Victoria ( Alexandrina Victoria ; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901 ) was the Queen regnant of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837, and the first Empress of India of the British Raj from 1 May 1876, until her decease. At 63 old ages and 7 months, her reign as the Queen lasted longer than that of any other British sovereign, and is the longest of any female sovereign in history. Her reign is known as the Victorian epoch, and was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military advancement within the United Kingdom.
Victoria was of largely German descent ; she was the girl of the 4th boy of George III, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. Both the Duke of Kent and George III died a twelvemonth after her birth, and she inherited the throne at the age of 18 after her male parent ‘s three senior brothers died without lasting legitimate issue. She ascended the throne when the United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the male monarch or queen held comparatively few direct political powers and exercised influence by the premier curate ‘s advice ; but she became the iconic symbol of the state and imperium. She had rigorous criterions of personal morality. Her reign was marked by a great enlargement of the British Empire, which reached its zenith and became the foremost planetary power.
Her 9 kids and 42 grandchildren married into royal households across the continent, binding them together and gaining her the moniker “ the grandma of Europe ” . She was the last British sovereign of the House of Hanover ; her boy King Edward VII belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Heiress to the throne
Victoria was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. She was the lone kid of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and his married woman, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The Duke of Kent was the 4th boy of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III. Victoria was christened in private by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace. Her godparents were Emperor Alexander I of Russia ( for whom her uncle the Duke of York stood placeholder ) , her uncle the Prince Regent ( subsequently George IV ) , her aunt Queen Charlotte of Wurttemberg ( whose sister The Princess Augusta Sophia stood in placeholder ) and her maternal grandma the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld ( for whom Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, the infant princess ‘s aunt, stood placeholder ) . On the instructions of the Prince Regent, she was named Alexandrina, after Emperor Alexander I, and Victoria after her female parent.
The King ‘s three eldest boies, the Prince Regent, the Duke of York, and the Duke of Clarence ( subsequently William IV ) , had no lasting legitimate kids, which placed Victoria fifth in the line of sequence after her uncles and male parent. Her gramps and male parent died in 1820, and the Duke of York died in 1827. On the decease of her uncle George IV in 1830, she became heiress presumptive to her lasting uncle, William IV. Parliament passed the Regency Act 1830, to do particular proviso for a kid sovereign if William died while Victoria was still a minor. Victoria ‘s female parent, the Duchess of Kent, would move as exclusive Regent during the Queen ‘s minority, without a council to restrict her powers. [ 4 ] King William distrusted the Duchess ‘s capacity to be Regent, and declared in her presence that he wanted to populate until Victoria ‘s eighteenth birthday, so that a regency could be avoided. [ 5 ]
Victoria subsequently described her childhood as “ instead melancholic. “ [ 6 ] Victoria ‘s female parent was highly protective of the princess, who was raised mostly isolated from other kids under the so called “ Kensington System ” , an luxuriant set of regulations and protocols devised by the Duchess and her accountant, Sir John Conroy, who was rumoured to be the Duchess ‘s lover. [ 7 ] The system prevented the princess from run intoing people whom her female parent and Conroy deemed unwanted, and was designed to render her weak and utterly dependant upon them. [ 8 ] The Duchess was scandalised by the kept womans and bogus kids of her brothers-in-law, and the widespread public disdain for the royal household that resulted ; she taught her girl that she must avoid any intimation of sexual improperness, which has been proposed as holding prompted the outgrowth of Victorian morality. [ 9 ] Victoria studied with private coachs to a regular timetable ; her drama hours were exhausted with her dolls and her King Charles spaniel, Dash. [ 10 ] She was required to portion a sleeping room with her female parent every dark until she became queen. [ 9 ]
As a adolescent, Victoria resisted their menaces and rejected their efforts to do Conroy her personal secretary. Once queen, she instantly banned Conroy from her quarters ( though she could non take him from her female parent ‘s family ) and consigned her female parent to a distant corner of the castle, frequently declining to see her. [ 9 ]
