The Messed Up Truth About Queen Victoria

being Queen Victoria was a pretty sweet deal considering all her wealth palaces and devoted subjects but he scratched beneath the surface that isn't often covered in the movies and TV shows about her you'll find plenty of calamity and controversy every family has a black sheep like a slightly racist uncle but what if you were related to the most notorious serial killer of all time well there's actually a theory that Victoria's grandson Prince Albert Victor was Jack the Ripper Eddie as he was affectionately known was rumoured to have contracted syphilis from a prostitute in the West Indies living in an age before penicillin was a bad time to be sexually irresponsible as STDs were rife and there was no easy cure the theory goes that as the syphilis began to rot Eddie's brain he took his revenge by killing ladies of the night in London's East End another theory suggests that he secretly impregnated and married a common Catholic girl from Whitechapel who was friends with Jack the Ripper's victims apparently in order to stop the scandal and silence everyone who knew about it an agent of the royal family started slaying anyone who knew Victoria's physician William gull was rumored to have carried out the dark deeds the theory is also the basis for Alan Moore's graphic novel from Hell which was adapted into a film starring Johnny Depp there was little love for Queen Victoria on the Emerald Isle during her rule Ireland suffered through the great hunger the darkest and most despair riddled seven years in the country's history this fierce and unforgiving famine resulted in the deaths of 1 million men women and children and caused 1 million more to forsake their native country and emigrate to distant shores Victoria made a token gesture of donating two thousand pounds to aid victims of the famine but it did more harm than good as royal protocol dictated that no one could appear more generous than the Queen when the Sultan of Turkey offered ten thousand pounds he was told to reduce it to below two thousand as to not offend her majesty according to historian christine connealy there is no evidence that victoria had any real compassion for the irish people in any way in her very long range she only visited Ireland four times and one of those times was 1849 when famine was still raging but coming to an end Victoria's reputation was eventually so infamous in Ireland that she came to be known by the nickname the famine queen you can't kill an idea and apparently you can't kill Queen Victoria either despite a staggering eight assassination attempts on her life she had a lot of hearts and a survivor soul what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and the assassination plots actually boosted her popularity the public loves an underdog in Victoria herself took a philosophical view on the people who wanted to do her in even once saying it is worth being shot at to see how much one is loved her assassins were a mixed bunch of desperados who probably thought killing the monarch would land them in the history books instead they failed and have all been consigned to obscurity the only assassin who came close to harming a hair on her head was a former soldier named Robert Bates he whacked the Queen over the head with an iron tipped cane that left her bruised and battered but still very much alive and kicking she made a point of appearing in public two hours later because when you're a royal the show must go on hate was sentenced to seven years in Tasmania's penal colony the other would-be assassins were either exiled imprisoned are carted off to the asylum at Her Majesty's pleasure Victoria had an Indian servant named Abdul whom she treated like an exotic pet you can't take a Muslim to Florence I can take a Muslim wherever I like some royal lovers use her relationship with Abdul to justify what a progressive monarch she was but that's questionable at best although she was called Empress of India she never set foot in the country you should go there I can never go there I am forbidden forbidden they said I would be assassinated Victoria regarded India as a remote and exotic place but also one that had to be ruled by the British at its peak the Empire included over 13 million square miles of territory and a quarter of the world's population but Britain's policy of colonialism did untold damage Abdul's fellow countrymen and women suffered terribly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries an estimated 12 to 30 million Indians died from starvation while Britain benefited immensely from wondering India of all its lutes in general British imperialism led to widespread poverty famine and genocide while Victoria had no say in government policy she was the figurehead as the British Empire thrived and the inhabitants of the countries it occupied very much did not as a child Victoria was forced to adhere to the Kensington system which was devised by her mother's royal adviser John Conroy it fostered complete dependence upon her mother kept interactions with other children to a minimum and isolated her from the world it also forced Victoria to hold someone's hand every time she climbed the stairs and she was made to share a bedroom with her mother until she became Queen she grew up to loathe this repressive system and her mother forgiving at the green light alas the rot had already set in as her difficult upbringing had a detrimental effect on a relationship with her own children she could be fiercely critical and have an acid tongue she even blamed her son birdie for Prince Albert's death which she believed was caused by typhoid fever he contracted while visiting his troublesome son in Cambridge to give him a stern talking-to in general she didn't think very highly of babies are pregnancy either she branded it the shadow side of marital life and once wrote an ugly baby is a very nasty object and the prettiest is frightful when undressed mother earth she was not although doctors have since suggested that