Top

Queen Victoria

August 15, 2013 by · Comments Off on Queen Victoria 

Queen Victoria, Queen Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India.

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father’s three elder brothers had all died leaving no legitimate, surviving children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the Sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Publicly, she became a national icon, and was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname “the grandmother of Europe”. After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.

Queen Elizabeth II

February 6, 2012 by · Comments Off on Queen Elizabeth II 

Queen Elizabeth II, The Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was up a tree in Kenya gazing at the wildlife below when her father, King George VI, died in London on Feb. 6, 1952. At that moment, 60 years ago today, she was queen of the United Kingdom, at age 25. Only she didn’t know it yet.

Six decades later, the British are preparing to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee with an outpouring of affection and patriotism and an extravagant party for their 40th monarch since the Norman Conquest.

It’s only the second Diamond Jubilee in British history. The first was Queen Victoria’s in 1897. The queen was so frail (she was 78) she had to sit outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in her carriage for the thanksgiving service because she couldn’t get up the steps.

Not so for her great-great-granddaughter, soon to be 86, who has spent a lifetime demonstrating how sturdy and steady she is, and always has been, since that gloomy day she arrived home from Kenya. The image is burned into the British memory: a small, black-gloved figure in a black coat and hat, alone at the top of the aircraft stairs, a line of ministers below led by a teary Winston Churchill.

“It was the first of very significant moments in the nation’s emotional life,” says royal biographer Robert Lacey, whose latest book about Elizabeth, “A Brief Life of the Queen,” just came out in the U.K.

Bottom