queen victoria

Desperate to help the grieving queen, the royal physician suggested that she go horseback riding to improve her health. He sent for the groom from the queens stables in Scotland. John Brown arrived in early 1865.The handsome thirtynine year old sported a kilt and had a straightforward, somewhat rough way of talking with the queen. She responded well to him and began venturing out in public for the first time in years. Although it was clear that the queen was in better spirits since Browns arrival, he was unpopular with both the queens family and the public. Rumors abounded that the two were having an affair, but no proof has ever been found to support that notion.John Brown remained the queens servant until 1883, when he died of a streptococcal infection.

Over the years, Queen Victoria regained her popularity by making more of an effort to attend public functions and by becoming involved in charitable causes. She kept close contact with an everchanging roster of prime ministers, always ready with an opinion on the issues of the day.The queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, marking sixty years as monarch. She was proud of the many jubilee biographies that were written about her, several of which described her as a virtuous woman who set a good example.

Queen Victoria, the only child of George IIIs fourth son, Edward, and sister of Leopold, king of the Belgians, was queen of Great Britain for 63 yearslonger than any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history. Victorias reign saw great cultural expansion and advances in industry, science, communications, and the building of railways and the London Underground. She died in England in 1901.

Queen Victoria, who served as queen of Great Britain from 1837 until her death in 1901, and as empress of India from 1876, was born Alexandrina Victoria on May 24, 1819, in London, England. Victoria was the only child of George IIIs fourth son, Edward, and Victoria Maria Louisa of SaxeCoburg, sister of Leopold, king of the Belgians.Taught by Lord Melbourne, her first prime minister, at a young age, Victoria had a clear grasp of both constitutional principles and the scope of her own prerogative, which she resolutely exercised in 1839 by setting aside the precedent which decreed dismissal of the current ladies of the bedchamber, thus causing Peel not to take up office as prime minister. In 1840, she married Prince Albert of SaxeCoburg and Gotha. The would have four sons and five daughters together.

Strongly influenced by her husband, with whom she worked in closest harmony, after his death in 1861, Victoria went into lengthy seclusion. She neglected many duties, which brought her unpopularity and motivated a republican movement. But with her recognition as empress of India, and the celebratory golden (1887) and diamond (1897) jubilees, she rose high in her subjects favor, and increased the prestige of the monarchy.Victoria had strong preferences for certain prime ministers (notably Melbourne and Disraeli) over others (notably Peel and Gladstone), but, following the advice of Albert, did not press these beyond the bounds of constitutional propriety. At various points in her reign, she exercised some influence over foreign affairs, and the marriages of her children had important diplomatic and dynastic implications in Europe.

Queen Victorias reignthe longest in English historysaw advances in industry, science (Charles Darwins theory of evolution), communications (the telegraph, popular press) and other forms of technology; the building of railways and the London Underground, sewers, and power distribution networks; the construction of bridges and other engineering feats; a vast number of inventions; a greatly expanded empire; unequal growth of wealth, with class differences to the fore; tremendous poverty; increase in urban populations, with the growth of great cities like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham; increased literacy; and great civic works, often funded by industrial philanthropists.

When Alexandrina Victoria was born in Kensington Palace on May 24, 1819, there seemed little chance that she would ever succeed as the ruling monarch of Great Britain and Ireland eighteen years later. Her father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, was the fourth son of the reigning King George III. He was one of the less inspiring figures of the populous royal familya man of somewhat middleclass sensibilities who had been discharged from the army for brutal behavior, accrued large debts, and lived for many years with a French singer before marrying Victorias mother. King George had other sons who would succeed himthe future George IV and William IVand it was generally assumed that at least one of them would eventually sire a legitimate male heir to the throne.

Victorias mother was Victoire of SaxeCoburg, Princess of Leiningen, a small German principality. The sister of Prince Leopold of SaxeCoburg and widow of Prince Emich Charles of Leiningen, she married Prince Edward with hopes of providing him with a son. However, Drina, as young Victoria was called, was their only child (Princess Victoire had two other daughters by her first marriage, Charles and Feodora). Edward died in January 1820 of pneumonia, the same year that his father King George III passed away.

While her uncle King George IV reigned over Great Britain and Ireland, Victoria lived a quiet, secluded childhood in Kensington Palace with her mother and a largely Germanspeaking household. German was Victorias first language, though she soon mastered English. Not expected ever to reign as monarch, her upbringing was left largely to her mother, who saw to it that her daughter received a liberal education in music, drawing, natural philosophy, history, and foreign languages. A German governess named Louise Lehzen, who sparked the future queens lifelong interest in reading history, tutored Victoria. Young Victoria showed exceptional talent with French and Italian as well as with her drawing and singing lessons.

Queen Victorias outspoken nature and imposing reputation belied her tiny stature the monarch was no more than five feet tall. In her later years, she also grew to an impressive girth. Some accounts claim she had a 50inch waist by the end of her life, a conclusion supported by the impressive size of a nightgown and pair of bloomers (underwear) belonging to Victoria that were auctioned off in 2009.

Victoria first met her future husband, Prince Albert of SaxeCoburgGotha, when she was 16. He was her first cousin, the son of her mothers brother; their mutual uncle, the ambitious Leopold, engineered the meeting with the idea that the two should marry. Victoria enjoyed Alberts company from the beginning, and with Leopolds encouragement she proposed to Albert (as she was the queen, he could not propose to her) on October 15, 1839, five days after he arrived at Windsor on a trip to the English court. They were married the following year. Their marriage was passionate she wrote in her diary that Without him everything loses its interest and produced nine children. On the other hand, Victoria was notoriously disenchanted by pregnancy and childbirth, calling it the shadowside of marriage.

Victoria was the only child of Edward, duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III. Her father died of pneumonia in 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, and she was raised primarily at Kensington Palace, where she lived with her mother, the Germanborn Victoria SaxeSaalfieldCoburg, duchess of Kent. Third in line for the throne (after the duke of York, who died in 1827, and the duke of Clarence, third son of George III, who would become William IV), the future queen became estranged from her mother, who was driven by the influence of her advisor Sir John Conroy to isolate the young Victoria from her contemporaries as well as her fathers family. Instead, Victoria relied on the counsel of her beloved uncle Leopold, as well as her governess Louise (afterward the Baroness) Lehzen, a native of Coburg. When she became queen and moved to Buckingham Palace, Victoria exiled her mother to a distant set of apartments and fired Conroy. After Alberts untimely death from typhoid fever in 1861, Victoria descended into depression, and even after her recovery she would remain in mourning for the rest of her life.

Hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder caused by a mutation on the X chromosome, can be passed along the maternal line within families; men are more likely to develop it, while women are usually carriers. Sufferers can bleed excessively, since their blood does not properly coagulate, leading to extreme pain and even death. Victorias son Leopold, Duke of Albany, died from blood loss after he slipped and fell; her grandson Friedrich bled to death at age 2, while two other grandsons, Leopold and Maurice, died of the affliction in their early 30s. As Victorias descendants married into royal families throughout the Europe, the disease spread from Britain to the nobility of ?Germany, Russia and ?Spain. Recent research involving DNA analysis on the bones of the last Russian royal family, the Romanovs (who were executed in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution) revealed that Victorias descendants suffered from a subtype of the disorder, hemophilia B, which is far less common than hemophilia A and now appears to be extinct in the European royal lines.