They are celebrated as one of history’s greatest love stories, but what was the truth behind this passionate relationship?
The marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert is one of the most famous and romantic in royal history. Their names are entwined in the public consciousness, and the story of Victoria’s untouchable grief following the death of her husband is one that has been told in literature, film and television for years.
Victoria and Albert were just two years old when his grandmother first mooted the idea of wedding the two cousins. Although it was a little too early to get the ball rolling just then, it was a plan that never really went away. As Victoria drew ever closer to the British throne, she became a more and more attractive marital prospect and by 1836, their uncle, Leopold, King of the Belgians, was giving the idea of a marriage between the youngsters some serious thought. Britain commanded a huge amount of global power at the time and since Leopold was the brother of Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, and Albert’s father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, it was the perfect way to keep that power in the family and ensure that there were no unexpected marital surprises.
Leopold couldn’t imagine any reason for the various interested parties to dislike his scheme, but he hadn’t considered King William IV, who loathed the ambitious Duchess of Kent. When Leopold prevailed upon her to invite their brother, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, to England and bring his two sons along, William knew that marriage plans were afoot.
The aging king, however, had ideas of his own. He didn’t want Victoria to marry into the House of Coburg and had hopes of making a match between his niece and Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, but Alexander’s scant desires were dashed as soon as Victoria laid eyes on Albert in 1836. She was blown away by his good looks while Alexander, she decided, wasn’t her type at all. Measured against Albert with his blue eyes and well-proportioned features, Alexander was forgettably plain.
From Victoria’s journal entry for the day she met Albert, it is clear she was quite smitten: “Albert […] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose, and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful; c’est a la fois [it is at the same time] full of goodness and sweetness, and very clever and intelligent.”
Although no formal engagement took place following the visit of the Coburg party, the meeting was such a roaring success that the Duchess of Kent and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha were certain that their children would one day be married. King Leopold couldn’t have been happier.
When Victoria became queen in 1837 she knew that the question of a husband was one that would soon have to be settled, but she was determined to take her time and settle into her new role before she took on another daunting project such as marriage. She did make enquiries about Albert’s understanding of what it meant to be consort to a queen, ensuring that he was prepared for the role and ready and willing to perform it. By the time Albert returned to Great Britain in October 1839 to visit Victoria, the matter of matrimony was all that was on their minds.
On 15 October 1839, five days after Albert arrived in Windsor, Queen Victoria proposed to him and, of course, he accepted. The forthcoming marriage was announced to the Privy Council the following month, and Albert was duly naturalised by an Act of Parliament and awarded the title of Royal Highness. Once all the necessary boxes had been ticked, Victoria and Albert’s wedding took place on 10 February 1840 at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace.
From the start this was a love match and Victoria and Albert’s wedding night wasn’t spent unhappily, like some of their predecessors’, but in each other’s arms. Victoria was taken ill in the evening but by nightfall was recovered, and she and Albert spent their first night as husband and wife in some pretty rapturous embraces!
Victoria had already effectively banished her mother to a distant corner of Buckingham Palace and when the queen married Albert, it signalled the final act of her transition from a sheltered girl into a confident monarch. Melbourne had been a father figure and Victoria’s closest political advisor, preparing her for the throne, but Albert now took that vital position and for the rest of his life, no one would be closer to the queen than he.
“She was determined to take her time and settle into her new role before taking on another daunting project such as marriage”
Although Victoria had no doubts that Albert was the man she wanted, the public weren’t quite so convinced. They wondered at his background and thought that he had cynically wormed his way into the bed and heart of their young sovereign. It was an opinion that some Members of Parliament shared, and prime minister Lord Melbourne, one of Victoria’s most trusted advisors, advised her against giving her new spouse the title of King Consort, worrying that it would stoke up existing anti- German emotions. Instead he was titled as Prince Albert until 1857, when he was granted the official title of Prince Consort.
As Albert encountered suspicions from the public and Lord Melbourne advised Victoria to tread carefully, Parliament also objected to any suggestion that Albert be granted a peerage, fearing that he might try to involve himself in political decisions if he had a seat in the House of Lords. But Albert didn’t care about British titles and believed that he, as a duke of Saxony, outranked even the royal dukes of the United Kingdom. Any peerage that Parliament could grant him would only be a demotion, he decided, so it was better to have none at all. In case there could be any doubt as to how unwelcome he was, when Parliament granted Albert an annuity it was for £30,000 – £20,000 less than his predecessors.
Albert arrived in a household that was already run like the proverbial well-oiled machine. Though happy in his marriage he wanted to feel useful, and in keeping with his gender and the era, he believed that a man should be the master of his own house – even a man who was wed to a queen. Yet the royal household already had a mistress and that was Baroness Lehzen, Victoria’s lifelong confidante. Albert and the baroness disagreed from the off. She dug in her heels and refused to budge, and the more she did, the more determined he became to unseat her. It was a clash of personalities and ambition that could only end in one way. With Victoria devoted to her prince and determined to be the most dutiful wife a husband could hope for, Baroness Lehzen’s days were numbered.
When Victoria fell pregnant within weeks of the wedding, there could be no question of Albert’s place in her life. Though he had no formal political duties, he took an interest in politics and was a sounding board for his wife as his public profile increased. He won the hearts of his wife’s subjects in the summer of 1840 when Edward
Oxford took a shot at Victoria. Albert responded with courage and a clear head, leading to admiring headlines as the country finally began to share the queen’s love for her spouse. Soon after the attempt on Victoria’s life, Parliament passed the Regency Act of 1840, which named Albert as regent should the monarch die before the next heir to the throne reached the age of majority. The public welcomed the move, finally believing that the queen’s husband was the best man for the job.
Albert and Victoria’s home life was serene and when the ousted Lehzen eventually left England to return home to Germany, Albert was finally able to feel like master of his house. It was a role that Victoria delightedly allowed him to assume. Kept busy with her duties as queen, she was happy for Albert to manage the affairs and education of their nine children and he did so with gusto, following the educational model that had served him so well. Though it didn’t suit all of their children, remarkably all nine of the royal offspring reached adulthood. In Victorian Britain this was quite a feat and some credit for this must go to the Prince Consort, a modern and highly engaged father who kept a close eye on the wellbeing of his children.
Even when Victoria was pregnant with her many children, she never shirked her royal responsibilities, and the importance of her husband’s support at home can’t be overstated. Albert relieved her of the burden of domesticity on top of duty, running the household and proving to be a careful and trustworthy household manager. Though their public face was one of the model of Victorian respectability, in private that relationship was far more intimate and relaxed.
Both at their Isle of Wight hideaway, Osborne House, and their beloved Scottish retreat at Balmoral, Victoria and Albert lived in a manner that would have been recognisable to most middleand upper-class Victorians. What made their relationship unique, however, was the reversed power dynamic. Though Albert had public duties and political interests, it was his wife who held the balance of power to the outside world. At home, of course, things were different. Albert was master of the house as he had wished to be, and his busy but loving wife was perfectly happy to let him take that particular responsibility.
At home Albert was Queen Victoria’s rock, and though much has been written of his strict education regime, there’s little doubt that the royal family was a happy one. The children were used to the continued presence of their father both as teacher and playmate, and he was able to bridge the gap between the incredibly busy queen and her offspring, ensuring continuity for both. It’s little that Victoria felt Albert’s absence so deeply when he died in 1861. Over the long years of her life she would never truly recover from his death, lamenting the loss not only of her husband, but her best and most precious friend.
“Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on Earth” – Prince Albert, in a letter to Victoria shortly after the couple were engaged