This week we’re exploring one of the most famous couples of all time: Victoria and Albert!
A Young Woman on the Throne
When Princess Charlotte, only heir of King George IV, died in 1817, the race was on to produce a legitimate heir. Prince Frederick and Prince William married but had no surviving children. Prince Edward, the fourth son of George III, married Princess Victoire and had a daughter, Princess Victoria. After the deaths of George IV and William IV, Princess Victoria became Queen in 1837.
After years of old men on the throne, the accession of the lovely, young girl was certainly a breath of fresh air. However, it quickly became evident that Victoria had not been well prepared for her responsibilities as monarch. It was hoped and expected that she would quickly find a husband who could help her share the burden. After all, that was the traditional expectation—when Mary I and Elizabeth I had taken the throne as single women, everyone expected them to quickly find a husband and settle down. It was the right, the natural, the reasonable, the expected course for a young woman. Victoria might be living nearly 200 years after the Tudor Queens, but expectations had not changed in that regard.
Initially, Victoria seemed determined to wait. But after two years on the throne, she was starting to feel the pressure to marry. The new Queen’s husband must be royal and approved by Parliament. He also must be Protestant. Three names were suggested early on: Prince George, son of Duke of Cumberland; or Duke of Orleans; or the Prince of Orange. From the day Victoria was born, her mother and her uncle Leopold mapped out her future and wanted her to marry a German prince. Two Coburg cousins, brothers Albert and Ernest, sent to England. Initially Victoria was particularly unimpressed with Albert
Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich, heir to Russian throne, was her first official royal visitor. They seemed to get along well and enjoyed spending time together. Their governments were not impressed: the Tsar did not want his son to marry the Queen and play a secondary role. Reportedly, both the Queen and the Duke were broken hearted when the Tsar ordered his son back home. After the experience, Victoria returned to her position that she was not ready to marry.
That summer, Baron Stockmar decided Albert was ready to try again. In October, Albert returned to England. This time, everything outcome would be different.
The Proposal
Victoria was stunned to see Albert’s improvement when he appeared on the stairs of Kensington Palace. She immediately fell in love. She recorded the event in her journal: “It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert.” She was taken with the way he had grown, describing “such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate moustache and slight but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist.”
Victoria decided she was ready to be married after all. Just a few days after Albert’s return to England, Victoria wrote to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, to inform him of her decision to marry Albert. Melbourne supported the choice. As Queen, Victoria was the one to propose. On October 15, she sent for the Prince and asked him to marry her. She was thrilled when he accepted: “Oh! How I adore and love him, I cannot say!”
The couple selected the date of 10 February 1840, and the Queen and Prime Minister started planning the royal wedding of the century, Victoria-style. It had to be a public relations success on a national scale. The royal wedding was her chance to make a positive impression and connect with the country.
The Wedding Dress
Tradition dictated that royals, who were almost always kings, wear royal robes at their wedding. So everyone expected Victoria to wear her crimson robes. After all, it wasn’t so much a private as a public event. It wasn’t a woman getting married, it was the Queen.
However, Victoria wanted to wear a gown, not her robes of state. She reportedly didn’t want to focus on her status as Queen on her wedding day; instead, she wanted to focus on her union with Albert. She decided to wear a white dress, which was unusual at the time. Victoria chose white to highlight the delicate lace she was having made and to stand out in the midst of the colorful outfits around her. The English silk and lace on Victoria’s gown made her look magnificent.
Victoria’s choices might have been made for personal reasons, but they had lasting impact. White has been the traditional color of wedding gowns since her wedding. Her insistence that all the fabric and embellishment in the gown be made in Britain is another tradition that continues in British royal wedding gowns. Although the tradition in her day was for Brussels lace, Queen Victoria commissioned Honiton lace for her wedding gown ensemble. This was part of an important effort to revive the British lace industry in Honiton, Devon. The lace flounce along the skirt of her dress was detachable and was loaned to future royal brides including two of her daughters. The silk was also British-made, coming from Spitalfields in East London. Again, the Queen was making a conscious effort to promote and support British businesses.