By 1836, Victoria ‘s ambitious uncle, Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831, hoped to get married his niece to his nephew, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. [ 11 ] Her female parent, the Duchess of Kent, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was the sister of both Albert ‘s male parent ( the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ) and Leopold. Leopold arranged for his sister, Victoria ‘s female parent, to ask for the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and his two boies to see her in May 1836, with the intent of run intoing Victoria. William IV, nevertheless, disapproved of any lucifer with the Coburgs, and alternatively favoured the suit of Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, 2nd boy of the Prince of Orange. [ 12 ] Victoria was well-aware of the assorted marital programs and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. [ 11 ] Some writers have written that she ab initio found Albert to be instead dull, [ 13 ] nevertheless harmonizing to her journal, she enjoyed his company from the beginning. After the visit she wrote, “ [ Albert ] is highly fine-looking ; his hair is about the same coloring material as mine ; his eyes are big and bluish, and he has a beautiful olfactory organ and a really sweet oral cavity with all right dentitions ; but the appeal of his visage is his look, which is most delicious. “ [ 14 ] Alexander, on the other manus, was “ really apparent ” . [ 15 ]
Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold, whom Victoria considered her “ best and kindest advisor ” , [ 16 ] to thank him “ for the chance of great felicity you have contributed to give me, in the individual of beloved AlbertA … He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me absolutely happy. “ [ 17 ] However at 17, Victoria, though interested in Albert, was non yet ready to get married. Although the parties did non set about a formal battle, the Coburgs widely assumed that the lucifer would take topographic point
Early on reign
Accession
On 24 May 1837 Victoria turned 18, and a regency was avoided. On 20 June 1837, William IV died at the age of 71, and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom. In her diary she wrote, “ I was awoke at 6 o’clock by Mamma, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room ( merely in my dressing gown ) and entirely, and saw them. Lord Conyngham so acquainted me that my hapless Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 proceedingss by 2 this forenoon, and accordingly that I am Queen. “ [ 19 ] Drafts of all the official paperss ( announcement, curses of commitment, etc. ) prepared on the first twenty-four hours of her reign described her as Queen Alexandrina Victoria, but at her first Privy Council meeting she signed the registry as Victoria ; therefore, although she was expected to reign as Alexandrina Victoria, the first name was withdrawn at her ain want. [ 20 ] Her enthronement took topographic point on 28 June 1838, and she became the first sovereign to take up abode at Buckingham Palace. [ 21 ]
Under Salic jurisprudence, nevertheless, no adult female could be monarch of Hanover, a kingdom which had shared a sovereign with Britain since 1714. Hanover passed to her uncle, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, who became King Ernest Augustus I. ( He was the 5th boy and 8th kid of George III. ) As the immature queen was as yet single and childless, Ernest Augustus besides remained the inheritor presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom until Victoria ‘s first kid was born in 1840
At the clip of her accession, the authorities was controlled by the Whig Party. The Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, at one time became a powerful influence in the life of the politically inexperient Queen, who relied on him for advice-some even referred to Victoria as “ Mrs. Melbourne ” . [ 24 ] However, the Melbourne ministry would non remain in power for long ; it was turning unpopular and, furthermore, faced considerable trouble in regulating the British settlements, particularly during the Rebellions of 1837. In 1839, Lord Melbourne resigned after the Radicals and the Tories ( both of whom Victoria detested at that clip ) joined together to barricade a Bill before the House of Commons that would hold suspended the Constitution of Jamaica. [ 25 ]
The Queen so commissioned Sir Robert Peel, a Tory, to organize a new ministry, but was faced with a fiasco known as the Bedchamber Crisis. At the clip, it was customary for assignments to the Royal Household to be based on the backing system ( that is, for the Prime Minister to name members of the Royal Household on the footing of their party truenesss ) . Many of the Queen ‘s Ladies of the Bedchamber were married womans of Whigs, but Peel expected to replace them with married womans of Tories. Victoria strongly objected to the remotion of these ladies, whom she regarded as close friends instead than as members of a ceremonial establishment. Peel felt that he could non regulate under the limitations imposed by the Queen, and accordingly resigned his committee, leting Melbourne to return to office
Marriage
Though queen, as an single immature adult female Victoria was however required to populate with her female parent, with whom she was rather angry over the Kensington system. Victoria gave her female parent a distant flat in Buckingham Palace and normally refused to run into her. Lord Melbourne advised Victoria to get married in order to be free of her female parent. Her letters of the clip show involvement in Albert ‘s instruction for the future function he would hold to play as her hubby, although she resisted efforts to hotfoot her into matrimony. [ 26 ]
Victoria ‘s childhood governess, Baroness Lehzen from Hanover, had been a formative influence on Victoria, [ 27 ] and Lehzen continued to run Victoria ‘s family after she ascended the throne. Victoria ‘s stopping point relationship with Lehzen ended after the Queen married Prince Albert, who found Lehzen incompetent for her authorization in the family, to the point of endangering the safety and wellness of their first kid.
