle George’s reign began in 1820 with the death of his namesake dad but with all the pies he got through, he died ten years later which saw Vicky’s uncle William become King William IV. His death in June 1837 saw Victoria become queen and ditch her birth name of Alexandrina to become Queen Victoria. She was coronated in Westminster Abbey a year later and became the first British monarch to reside in Buckingham Palace. She made it the official royal residence.
In 1840, she married her German cousin Albert (his dad was a brother of Victoria’s mother) and together they had 9 children who would go off to marry into the royal households of Europe which is why Victoria is known as the Grandmother of Europe. Interesting to note was that Queen Victoria was the one of the first to wear a white wedding dress which made white wedding dresses popular for rich brides of the time and now brides of all social classes of today! However, those births (even the princes she gave birth to) weren’t free from grief as Victoria was a carrier of a disease that prevents clotting called haemophilia which was tricky to cure back then in comparison to now. Women are usually the carriers of the disease if haemophilia runs in their family so her daughters didn’t suffer with it but one of the princes Victoria had wasn’t so lucky. His name was Leopold and his daughters, Alice and Beatrice became the carriers of the disease. Her daughter Alice’s daughter Alexandra also became the mother of the haemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei as both Alice and Alexandra were carriers of the disease.
Albert popularised Christmas trees in Britain which were first introduced by Queen Charlotte who was Victoria’s paternal grandmother. The Prince Consort (a queen’s husband in the UK as well as The Netherlands can’t have the title of King Consort to avoid outranking his wife) worked very hard to not only improve his popularity in the UK but also life in Britain and its position in the world which saw the growth of technology and public projects being invested in heavily like the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace, a gigantic glass building where many British innovations and culture were showcased. The building gave its name to the football club Crystal Palace F.C. as well as a cricket club who actually lobbied for its creation as a second sport to play in the winter.
While Queen Victoria was popular and beloved in Britain, it was a different tale in Ireland which was under colonial rule by Britain during her reign. In 1845, the potato crop was ruined by a blight that was carried by the wind which caused the crop to rot. What’s worse was that there was a lack of money for farmers to use to diversify the crops or even invest in better farming techniques so starvation and disease became easier to spread. What did the British do to help? Not a lot since the landlords they had in Ireland were often absent, preferring to live in Britain. There were soup kitchens that opened but they quickly closed down. They also opened up workhouses and they exported grain from Ireland. In fact, exports were prioritised over the health and safety of the Irish (especially the poor) during this time. Many Irish nationalists called Britain out over it but the British barely gave a hoot and just continued exporting Irish struggles for profitable gain like colonialism in India and Africa! One of Queen Victoria’s 4 visits to Ireland took place in 1849, when the famine was still rampant but slowly dying down and she barely did anything about it apart from getting protestants to donate £2000 to the cause. In all honesty, her surviving diary entries show a lack of interest in Ireland.
Queen Victoria was widowed in 1861 with the death of her husband Prince Albert and she wore black for the rest of her life. During this part of her life, she became friendly with a Scottish bachelor called John Brown. He wasn’t popular with Vicky’s children which is why Victoria’s eldest son and heir Albert Edward (later King Edward VII) ordered for the statues and private memorials dedicated to John Brown (who later died in 1883) to be destroyed when he became king.
Despite being praised for ruling a country and defying the patriarchy, Queen Victoria wasn’t a fan of the women’s Rights movements that were going on in her reign like the suffragettes’ campaign for women to get the right to vote. So in a way, she wouldn’t like how she appears in books about women who made history, even if she reigned for 63 years and had 2 jubilees to celebrate that and would hate seeing women speak without the presence of their husbands. Children being made to work in appalling conditions? Let them suffer! She had a dynasty to take care of even if she had haemophilic carrying kids spawning when she was just 21 and vice-versa with grandkids when she was 39.
Queen Victoria survived seven attempts on her life and lived to be 81-years-old when she died at Osborne House at 6:30PM GMT on 22 January 1901 in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Prince Albert Edward who would reign as King Edward VII. She was buried in Frogmore, dressed in white as a renewed bride and with her wedding veil so she could be reunited with her dearly departed Prince Albert after 39 years, 1 month and 8 days. Queen Victoria is the great-great-great grandmother of current (as of early January 2026) British monarch, King Charles III.