Queen Victoria photographed by Alexander Bassano in 1887 • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Queen Victoria reigned over the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901, 63 years and seven months, which remained a record for a long time. Although the latter has recently been defeated by the current Queen Elizabeth II, who ascended the throne in 1952, Victoria's long reign remains associated with an undeniable moment of apogee, when England and British civilization dictated their law to the world. An austere youth Daughter of the Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George III, and a German princess of Saxe-Coburg, the young Victoria was however not predestined to become sovereign. At her birth, in 1819, she occupied only fifth place in the order of succession to the throne. But the premature death of her father, who died when she was only 1 year old, then that of two of her uncles made her in 1830 the presumptive heiress of King William IV, who remained without direct descendants. Raised by her mother, Victoria had a childhood that she herself described as “sad” and “melancholic”. Life was austere at London's Kensington Palace, where the Duchess of Kent kept the princess away from other children, deemed undesirable. She was subject to very strict moral and protocol rules, supposed to be those of a future queen, but which were above all intended to isolate the young girl. Her mother, who aspired to the regency, indeed wanted her to be fragile and dependent. Victoria studied with private tutors and spent her free time with her dolls. Only the friendship of her governess Louise Lehzen, who defended her against the oppressive "Kensington system", enabled her to find some warmth in this heavy climate of intrigue and moral asphyxiation. The Queen moves to Buckingham Victoria ascended the throne on June 20, 1837, on the death of her uncle William IV. As she had just turned 18, the regency no longer had a reason to exist. One of his first decisions was therefore to dismiss his mother and leave the sinister Kensington Castle to settle in the heart of London, in Buckingham Palace. The situation was not so simple. The young queen, writes her official biographer Lytton Strachey, succeeded "a madman, a debauchee and a buffoon". Indeed, it is an understatement to say that the Hanover-Windsor monarchy had been discredited by the long mental illness of King George III and by the escapades of his two sons, George IV and William IV. The social situation was also very difficult:the accelerated industrialization of the country created terrible pockets of poverty, sparked riots and very violent protest movements. But the young queen benefited, during her first years of reign, from the advice and attention of Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, a benevolent father figure, who also instilled in her a liberal sensibility. Respectful of institutions, she nevertheless knew how to be firm in the event of disagreement. She thus successfully opposed in 1839, during what was called the "bedroom crisis", the conservative Robert Peel, who intended to appoint according to custom ladies-in-waiting of the same political sensibility as him. In a few years, the young sovereign thus acquired wide popularity and managed to restore the lost dignity of the British monarchy. Albert “has all the qualities” The great turning point in his life was his marriage, shortly afterwards, to his cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Victoria had been captivated by the "fascinating" beauty of the German prince, whom she had met a few years earlier. "He has all the qualities that could be desired to make me perfectly happy," she wrote to her uncle Leopold, the King of the Belgians. The marriage was celebrated in February 1840, in the chapel of St. James's Palace, London. Despite their differences – Albert was much stricter, more serious and more rigorous than the young queen – they lived together a beautiful page of love, which contributed to building this ideal of family monarchy with which so many British households identified. . Also read Albert, a husband in the shadow of Queen Victoria “No sovereign has been so loved as I,” wrote the queen in her diary, happy to have finally found in Albert the affection that she had missed during her childhood. Between 1840 and 1857, the royal couple had nine children, most of whom married other crowned heads of Europe. Their eldest daughter Victoria – Vicky – married Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1858 and gave birth to the future German Emperor Wilhelm II. One of their granddaughters, Alix, married Tsar Nicholas II; another, Victoire-Eugénie, united with the King of Spain Alphonse XIII, while others allied themselves to the thrones of Greece, Norway, Denmark or Romania, which earned Queen Victoria the nickname of "grandmother of Europe". But, unwittingly carrying the hemophilia gene, the sovereign also transmitted this deadly disease to all the courts of the Old Continent. Cordial relations with Napoleon III The middle