It’s not easy being queen. Nor,
for that matter, making a film about the not-so-long-ago queen of a nation
that’s very much connected to our own history. I became interested in Britain’s
Queen Victoria when I recently toured Kensington Palace. No, I wasn’t invited
to tea by Harry and Meghan. They do live in Kensington Palace, as do Prince
William, Kate, and their brood. (Clearly, it’s a very big palace.) But the
historic rooms of this London landmark have now been spruced up for tourists. I
learned a lot about the lavish apartments of George II—ladies were admitted to
inner-sanctum parties only if their dresses with sufficiently bouffant—and the far
more austere ones of William and Mary. But the chief attraction is the
childhood rooms of Queen Victoria, the centenary of whose birth is being
celebrated this year.
The word “Victorian” is such
a part of our language that we rarely stop to think about it. Queen Victoria,
in our minds, is a plump old woman in severe black widow’s weeds, forever
mourning the death of her consort decades before. We consider her prim to the
point of stodginess, burdening her descendants with an obsolete moral code. But,
as I learned at Kensington, Victoria was far more complicated than the dour
widow we associate with the era that bears her name. Her father, the younger
brother of King George IV, died when she was one year old. As her father’s
brothers all lacked legitimate heirs (though there were illegitimate offspring
aplenty), it quickly became clear that the young Victoria was in line to assume
the throne of England. Her mother, a German princess, in tandem with the
ambitious, domineering Sir John Conroy, kept her a virtual prisoner at
Kensington. She was not allowed playmates or much in the way of intellectual
stimulation; she shared a bedroom with her mother and -- when descending the
stairs of the palace -- was required (even into her teens) to hold the hand of
a lady-in-waiting. Sir John’s goal, if she were crowned before age eighteen,
was for her mother to be declared regent, with himself as the power behind the
throne.
Fortunately for English
history, the elderly and ailing George IV survived until after Victoria had
reached her eighteenth birthday. On June 20, 1837, she was awakened with the
news that she had become Queen. Finally able to make her wishes known, she
banished Conroy, freed herself from her mother’s grip, and started making her
own decisions. Naturally, various
factions tried to control her choice of a marriage partner. She was barely
eighteen, extremely sheltered, and seemed easy to manipulate. A German branch
of her family contrived to introduce her to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and
Gotha, and she was immediately smitten. Happily, so was he. They corresponded
for several years (she even sent him a fetching “secret portrait” of herself
with her hair undone and shoulders bare), but she had become savvy enough to
postpone matrimony until she was secure on the British throne. Finally she proposed
marriage—that’s what queens get to do—and by all accounts their relationship
was a constructive and loving one, producing nine children and some valuable
social programs.
A 2009 British film, The
Young Victoria, stars Emily Blunt as the headstrong and frankly sensuous
(and charming) queen. I watched it with pleasure, since it reproduced so much I
had learned at Kensington Palace. But IMDB lists multiple complaints of tiny
historical inaccuracies, like an incorrect placement of the Order of the
Garter. All those Anglophiles out there
should really get a life.
Painted for Albert's Eyes Only |