Though ab initio Victoria was rather popular, her repute suffered slightly in an 1839 tribunal machination when 1 of her female parent ‘s ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Hastings, developed an abdominal tumor that resulted in her decease in July 1839. Lady Flora at foremost refused to subject to a physical scrutiny by a physician, and her abdominal growing was widely rumoured to be an out-of-wedlock gestation by Sir John Conroy, who was long rumoured to be the lover of Victoria ‘s female parent. Victoria hated Conroy for his function in building the Kensington System that had rendered her childhood so unhappy, and believed the rumor. Lady Flora finally submitted to an scrutiny and was found to hold a terminal tumor. When she died several months subsequently, Conroy and Lady Flora ‘s brother organised a imperativeness run impeaching the Queen of distributing false and scandalous abuses about Lady Flora.
Victoria continued to praise Albert following his 2nd visit in October 1839 after she had become Queen, when she wrote of him: “ … beloved Albert… He is so reasonable, so sort, and so good, and so good-humored excessively. He has besides, the most pleasing and delicious outside and visual aspect you can perchance see. “ [ 13 ] Albert and Victoria felt common fondness and the Queen proposed to Albert merely five yearss after he had arrived at Windsor on 15 October 1839. [ 28 ]
The Queen and Prince Albert were married on 10A February 1840, in the Chapel Royal of St. James ‘s Palace, London. Albert became non merely the Queen ‘s comrade, but an of import political adviser, replacing Lord Melbourne as the dominant figure in the first half of her life following Melbourne ‘s decease. [ 29 ] Victoria ‘s female parent was evicted from the castle, and Victoria seldom visited her.
During Victoria ‘s first gestation, eighteen-year-old Edward Oxford attempted to assassinate the Queen while she was siting in a passenger car with Prince Albert in London. [ 30 ] Oxford fired twice, but both slugs missed. He was tried for high lese majesty, but was acquitted on the evidences of insanity. [ 31 ] The first of the royal twosome ‘s nine kids, named Victoria, was born on 21A November 1840
Further efforts to assassinate Queen Victoria occurred between May and July 1842. First, on 29A May at St. James ‘s Park, John Francis fired a handgun at the Queen while she was in a passenger car, [ 30 ] but was instantly seized by Police Constable William Trounce. Francis was convicted of high lese majesty. The decease sentence was commuted to transit for life. Then, on 3A July, merely yearss after Francis ‘s sentence was commuted, another male child, John William Bean, [ 30 ] attempted to hit the Queen. Prince Albert felt that the efforts were encouraged by Oxford ‘s acquittal in 1840. Although his gun was loaded merely with paper and baccy, his offense was still punishable by decease. Feeling that such a punishment would be excessively rough, Prince Albert encouraged Parliament to go through the Treason Act 1842. Under the new jurisprudence, an assault with a unsafe arm in the sovereign ‘s presence with the purpose of dismaying her was made punishable by seven old ages ‘ imprisonment and whipping. [ 33 ] Bean was therefore sentenced to 18 months ‘ imprisonment ; nevertheless, neither he, nor any individual who violated the act in the hereafter, was flogged. [ 34 ]
During the same summer as these two blackwash efforts, Victoria made her first journey by train, going from Slough railroad station ( near Windsor Castle ) to Bishop ‘s Bridge, near Paddington ( in London ) , on 13A June 1842 in the particular royal passenger car provided by the Great Western Railway. Attach toing her were her hubby and the applied scientist of the Great Western line, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Queen and the Prince Consort both complained the train was traveling excessively fast at 20A miles per hour ( 30 kilometers per hour ) , fearing the train would derail. [ 30 ]
