Queen Victoria reigned over Great Britain
for 63 years, and she is remembered as being one of the most influential monarchs in history. When it comes to the life of Queen Victoria,
biographers are actually very lucky, because she wrote journals and letters documenting
her daily life from the time she was a teenage girl all the way up to her death. So we know exactly what she was experiencing,
in her own words. However, when she was close to death, she
asked her daughter Beatrice to edit and rewrite many of her journals, and destroyed much of
the original text that might offend members of her family. After the Queen’s death, her children took
it upon themselves to burn certain chunks of her life that were embarrassed of. Because of that, we have the image of her
that her children wanted us to see: A woman who was known as the “Widow of Windsor”
and spent her entire life mourning the death of her husband, Albert. But her life was far more interesting that
she is often given credit for. A Princess in Training
Victoria’s grandfather was George III, who was the reigning King of England during her
youth. Her father was Prince Edward, the Duke of
Kent, and her mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was born in Germany before she became the
Duchess of Kent. Prince Edward would have become the next king,
but he died when Victoria was young, leaving her to be the only legitimate heir to the
throne. Victoria grew up knowing that one day, she
would become the next Queen of England. At the time, women were never trusted with
their own finances. To make matters worse, the Duchess of Kent
only spoke German, but she was expected to raise an English queen. So a man named John Conroy was appointed as
the comptroller over the lives of Victoria and her mother. Conroy took his duty much further than being
just an accountant. He was an opportunist who saw this as a chance
to have a powerful position in the government, and pushed for control over the way Victoria
was raised. In a lot of ways, he became almost like a
talent agent for a child star. From an outsider’s perspective, it would
seem that young Victoria had the perfect life. She was raised in a beautiful home of Kensington
Palace with toys, clothes, servants, and vacations abroad. But in her journals, Victoria often wrote
that she had a very unhappy childhood. Together with her mother, Conroy created strict
rules known as the “Kensington System”. The main goal of its design was to make Victoria
weak and completely incapable of doing anything on her own. She was always in the company of a chaperone
wherever she went. Instead of going to school, she had a governess
to tutor her, and she was never allowed to play with other children. This was an extremely lonely life, and she
desperately wanted to make friends. Conroy and Victoria’s mother hoped that
if they broke the princess down enough, they could turn her into a puppet that was easy
to control. As a teenager, Conroy arranged for a tour
on a train so that Victoria could see every major city in the UK. She was forced to try to memorize every single
person’s name and title at each dinner party. Considering that these parties were massive,
he had given her a task that was guaranteed to fail. Conroy would reprimand her, saying that she
was too stupid to be queen. Needless to say, the demands put upon her
made Victoria, and the constant onslaught of insults made her completely miserable. In 1835, she was visiting the town of Ramsgate,
and she became very ill with typhoid fever. Conroy accused her of being lazy, and a liar. He said that she was faking her illness, in
order to get out of the tour. But she truly was sick, and she was lying
in bed in a hotel. John Conroy burst into the hotel room with
a paper in his hand. He said that she would be a horrible queen,
and demanded that she sign away her power over to him so that he could be her personal
secretary. This would have made him King by proxy, because
he would have absolutely power over all of her affairs. She was just 16 years old at the time, and
spent her entire life being broken down to feel worthless. But she still had the strength to say “no”. When she was 18, Victoria was woken up in
the middle of the night by her mother, and she learned that her grandfather was dead. She came downstairs to find the Archbishop
of Canterbury kneeling in front of her. And just like that, she was the new Queen
of Great Britain. Becoming the Queen
On the day of Queen Victoria’s coronation, the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne was so
moved by the beauty of the ceremony, he had tears in his eyes. He congratulated her, and told her that she
was going to do a wonderful job. He looked at her with fatherly pride, which