this mother of 9 suffered from postpartum depression before Prince Andrew made tabloid headlines around the world there was Edward the seventh the Playboy came known as birdie he set a new Royal standard in Affairs drinking and gambling bathing and champagne was one of his preferred pastimes in just the tip of the iceberg being born in such a repressive society may have instilled in birdie a need to rebel but more likely an indulgent yet distant mother led him to behaving like a hell raising and party loving rockstar before the likes of Led Zeppelin had even strummed a single court birdie once remarked I don't mind praying to the Eternal Father but I must be the only man in the country afflicted with an eternal mother like most people who act out there was probably a little lost child inside him looking for the attention that his never gave him ha button to rub salt into an already raging wound Bertie had to wait 60 long years before he got to step up to the throne and wear the crown that had to hurt sadly for birdie his reign was rather short-lived compared to his mother's epic 63 year stint after 9 years three months and 12 days of rule he died of pneumonia in 1910 Victoria was the first carrier of what was once referred to as the royal curse today it is known as hemophilia but in Victoria's time the blood clotting disorder was an unknown factor all doctors knew was that Victoria and many of her descendants had inherited the curse that could lead to excessive bleeding and even death she was afflicted with a very rare strain of haemophilia caused by a spontaneous mutation of the X chromosome since females possessed two X chromosomes and males possess X Y chromosomes the disease is passed on by females who manifest no symptoms to male descendants who do her son Prince Leopold was the first Victoria's line to inherit the curse Leopold was a sickly child and Victoria fretted about him constantly her worry was justified after suffering a fits and hitting his head in the South of France in 1884 he died the following morning from a cerebral hemorrhage he was just thirty before his untimely death Leopold fathered two children his son was unaffected by the curse while his daughter Princess Alice of Albany became a carrier she in turn passed it on to her son Rupert Alexander George of Teck who would die from a hemorrhage caused by a car crash through two of Queen Victoria's daughters Princess Alice and Beatrice the curse spread into many of Europe's royal dynasties Victorian London was soaked in opium the sailors who made their home in the East End had been smoking it recreationally for years opium dens became favored by aristocrats looking to forget reality ruling over all this chemical chaos was Victoria who is no stranger to mind-altering substances she was rumored to use opium tinctures and once chewed cocaine laced gum with a young Winston Churchill but all of that was legal where she shocked society was when she insisted on inhaling chloroform for 53 minutes from a handkerchief when she was in labor with her eighth child according to the New York Times she described it as blessed chloroform soothing quieting and delightful beyond measure Victoria's use of the drug went against medical advice doctors believe that pain relief during birth was dangerous and would interfere with child labor but with nine children Victoria had plenty of first-hand experience giving birth and she had no time for such theoretical nonsense for men as a result her stubbornness helped pioneer the use of pain relief during pregnancy after the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861 Victoria basically stopped wearing colors for 40 long years until her death in 1901 she presented herself to the world in 50 shades of black the Victorians could be inherently more gothic than the cures Robert Smith on a bad hangover they tended to romanticize horrific things like tuberculosis looking like you were at death's door was off at all the rage so society tried to be pale frail and morbid by committing herself to wearing nothing but black Victoria provided the nation with a cast-iron template on how to be a diva of despair such was her Gothic greatness that you could quite barely call Queen Victoria the patron saint of God but strangely enough white wedding gowns are actually her greatest tutorial legacy as a 20 year old blushing bride she started the fad for white weddings and single-handedly influenced nearly two centuries of what women wear when getting hitched Billy Idol clearly owes her some royalties no pun intended after getting hitched Victoria and Albert went at it like bunny rabbits although Victorian society was deeply repressed in straight-laced Victoria loved a good time in the bedroom as evidenced by her nine pregnancies historians have often pegged her for having a rampant libido it's even been suggested she was an insatiable predator who devoured her poor husband yet such depictions were purely the product of 19th century thought that branded female desire is pathological women who expressed the merest curiosity and physical intimacy were considered brazen nymphomaniacs with mental health disorders Victoria's passionate delight in expressing her love for her husband was countercultural it was also quite touching and by today's standards strangely quaint a note from her diary the day after her wedding night reads I never never spent such an evening my dearest dear Albert said on a footstool by my side and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before he clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again Oh this was the happiest day of my life if you're in the love notes surely that's enough to get you hot and bothered check out one of our newest videos right here plus even more grunge videos about your favorite stuff are coming soon subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one [Music] 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Id: QenbKETAEWo

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020