Early Victorian political relations and foreign policy
Peel ‘s ministry shortly faced a crisis affecting the abrogation of the Corn Laws. Many Tories-by so known besides as Conservatives-were opposed to the abrogation, but some Tories ( the “ Peelites ” ) and most Whigs supported it. Peel resigned in 1846, after the abrogation narrowly passed, and was replaced by Lord John Russell. Russell ‘s ministry, though Whig, was non favoured by the Queen. Particularly violative to Victoria was the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who frequently acted without confer withing the Cabinet, the Prime Minister, or the Queen. [ 35 ]
In 1849, Victoria lodged a ailment with Lord John Russell, claiming that Palmerston had sent official despatchs to foreign leaders without her cognition. She repeated her expostulation in 1850, but to no help. It was merely in 1851 that Lord Palmerston was removed from office ; he had on that juncture announced the British authorities ‘s blessing for President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte ‘s putsch in France ( going Napoleon III ) without anterior audience of the Prime Minister
The Gallic nexus to Palmerstone ‘s autumn is important, in that Victoria took a acute involvement in then-improving dealingss between the two states, doing and hosting several visits and orchestrating several matrimonies between the British royal house and the house of Orleans. In 1843 and 1845, she and Albert stayed with king Louis Philippe I at his chateau d’Eu in Normandy and Louis made a return visit to Windsor Castle in 1844, though none of these three trips were official province visits. Napoleon III visited London in April 1855 and from 17 to 25 August the same twelvemonth Victoria and Albert returned the visit, in the first province visit to France by a British or English sovereign since the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. [ 36 ] Napoleon met the twosome at Dunkirk and personally accompanied them to Paris, where they visited the Exposition Universelle ( replacement to Albert ‘s 1851 brainchild the Great Exhibition ) and Napoleon I ‘s grave at Les Invalides ( to which his remains had merely been returned in 1840 ) and were invitees of honur at a 1,200-guest ball at the Chateau de Versailles on 25 August. [ 37 ] Victoria and Albert were besides invited to the gap of a new basin at the military port of Cherbourg on 5 August 1858, in a failed effort by Napoleon III to reassure Britain that his military readyings were non directed against her – on that juncture she and Albert stayed less than three yearss and on her return Victoria wrote to Lord Derby censuring him for the hapless province of the Royal Navy in comparing to the Gallic Navy.
Further blackwash efforts
The period during which Russell was Prime Minister besides proved personally straitening to Queen Victoria. In 1849, an unemployed and dissatisfied Irishman named William Hamilton attempted to dismay the Queen by firing a powder-filled handgun as her passenger car passed along Constitution Hill, London. Hamilton was charged under the 1842 act ; he pleaded guilty and received the maximal sentence of seven old ages of penal transit. [ 39 ] In 1850, the Queen did prolong hurt when she was assaulted by a perchance insane ex-Army officer, Robert Pate. As Victoria was siting in a passenger car, Pate struck her with his cane, oppressing her bonnet and contusing her. Pate was subsequently tried ; he failed to turn out his insanity, and received the same sentence as Hamilton.