The Queen wore her wedding lace on the dresses she wore for her children’s christenings. She also wore it for the wedding of her grandson George (who later became George V) to Princess Mary of Teck (later Queen Mary) in 1893 and for her official Diamond Jubilee portrait in 1897, nearly 60 years after she wore it on her wedding day. When she died in 1901, she was buried with her veil over her face.
Another feature of Victoria’s wedding outfit was the orange blossom trim that was applied to her gown and used in the wreath that held her veil. Orange blossoms were a traditional symbol of fertility, which certainly proved appropriate for the royal couple! Prince Albert later gave Queen Victoria gifts of enamel orange blossom jewelry, which she regularly wore on their wedding anniversary.
For jewelry, Victoria selected a diamond necklace and earrings that had been presented to her by the Sultan of Turkey. Her final piece of jewelry was a brooch containing a large sapphire surrounded by diamonds that Prince Albert had given her the day before. She was so pleased with the gift that she attached it to the front of her wedding gown. She wore it regularly until Albert’s death. The Queen recognized the significance of the piece and designated it as an heirloom of the Crown. It has been worn by subsequent Queens and Queen consorts. Queen Alexandra wore it for her coronation, and Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and HM Queen Elizabeth II have all worn it. The Queen wears it frequently, and Princess Anne has been spotted wearing it as well.
Another bit of royal wedding outfit tradition was started by Queen Victoria. Prince Albert’s grandmother gave Queen Victoria a sprig of myrtle when she visited, and the Queen planted the myrtle in her garden in the Isle of Wight. When her daughter got married in 1858, she carried a sprig of myrtle in her bouquet. The plant is thought to symbolize love and marriage, making it ideal for a wedding bouquet. Subsequent royal brides included sprigs of myrtle as well. When then-Princess Elizabeth was married in 1947, she later planted the myrtle from Queen Victoria’s bush to start her own. In 2011, Catherine Middleton’s bouquet included myrtle from both Queen Victoria’s myrtle bush and from Queen Elizabeth’s.
The Royal Wedding
The wedding itself was a matter of history. Not since Mary I had married Philip of Spain in 1554 had a British regnant Queen been married during reign (and it hasn’t happened again since). As was the case with Mary I’s choice, Victoria’s husband was not English but a foreigner. Both Phillip and Albert were viewed with suspicion and some resentment by the British people. However, unlike Mary and Philip, who had a short marriage a no children, Victoria and Albert were embarking on a relationship that would last more than 20 years and produce nine children.
Although the wedding day began with rain, nothing could dampen Victoria’s enthusiasm for her big day. She was delighted by the crowds that had gathered and filled the streets. The ceremony was held in the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace. The Queen emerged from Buckingham Palace and rode to St. James’s Palace in a gold coach. People lining the streets cheered and cheered.
The excitement of the day was captured by newspapers. The journal The Satirist wrote “We are all going stark, staring mad. Nothing is heard or thought of but doves and cupids, triumphal arches and white favours, and last but not least, variegated lamps and general illuminations.”
Although she had opted to break with some traditions, Victoria decided to keep a traditional and controversial part of the ceremony: she pledged to obey her husband. This didn’t do anything to calm the concerns of those who saw Albert as a minor royal from a poor nation trying to use Victoria to make his mark on the world. In fact, the struggle between a traditional marriage with the man in charge, as Albert saw their relationship, and a Queen at the head of a government that included that relationship was one they would continue to battle over and navigate throughout their marriage.