was something that she had never experienced before in her life. Victoria knew that she could trust him. The Prime Minister became her new father figure,
and her very first friend. They would spend loads of time together doing
jigsaw puzzles, and taking long walks. She often wrote that his sense of humor was
her favorite quality about him, and how often he would make her laugh. But in public, she was forced to put on a
serious face. After becoming Queen, Victoria moved into
Buckingham Palace, and she decided to never speak to her mother or Lord Conroy again. Their plans to control her had completely
backfired. She hated the both of them, and was glad to
finally have her independence. But that didn’t stop Lord Conroy from continuing
to try to slither his way back into power. He approached Lord Melbourne, claiming that
the Queen promised him a pension of 3,000 pounds per year, a title, land, and a seat
in court. Melbourne gave in to Conroy’s demands. After hearing about his lies, Victoria dismissed
Lord Conroy, but he continued to work for the Duchess of Kent, while they plotted their
next move. When Lord Melbourne’s time as Prime Minister
was over and he was voted out of office, Victoria was devastated. She wrote about it in her journals with so
much drama, it was as if he had died. Robert Peele became the next Prime Minister,
and he treated her like she was a stupid girl, just like John Conroy had. He was part of the Tory political party, so
he demanded that Victoria dismiss her ladies in waiting, because they were members of the
Whig Party. Victoria’s bedchamber maids were her dearest
friends, so she was outraged at the suggestion that she should fire them over politics. She flat-out refused to continue obey Peele’s
orders. After all, she was the Queen, so he really
had no right to make demands of her, anyway. Robert Peele was so frustrated that he could
not control her, that he actually resigned from being Prime Minister. This incident became known as the Bedchamber
Crisis. Life With Prince Albert
Even though Victoria’s mother and John Conroy were no longer on speaking terms with her,
they were still trying to give more power to the German part of the family. They instructed Prince Albert, her first cousin,
to court her, with the plot to get their family more control over the throne. Victoria had only met Albert once before,
and by the time they were both 20 years old, she was shocked at how handsome he had grown
up to be. She ran home to write in her journal how attractive
he was, and how her heart was pounding. Victoria had no idea that her mother had planned
this clandestine meeting with Albert, but they truly did fall in love with one another. She was head-over-heels in love, and as the
Queen, she was the one to ask Albert to marry her. In her diary, there are so many intimate details
about their honeymoon, it might as well be a romance novel. Victoria became pregnant just a month after
her wedding. She was in constant pain, and felt very hormonal,
as all pregnant women do. But she struggled with this, and was extremely
critical of herself. Falling into a serious depression, Victoria
would write in her diary about how guilty she felt every time she lost her temper. She would often write that her husband was
“perfect”, and she hated herself for being anything put sweet and loving towards him
at all times. Little did the Queen know that this was all
part of an extension of Conroy and the Duchess of Kent’s “Kensington Plan.” Albert’s German family instructed him to
keep getting her pregnant, so that she would remain weak, and never had time to truly learn
how to rule on her own. She wrote that pregnancy made her miserable,
but they had a total of 9 children together. Unfortunately, Victoria did not like her own
kids very much. Motherhood was not something she was ready
for, and she suffered from postpartum depression. For all of those years, she "lowness and a
tendency to cry... it is what every lady suffers with more or less and what I, during my first
confinements, suffered dreadfully with." Tragedy
In the year 1861, Queen Victoria’s mother died of cancer. Despite all of the drama that had gone on
between the two of them, she regretted not spending more time with her mother. She realized that John Conroy was the true
villain, and she regretted not taking action to repair their relationship sooner. That same year, her husband Albert died. She was 42 years old, and suddenly, the closest
people in her life were gone. After his death, she continued to sleep next
to a picture of him, and had the servants lay out his clothes on the bed in the morning,
even though he wouldn’t be there to get dressed. Whenever someone asked her to make a decision,
she would accidently say, “I'll have to ask Albert,” as if she forgotten, or was