Irish republic
The immature Queen Victoria fell in love with Ireland, taking to vacation in Killarney in Kerry. Her love of the state was matched by initial Irish heat towards the immature Queen. In 1845, Ireland was hit by a murphy blight that over four old ages cost the lives of over a million Irish people and saw the out-migration of another million. [ 40 ] In response to what came to be called the Great Famine ( in Irish, An Gorta Mor ) , the Queen personally donated ?2,000 ( 2,000 lbs sterling ) to the Irish people. [ 41 ] However, when Sultan Abdulmecid I of the Ottoman Empire declared that he would direct ?10,000 in assistance, Queen Victoria requested that the Sultan send merely ?1,000, because she had sent merely ?2,000. The Sultan sent the ?1,000 but besides in secret sent three ships full of nutrient. British tribunals tried to barricade the ships, but the nutrient arrived at Drogheda seaport and was left at that place by Ottoman crewmans. [ commendation needed ] However, myths were generated towards the terminal of the nineteenth century that she had donated a upper limit of ?5 in assistance to the Irish, and on the same twenty-four hours besides gave ?5 to Battersea Dog Shelter. This was false, as she in fact contributed ?2,000, well more than many Irish Catholic Bishops, one of whom donated ?1,000 to a charity for the hungry and ?10,000 to a University undertaking. [ 42 ]
Additionally, the policies of her premier curate, Lord John Russell, were frequently blamed for worsening the badness of the dearth, which adversely affected the Queen ‘s popularity in Ireland. However Victoria was a strong protagonist of the Irish ; she supported the Maynooth Grant and made a point, on sing Ireland, of sing the seminary. [ 43 ]
Victoria ‘s first official visit to Ireland, in 1849, was specifically arranged by Lord Clarendon, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland-the caput of the British administration-to attempt to both draw attending from the dearth and watchful British politicians through the Queen ‘s presence to the earnestness of the crisis in Ireland. Despite the negative impact of the dearth on the Queen ‘s popularity she remained popular plenty for many Irish patriots at party meetings to complete by singing “ God Save the Queen ” . [ 44 ] She became known in Ireland as “ The Famine Queen ” , [ 45 ] and was much vilified so, as now. [ 46 ] In 1853 she visited the Great Industrial Exhibition which was the biggest international event held to day of the month in Ireland. Over one million attended and Victoria knighted the designer of the exhibition, John Benson.
By the 1870s and 1880s the monarchy ‘s entreaty in Ireland had diminished well, partially because Victoria refused to see Ireland in protest at the Dublin Corporation ‘s determination non to compliment her boy, the Prince of Wales on both his matrimony to Princess Alexandra of Denmark and on the birth of the royal twosome ‘s oldest boy, Prince Albert Victor. [ 43 ] Queen Victoria had besides felt profoundly hurt after Dublin Corporation had returned a flop of her beloved late hubby Albert, which she sent as a gift to the people of Dublin. In add-on, she had felt hurt by the outrage at the suggestion to put a statue of Albert on St. Stephen ‘s Green in Dublin, and to rename it ‘Albert Green ‘ . It has been theorised that these perceived ‘insults ‘ to her darling Albert ‘s memory hardened her positions of the Irish people. [ 48 ]
Victoria refused repeated force per unit area from a figure of premier curates, Godheads lieutenant and even members of the Royal Family, to set up a royal abode in Ireland. [ 44 ] Lord Midleton, the former caput of the Irish union member party, composing in his memoirs of 1930 Ireland: Victim or Heroine? , described this determination as holding proved black to the monarchy and the brotherhood. [ 49 ]
The Queen paid her last visit to Ireland in 1900, when she came to appeal to Irishmen to fall in the British Army and battle in the Second Boer War. Nationalist resistance to her visit was spearheaded by Arthur Griffith, who established an administration called Cumann na nGaedhael to unify the resistance. Five old ages subsequently Griffith used the contacts established in his run against the Queen ‘s visit to organize a new political motion, Sinn Fein, [ 44 ] which finally brought about the constitution of the Irish Free State.
Empress of India
After the Mughal Emperor was deposed by the British East India Company, and after the company itself was dissolved, the rubric “ Empress of India ” was taken by Victoria from 1 May 1876, and proclaimed at the Delhi Durbar of 1877. The rubric was created 19 old ages after the formal incorporation into the British Empire of Britain ‘s ownerships and associated states on the Indian subcontinent. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is normally credited with making the rubric for her. [ 50 ] Victoria began larning Hindi and Punjabi in 1867.