of the century marked the height of this England that was beginning to be called "Victorian". The 1 st May 1851, in Hyde Park, the inauguration by the royal couple of the first Universal Exhibition, constituted the symbol of this rediscovered greatness. The six million visitors who flocked to the famous Cristal Palace gave all its meaning to this extraordinary event, dedicated to celebrating the industrial superiority of the country, to promoting peace, free trade and the harmony of nations. The political role of the queen was far from negligible. Without ever questioning the parliamentary nature of the regime, she frequently intervened in the appointment of prime ministers and did not hide her liberal preferences. She mainly played a role in foreign policy, annotating the dispatches, not hesitating to make known her opinions to the secretaries of the Foreign Office. In China, India and Egypt, it supported the resumption of colonial expansion and largely contributed to rapprochement with France. In 1843, she crossed the Channel to meet, in Eu, then in Paris, King Louis-Philippe. But it was with the Emperor Napoleon III, a great admirer of England, that relations were the most cordial. In 1855, the British royal couple visited the Universal Exhibition in Paris. The ball that Napoleon III organized on this occasion at the Palace of Versailles brought together more than 1,200 guests and sealed the restored friendship between the two nations. Also read Queen Victoria:an army on all fronts Prince Albert's activity was different. This science and technology enthusiast had been one of the inspirations of the first Universal Exhibition. He was also a great lover of art, which contributed to enriching the masterful collection of the Windsors. His practicality made it possible to put the administration of the royal house in order and to rationalize his philanthropic works. But the principal contribution of the prince consort, a Lutheran of strict obedience, resided in the respect he imposed on an austere morality and which became for many synonymous with the Victorian "art of living". Bereaved, depressed and reclusive This beautiful romance was however cut short by the brutal death of Albert, carried away in December 1861 by an attack of typhoid fever. This death deeply affected Queen Victoria. Devastated by depression, she retired to the medieval fortress of Windsor, where she isolated herself in grief and mourning. Sacrificing her duties as sovereign and mother, she even thought for a time of abdicating. The one who was nicknamed the “widow of Windsor” hardly left her seclusion except to go to her manor house in Balmoral, Scotland, or her residence in Osborne, Isle of Wight. She then approached one of her servants, the Scotsman John Brown, who had been the late Prince Albert's first valet. Combined with her isolation, this relationship, which sparked many rumors (there was even talk of a secret marriage), contributed to tarnishing the Queen's popularity and nurturing a temporary feeling of republicanism, exploited by the radical Charles Dilke. Life, however, gradually resumed its course. In 1866, the Queen decided to open the session of Parliament and pledged the following year to support the great electoral reform championed by the Conservatives Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. The latter played a decisive role in Victoria's return to grace. From his romantic and tumultuous youth, Disraeli had retained ambition and passion. Although a conservative, he led a policy of social reform and engaged the country in a vigorous campaign of colonial expansion. In Afghanistan, in Zululand, in Sudan, Victoria supported these “small wars”, which according to her worked with the size of the country. Disraeli, who had won her confidence, was gradually leading the queen back onto the public road. In April 1876, he got Parliament to pass the Royal Titles Act , which made Victoria Empress of India. The sovereign, also queen of Canada and Australia, now reigned over more than 350 million subjects, or a quarter of the world's population. Victoria was passionate about this new function, applied herself to the study of the Hindi and Urdu languages, and surrounded herself with Indian servants. The initiative, which allowed the queen to regain the confidence of the country, was also the source of a deep friendship with Disraeli. Golden and Diamond Jubilees On the other hand, relations were more difficult with her rival, the liberal William Gladstone, whose personality and government she hated. She was particularly opposed to the Irish policy of Gladstone, who tried, without success, to give the island a status of autonomy, the Home Rule . However, despite her sympathies or her enmities, Victoria always played the game of institutions and accepted, in the name of the public interest, the principle of bipartisanship, which characterized the democratic evolution of the country at the end of the 19th century.