in total denial that he was dead. Victoria already struggled with mental illness,
but these deaths in her life made it far worse. People whispered that she may have inherited
“Hanoverian Madness.” After all, there was so much inbreeding going
on in that part of her family, it shouldn’t be surprising that all of them were known
for being a bit nuts. She dressed in black at all times, and acted
completely melodramatic. She wrote her letters on paper with a black
border to signify that she was in mourning. Instead of staying in Buckingham Palace, she
went on long holidays in Germany. In her diary, she wrote that she wished she
could have had a normal life, and lived in Germany with Albert without having to be Queen. Everyone began to call her “The Widow of
Windsor.” For the rest of her life, Victoria wore black
every single day. She went on one of the longest periods of
mourning in history. People thought that this was tragically romantic,
so they became fascinated with death. Suddenly, it was fashionable to enjoy spooky
and creepy things, and this inspired so much amazing culture during the Victorian Era. Most people think that this is where her story
ends, and that she remained a very serious and sad woman for the rest of her days. But the reality is that she was able to heal,
and learned to love her life again. Moving On
After returning to the United Kingdom, Victoria met a Scottish man named John Brown when she
was 45 years old. Brown had been Prince Albert’s assistant
whenever he visited Scotland, so he was there to pay his respects. Instead of seeing her as just the Queen, he
could see that Victoria was incredibly lonely woman, and all she really needed in her life
was a friend. The two of them would get into long conversations,
where she poured out all of the feelings she had kept secret, or in her diaries for so
long. Brown had a lot of sympathy for her, and became
devoted to serving her. He swore that he would never leave her side,
and take care of her every need. The greatest gift John Brown gave her was
his personality. He was loud, rude, and almost always drunk. He would drink whiskey, and slipping some
into Victoria's drinks saying, “don't stay thirsty”. No one had made Victoria laugh so much in
years, and she absolutely loved it. The two became best friends, and possibly
lovers. If Brown disagreed with something she did,
or if she was trying to stop her from making the wrong decisions, he would yell, “Woman,
what are ye doin?!” Onlookers were shocked at his level of disrespect,
but she actually enjoyed it very much. No one had ever dared to talk to her like
that, or treat her like a normal person. Her entire life, everyone treated her like
she was weak and stupid, but John Brown knew how smart and strong she truly was, so he
held her to a higher standard. Their friendship lifted her spirit out of
her depression, and she was the happiest she had been in a very long time. All her life, Victoria was writing in her
journals every single day, and she was an avid reader. She made a decision to do something that no
other monarch had never done before; become an author. Queen Victoria published a book called Leaves
From The Journal of Our Lives in the Highlands, which was full of excerpts from her own personal
journal about her friendship with John Brown, and how he changed her life. It became a bestseller, and sold over 100,000
copies. She even gave a dedication to John Brown's
muscular legs, which peeked out of his kilt. Her kids were embarrassed, but then again-
any kid would feel embarrassed if their mother wrote about those things, and then published
them. After her death, Victoria’s daughter, Beatrice
deleted all mention of John Brown when she was rewriting Victoria's journals, because
their relationship was considered to be a truly humiliating stain on the royal family. But of course, she could not erase him from
history. Queen Victoria had commissioned statues to
be made in John Brown’s honor. And plenty of people had witnessed them together
when he was alive. Victoria and John held hands and hugged one
another in public together, and of course, there was also the book she published about
their friendship. There is rumor that they were secretly lovers. Victoria made sure that they slept in conjoining
bedrooms, and her children called him “mama’s lover”. On his deathbed, the Queen’s personal chaplin,
Rev Norman Macleod, confessed that he married Queen Victoria and John Brown in a secret
ceremony. Years later, we would learn that he gave her
his mother’s engagement ring. Tragically, she outlived Brown, too, even
though he was several years younger than her. He died at age 56, so she lost yet another
man in her life that she truly loved. In 1997, a movie called Mrs. Brown was made
to dramatize their love story. Despite the evidence, there are still historians