Widowhood
The Prince Consort, diagnosed with typhoid febrility, died on 14A December 1861, believed to be due to the crude healthful conditions at Windsor Castle. His decease devastated Victoria, who was still affected by her female parent ‘s decease in March of that twelvemonth. [ 51 ] She entered a province of bereavement and wore black for the balance of her life. She avoided public visual aspects, and seldom fit pes in London in the undermentioned old ages. Her privacy earned her the name “ Widow of Windsor. ” She blamed her boy Edward, the Prince of Wales, for his male parent ‘s decease, since intelligence of the Prince ‘s hapless behavior had come to his male parent in November, taking Prince Albert to go to Cambridge to face his boy. [ 51 ]
Victoria ‘s self-imposed isolation from the populace greatly diminished the monarchy ‘s popularity, and even encouraged the growing of the republican motion. She did set about her official authorities responsibilities, yet she besides chose to stay privy in her royal residences-Balmoral Castle in Scotland, Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, and Windsor Castle. [ 51 ]
As clip went by, Victoria began to trust progressively on a manservant from Scotland, John Brown. [ 51 ] A romantic connexion and even a secret matrimony have been alleged, but both charges are by and large discredited. However, when Victoria ‘s remains were laid in the casket, two sets of souvenirs were placed with her, at her petition. By her side was placed one of Albert ‘s dressing gowns, while in her left manus was placed a piece of Brown ‘s hair, along with a image of him. It was learned in 2008 that Victoria ‘s organic structure wore the marrying ring of John Brown ‘s female parent, placed on her manus after her decease. [ 52 ] [ commendation needed ] Rumours of an matter and matrimony earned Victoria the moniker “ Mrs Brown ” . [ 51 ] The narrative of their relationship was the topic of the 1997 film Mrs. Brown. [ 53 ]
Subsequently old ages
Golden Jubilee and an blackwash effort
In 1887, the British Empire celebrated Victoria ‘s Golden Jubilee. Victoria marked the 50th day of remembrance of her accession on 20A June with a feast to which 50 European male monarchs and princes were invited. Although she could non hold been cognizant of it, there was a plan-ostensibly by Irish anarchists-to blow up Westminster Abbey. This blackwash effort, when it was discovered, became known as the Jubilee Plot. On the following twenty-four hours, she participated in a emanation that, in the words of Mark Twain, “ stretched to the bound of sight in both waies ” . By this clip, Victoria was one time once more an highly popular sovereign.
Diamond Jubilee
On 25A September 1896, Victoria surpassed George III as the longest-reigning sovereign in English, Scottish, and British history. The Queen requested all particular public jubilations of the event to be delayed until 1897, to co-occur with her Diamond Jubilee. The Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, proposed that the Diamond Jubilee be made a festival of the British Empire. [ 44 ]
The Prime Ministers of all the autonomous rules and settlements were invited. The Queen ‘s Diamond Jubilee emanation included military personnels from every British settlement and rule, together with soldiers sent by Indian princes and heads as a grade of regard to Victoria, the Empress of India. The Diamond Jubilee jubilation was an juncture marked by great springs of fondness for the septuagenarian Queen. A service of Thanksgiving was held outside St. Paul ‘s Cathedral. Queen Victoria sat in her passenger car throughout the service ; she wore her usual black mourning frock trimmed with white lacing. [ 24 ] Many trees were planted to observe the Jubilee, including 60 oak trees at Henley-on-Thames in the form of a Victoria Cross. [ 54 ] [ 55 ] The VC was introduced on 29 January 1856 by Queen Victoria to honor Acts of the Apostless of heroism during the Crimean War, and its modern Commonwealth discrepancies remain to this twenty-four hours the highest British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and Commonwealth awards for courage.