>e century. Her last years were for the sovereign those of an apotheosis. His Golden Jubilee, which celebrated his 50th anniversary in 1887, was marked by sumptuous festivities:a grand banquet was given, to which all the greats of this world were invited, and a procession was organized at Westminster Abbey. . Ten years later, the kingdom celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of a queen soon to be in her eighties, for whom the whole country showed its fervor and affection. Also read Queen Victoria, grandmother of Europe Weakened, weakened by rheumatism and cataracts, Victoria died in her residence on the Isle of Wight on January 22, 1901, watched over by her eldest son Edward and by her grandson, Kaiser William II. Her funeral, which she had wanted to be military because of her status as army commander, took place in the chapel of Windsor Castle, and she was buried alongside Prince Albert in the royal mausoleum in the park. In this first year of the XX th century, Victoria's death seemed to mark the end of a world. No doubt Britain was still a great power, but the clouds were gathering on the horizon. The industrial rise of Germany and the economic power of the United States threatened a preponderance of the aging model. Everyone then understood how Victoria's reign had embodied a climax. Heart of a colonial empire on which the sun never set, Victorian England had been “the workshop of the world”:its industries, its banks, its fleet, its currency assured it an uncontested supremacy. The English language resounded in every corner of the world and London, with its 5 million inhabitants, was the largest city in the western world. Dickens reigned over the letters and Darwin over the sciences. The stability of the political system had spared the country the upheavals and revolts experienced by other European states, and the democratization of institutions had followed a more peaceful path than elsewhere. Despite strong Puritanism and the conservatism embodied in the bourgeois values of foresight and respectability, Britain too had advanced along the path of intellectual and social modernity. Of all this Queen Victoria had been the attentive witness; it now remains its symbol and icon. Find out more Victoria, Queen of England, P. Chassaigne, Gallimard, 2017. Timeline 1819 Birth on May 24 of Alexandrina Victoria, daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent (brother of King William IV), and Victoria of Saxe-Coburg.1837 On June 20, Victoria, aged 18, inherits the throne of the United Kingdom on the death of William IV, without heirs, and is crowned a year later.1840 Victoria married her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg on February 10, at St. James's Palace. They had nine children (four boys and five girls).1861 Albert died on December 14. The queen mourned until the end of her life and withdrew from public life for several years.1868-1894 The Conservative Disraeli and the Liberal Gladstone alternate in government. The queen gets on well with Disraeli, but hates Gladstone.1877 The 1 st January, at the initiative of Disraeli, Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India during the great Durbar of Delhi.1901 Victoria dies on January 22. His reign was the longest in English history, now surpassed by that of Elizabeth II. “Bertie”, the dissolute son Some called him the “gentleman of Europe”, but the writer Henry James called him “fat, vulgar and ugly”. A judgment that Victoria and Albert were to share on their heir… Because Albert Edward, nicknamed Bertie, having had to wait 60 years to reign, contented himself with leading a dissolute and idle life during all these years. His mistresses and his vices scandalized his parents, who were however partly responsible for them, not having deemed it useful to give him the education due to a prince. To everyone's surprise, this bon vivant began a period of astonishing (and brief) splendor when he inherited the throne in 1901:the Edwardian era. We owe him the Prince of Wales fabric and the Panama hats. Balmoral:Scottish Lands "Everything breathed peace and freedom" in Balmoral, notes the queen in her diary. If the Scottish castle has always been the favorite refuge of the British monarchy, the relationship that Victoria has with it is particularly intimate. It is not she who chooses him, but Prince Albert, in love with the Highlands, these Scottish highlands that remind him of his native Germany. Personal property of the monarchy, Balmoral becomes the love nest of Victoria and Albert, but its importance is due to other reasons. It was from the castle that the Scottish fashion was launched, which invaded Great Britain in the 19 th century:the train transports tourists to Scotland, Walter Scott makes the country known through his novels, Prince Albert himself draws a tartan (checkered fabric), and Queen Victoria does not hesitate to take a bottle of whiskey, the local specialty, when she goes on a trip. Diana, the Princess of Wales who died in 1997, did not like this castle, which she found boring. But the current royal family appreciates this place, which is ideal for hunting parties, outdoor meals and horseback riding.