The ceremony was followed by a feast for the guests. The wedding cake was huge, nine feet across and 16 inches high. It took four men to carry it into the Palace. It was decorated with a figure of Britannia, along with shield decorated with the coats of arms of the bride and groom. There were also cupids, one holding a book with the date of the wedding. There might have been an attempt at political humor in the face of one of the cherubs, as the Times reported, “We are assured that not one of the cherubs on the royal wedding cake was intended to represent Lord Palmerston. The resemblance pointed out…must be purely accidental.” In addition to that cake, more than a hundred cakes were baked for guests to eat that day.
The Queen then changed into a traveling outfit, and she and Albert set off around 4 pm for the 3-hour ride to Windsor Castle. Victoria opted for an older coach for their journey, which was criticized by one of the guests at the wedding. However, the Queen had believed the people had grown weary of the exceses during the reigns her two uncles and would appreciate a bit of royal restraint. She seems to have been correct. She described their journey being cheered by “an immense crowd…quite deafening us” all the way to Windsor. They arrived at Windsor that evening, and their married life began.
The wedding had been a triumph. Lord Melbourne declared, “Nothing could have gone off better.” The Queen’s wedding to Prince Albert had started several traditions: white wedding dresses, elaborate cakes, and a sprig of myrtle in royal bouquets. Royal weddings now held but during the daytime. The very profile of a royal wedding as a public event was established by Victoria, and that tradition seems here to stay.
The Royal Marriage
Another tradition of royal marriages that we see in Victoria and Albert’s experience is the attempts to analyze it! The “real story” of Victoria and Albert’s marriage has been debated for years and continues to be dissected today. So let’s take a look at what we know and what people think.
We know that there was enormous physical attraction between Victoria and Albert. The Queen recorded some bordering-on-racy comments about the wedding day (and night), “I never, never spent such an evening! My dearest, dear Albert sat on a footstool by my side, and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before. He clasped me in his arms, and we kissed each other again and again! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!”
But at the same time, this was a political marriage, and the political head was the Queen. When Albert asked that the two of them take a two-week honeymoon, Victoria refused, writing, “Dear Albert, you have not at all understood the matter. You forget, my dearest love, that I am the Sovereign, and that business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and something occurs almost every day, for which I may be required, and it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London; therefore two or three days is already a long time to be absent. I am never easy a moment if I am not on the spot.”
That tension—between the personal and the political—infused the marriage from the beginning. There was love and attraction, and there was a desire to rule for both of them. Albert was not agreeable to a secondary role, and he was eager to become involved in government. Victoria was not interested in changing her role as single ruler to one of shared rule. She might have been willing to have the word “obey” included in her wedding vows, but she was not interested in that curtailing her position as Queen.
Both Victoria and Albert tried to assert their will during their marriage, leading to regular battles. Their relationship refused to fall easily into a pre-determined form, and their strong personalities meant they were continually remaking their marriage. Albert is reported to have told his friend William von Lowenstein, “The difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not master of the house.”
The landscape changed when, within a few months, Victoria became pregnant. As one pregnancy followed another, Victoria was literally unable to keep up with her work. Her worry about being away for two or three days was swallowed up in the dangerous and arduous experience that was pregnancy and childbirth in her time. Within months of the marriage, Albert had moved his writing desk next to Victoria’s so he could participate in her work. Despite her resistance in the earliest weeks, Victoria eventually welcomed his help.
A woman, especially such a small woman, could not be pregnant so often without enormous physical risk and cost to her health and energy. Victoria had an astonishing seven children in the first 10 years of her marriage. She hated being pregnant, and she repeatedly wrote about how much she disliked small babies and resented breast feeding them. Victoria gave Albert the key to the cabinet boxes in November 1840, when their first child was born. For the next 10 years, Victoria had babies while Albert attended meetings with ministers, dealt with royal correspondence and drafted letters for the Queen to copy.
In 1850, Albert’s position was described this way: “As the natural head of [the Queen’s] family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private affairs, sole confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant in. her communications with the officers of her government, he is, besides, the husband of the Queen, the tutor of the royal children, the private secretary of the sovereign, and her permanent minister.” Albert sometimes prompted Victoria in German before she spoke in English to her politicians. Albert was pursuing a more and more active role in government and foreign policy.