Death and sequence
Following a usage she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She died at that place from a intellectual bleeding on Tuesday 22A January 1901 at half past six in the eventide, [ 56 ] [ 57 ] at the age of 81. At her deathbed she was attended by her boy, the hereafter King, and her eldest grandson, German Emperor Wilhelm II. As she had wished, her ain boies lifted her into the casket. She was dressed in a white frock and her nuptials head covering, and the casket was draped with the Royal Standard that had been winging at Osborne House ; it was subsequently given by Victoria ‘s grandson, George V, to Victoria College at the University of Toronto. [ 58 ] Her funeral was held on Saturday 2A February, and after two yearss of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in Frogmore Mausoleum at Windsor Great Park. Since Victoria disliked black funerals, London was alternatively festooned in purple and white. When she was laid to rest at the mausoleum, it began to snow. [ 59 ]
Flags in the United States were lowered to half-staff in her honor by order of President William McKinley, a testimonial ne’er earlier offered to a foreign sovereign at the clip and one which was repaid by Britain when McKinley was assassinated subsequently that twelvemonth. Victoria had reigned for a sum of 63 old ages, seven months and two days-the longest of any British monarch-and surpassed her gramps, George III, as the longest-lived sovereign ( since surpassed by Elizabeth II ) merely three yearss before her decease. [ 60 ] [ 61 ]
Victoria ‘s decease brought an terminal to the regulation of the House of Hanover in the United Kingdom. Her hubby belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and her boy and heir Edward VII was the first British sovereign of this new house. [ 13 ] Later, in 1917, her grandson King George V changed the house name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the ( presently functioning ) House of Windsor.
Victoria outlived 3 of her 9 kids, and came within seven months of outlasting a 4th ( her firstborn girl, Victoria, who died of spinal malignant neoplastic disease in August 1901 aged 60 ) . She outlived 11 of her 42 grandchildren ( 3 were stillborn, 6 died as kids, and 2 as grownups ) .
Bequest
Within Britain
Queen Victoria ‘s reign marked the gradual constitution of a modern constitutional monarchy. A series of legal reforms saw the House of Commons ‘ power addition, at the disbursal of the House of Lords and the monarchy, with the sovereign ‘s function going bit by bit more symbolic. Since Victoria ‘s reign the sovereign has had merely, in Walter Bagehot ‘s words, “ the right to be consulted, the right to rede, and the right to warn ” . [ 44 ]
As Victoria ‘s monarchy became more symbolic than political, it placed a strong accent on morality and household values, in contrast to the sexual, fiscal and personal dirts that had been associated with old members of the House of Hanover and which had discredited the monarchy. Victoria ‘s reign created for Britain the construct of the “ household monarchy ” with which the burgeoning in-between categories could place. [ 13 ]
The sudden visual aspect of hemophilia in Victoria ‘s posterities has led to suggestions that her true male parent was non the Duke of Kent but a hemophiliac. Victoria was the first known bearer of hemophilia in the royal line. Since no hemophiliac were among her known ascendants, hers was either an case of self-generated mutant, or she was really illicit, her male parent an unidentified hemophiliac male instead than the Duke of Kent. [ 63 ] Spontaneous mutants account for approximately 30 % of all haemophilia A, [ 64 ] and hemophilia B instances. [ 65 ] There is no documental grounds of a haemophiliac adult male in connexion with Victoria ‘s female parent, and as male bearers ever suffer the disease, even if such a adult male had existed he would hold been earnestly ill. [ 66 ]
Evidence indicates Victoria passed the cistron on to two of her five girls: Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice. Her boy, Prince Leopold, was affected by the disease. The most celebrated hemophilias victims among her posterities were her great-grandson, Alexei, Tsarevich of Russia, and Alfonso, Prince of Asturias and Infante Gonzalo of Spain, the eldest and youngest boies of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Victoria Eugenie ( Victoria ‘s granddaughter ) . [ 67 ]
Queen Victoria experienced unpopularity during the first old ages of her widowhood, but afterwards became highly well-liked during the 1880s and 1890s. In 2002, the BBC conducted a canvass sing the 100 Greatest Britons ; Victoria attained the 18th topographic point. [ 68 ]
The design of the Queen ‘s caput on the first postage cast was based upon the 1837 Wyon City decoration engraved by a celebrated coin engraver William Wyon. The design of Queen Victoria ‘s caput is based on a posing when she was a princess aged 15.Victoria besides started the tradition that a bride wears a white frock to her nuptials. Before Victoria ‘s marrying a bride would have on her best frock of no peculiar coloring material.
The Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace-which was erected as portion of the remodelling of the facade of the Palace a decennary after her decease.
