Royal biography
BORN:24 May 1819, Kensington Palace, London.
PARENTS; Edward, Duke of Kent and Victoria of Saxe-Coburg.
ASCENDED THE THRONE;20 June 1837.
CROWNED;28 June 1838, Wesminster Abbey.
AUTHORITY;Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India(from May 1 1876).
MARRIED;Albert, son of Duke of Saxe-Coburg.
CHOLDREN;4 sons
DIED;22 January 1901, Osborne, Isle of White
BURIED;Frogmore, Winsdor.
Queen Victoria was the longest reigning of the British monarchs, coming to the throne at the age of eighteen. She was the daughter of the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George the third and of Princess Victoria Leiningen of Saxe-Coburg. It seemed likely from her earliest years that she would one day inherit the throne, and so was carefully brought up, under the care of a Hanoverian governess,Fraulein Louise Lehzen.
The two major influences in her first years as Queen were her uncle, Prince Leopold, and Lord Melbourne, her first Prime Minister. Both were sophisticated men of the world and politically wise. Their example and her own strong will formed the character of the later Queen. Her first tussle with the established order accured in May 1839 when Melbourne resigned, to be succeeded by the TorySir Robert Peel. The new Prime Minister insisted that the ladies of the Queen’s Bedchamber should all be Tories, like the new government. The Queen refused to dissmiss the Whig women in her household and the affair quikly became a crisis, leading to vote in Parliament that Peel lost. Melbourne took up the prime ministership again.
By the autumn of 1839, a much more important influence on Victoria had been brought into her life by her mother and Uncle Leopold,both intent in marrying off the young Queen suitably. Their candidate for the role of royal consort was a relative, Prince Albert of the small German principality of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert was handsome, intelligent and well educated, and Victoria was immediatly attracted. They were married in the