The Queen seemed to appreciate and applaud Albert’s growing role. She thought men naturally more capable of rule, an attitude shared with many in the country. She believed in the “natural family order” she and Albert were promoting in their images, and she worried over the fact that as Queen she outranked him. “It is a reversal of the right order of things which distresses me much and which no on, but such a perfection, such an angel as he is—could bear and carry through.” But at the same time, Victoria was proud of her royal blood and her role as a regnant Queen. She sometimes demanded attention and power, and Albert was not always eager to give it.
As Victoria’s outbursts of temper increased, Albert seemed to be worried that she might have inherited some of the madness that had plagued and immobilized her grandfather George III. When Victoria became angry, he left, writing, “If you are violent I have no choice but to leave…and retire to my room in order to give you time to recover yourself.” Victoria recorded her behavior, and Albert evaluated her progress—as if he were her parent. She described him as such to her daughter: “He was my father, my protector, my guide and adviser in all and everything, my mother (I might almost say) as well as my husband.” That the title of husband comes last tells us a great deal about the relationship.
So although Victoria was Queen of a nation, she was regularly inferior in her family. It was a reality that created constant tension for the couple. Perhaps it was in response to this that Albert focused so heavily on his work. As the 1850s progressed, he rose earlier and worked later. The Great Exhibition in 1851 was the culmination of Albert’s interest in science and technology, as well as the arts. The Exhibition was a huge success. Albert founded several national museums. He also led the reorganization and cataloguing of the Royal Collection. He was very supportive of new technologies, particularly photography. Ultimately, he gained the support and approval of the British people.
Presenting the image of a happy family on the throne was important to both Victoria and Albert. Albert had a clear vision of what his family should be, and he devoted himself to the education of his children and the running of the family household. Therefore, it was a great strain for Albert that their eldest son, Bertie, was a disappointment. He was not a natural or a hard-working student. As he grew, he resented his father and his extreme punishments and rebelled, gaining a reputation a playboy. When he visited troops in Ireland, some of the officers snuck actress Nellie Clifden into the Prince’s bed. Albert was horrified. He visited the Prince at Cambridge and took his son on a long walk to discuss how to deal with his reckless behavior and mend his ways. Shortly after, Albert became ill. He returned to Windsor, where he died at age 42 on 14 December 1861. He and Victoria had been married just over 20 years.
The Widow
Queen Victoria spent the final 40 years of her reign as a widow. That means she was a single woman on the throne for more than twice as long as she was a married woman on the throne. Even so, her marriage and her husband dominated her thinking and actions for the remainder of her reign.
It was a complicated relationship. Some of my wonderful listeners and followers and fellow history lovers describe the marriage as complicated, which is a great word for it. The notion of wedded bliss is not true and really not possible. Both Victoria and Albert had very difficult childhoods and brought their own needs to the marriage—and expected their partner to fulfill those needs. Expectations of the day were that a woman promise to “obey” her husband, and this was an expectation that both Victoria and Albert brought to the marriage as husband and wife. But the reality of a Queen and consort was something that was far less clear. She was emotional and volatile and gave way to her feelings, while he was more intellectual and reserved. The steady beat of pregnancy and childbirth took a huge toll on Victoria’s physical, mental, and emotional health.
In face of needing to create a new model of royal marriage and royal family life, Victoria and Albert started with an astonishing wedding and moved on to a marriage full of children, technological progress, international success, the Great Exhibition, and a new way of celebrating Christmas. Out of this they created a complicated marriage that changed Britain and the world.
Thank you so much for joining me to explore this important and fascinating royal love story. And special thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts about this fascinating marriage. We’ve enjoyed celebrating their anniversary month with Victoria and Albert. Join me next week as we consider some modern royal love stories.