who refuse to believe that Queen Victoria would marry a commoner like John Brown. And, if she had, they think she would have
been brave enough to let the world know, instead of keeping it a secret. Unfortunately, we will never know all of the
details, because they have been lost forever. The Later Years
As we mentioned before, Queen Victoria was incapable of running a government on her own,
and she was known for being a bit off her rocker. The decisions she made were usually based
on her personal preferences, rather than politics. Prime Minister Gladstone was very serious,
and didn’t have any sense of humor at all. So, of course, Victoria hated him. They would write nasty letters back and forth
to one another, even though they both lived in Buckingham Palace, and could have easily
spoken to one another face-to-face. The next Prime Minister Disraeli had a much
better sense of humor, and treated her with respect. He would compliment her, and treat her like
the royal she was. Disraeli lovingly called her “the fairy
queen”, and gave her the title “Empress of India.” Queen Victoria had never been to India her
entire life, but after being given this title, she set out to learn as much about the country
as she possibly could. She hired a tutor named Abdul Karim so that
she could learn to speak the Indian language Hindustani. In her notebooks, she took notes every time
asked him how to say flirtatious or dirty things. Karim became her new favorite servant, and
he was given the title of “The Munshi”, or “The Teacher”. Victoria allowed him to go with her everywhere,
even when she was on holiday. Compared to the loud and boisterous John Brown,
the people in Queen Victoria’s court were actually very relieved that her new favorite
servant was at least soft-spoken and a real gentleman. They saw this as a huge improvement. However, Karim soon began to get showered
with gifts, and gained more and more privileges. Plenty of people were concerned that Victoria
was going to be taken advantage of, and that she was making poor decisions. After all, being a good tutor didn’t exactly
qualify Abdul Karim to become a hold any position of power. But the moment anyone questioned anything
to do with Karim, she would accuse them of being racist. Abdul Karim was always getting sick...It turns
out that he had Gonorrhea. But, of course, if the royal physician was
getting frustrated, Victoria pulled the race card once again. He came with her on vacation to the Riviera,
and the newspapers described him as a “servant”. She wrote a letter to the newspaper and, demanded
that they retract their last story and submit a correction. Abdul Karim was and educated gentleman, and
her “Indian secretary.” While she was incredibly eccentric, there
is no doubt that once anyone became Queen Victoria’s friend, she was fiercely loyal,
and made sure they lived their best life. Death, and Legacy
At 81 years old, Queen Victoria planned for her death, and when she had a hemorrhagic
stroke, they knew how to prepare for her funeral. Throughout her life, Queen Victoria had been
given precious jewels, but they meant nothing to her in those final days. She told her doctors what she wanted a number
of sentimental items in her coffin. First was Albert's dressing gown, which she
had in their bedroom all of those years. Next were the photos of the children, as well
as the locks of their hair that she had collected from their first haircuts. She requested to have a framed photograph
of John Brown in her hands, laying over her heart. On her finger, she wore an engagement ring
that once belonged to John Brown’s mother. Queen Victoria’s funeral took place on February
2nd, 1901. Despite it being in the middle of winter,
thousands of people showed up to mourn, and it became one of the largest funerals in history. She never lead the country through war, or
ever made any substantial improvements in politics, but people still loved her all the
same. So many Prime Ministers came and went during
Queen Victoria’s reign, but they have been all-but-forgotten. The monarch who reigns over England always
sets an example for their people. You could say that they were some of the first
true influencers. Everything they did caused a ripple effect
for the rest of in society, and Queen Victoria was no exception. In fact, her life was so colorful, that when
we think of the Victorian Era, we truly do get a very vivid image of the time period
in our minds. The clothes, style, and attitude of the people
were just like the Queen; serious on the outside, and wild on the inside. It’s deliciously romantic, and yet very
dark at the same time. In fact, that time period is still so popular
to this day. She will continue to be remembered as being
one of the most impactful figures in history.
