Albert died in December aged 42, when the Queen was the same age. Victoria never recovered from his death. She dressed in black as a sign of mourning for the rest of her life. Queen Victoria reigned for exactly sixty-three years, seven months, and two days 20 June - 22 January Her rule is the second longest after Queen Elizabeth II. During Victoria's reign, eight assassination attempts were made on her life. All of them were unsuccessful. The first attempt took place in when year-old Edward Oxford fired at the Queen's carriage near Buckingham Palace in London.
Oxford was accused of treason for his crime but was ultimately found not guilty for reasons of insanity. Three attempts were made in , two by the same man - John Francis, an unemployed carpenter. On his second effort, he was promptly arrested and sent to Van Diemen's Land later known as Tasmania , where he became a successful carpenter, helping to build the Launceston General Hospital on the island.
One year later, Robert Pate, a former officer, used a brass-tipped cane to hit the Queen in the head. Pate's attack was the only attempt that caused Victoria actual harm, and the mark on her forehead supposedly remained for a decade. Pate was immediately arrested and also sentenced to seven years in the Tasmanian penal colony. The reasons for the attack remain unknown.
A memorable final attempt took place in when a Scottish poet named Roderick Maclean shot at Queen Victoria's train carriage with a pistol as it left the Windsor train station. This was Maclean's eighth attempt at assassinating Victoria. Maclean was tried for high treason and was pronounced "not guilty, but insane. Discover more. Royal history. What happened during the Victorian era?
Women in Victorian Astronomy: celebrating Annie Maunder Victoria and Albert went on to have a total of nine children — four boys and five girls. Surprisingly, Victoria hated being pregnant, and historians have suggested that she may have suffered from post-natal depression. She had a notoriously fractious relationship with her eldest son, the charismatic yet quick-tempered Bertie. Melbourne held significant sway over the young queen, who appointed the majority of her ladies-in-waiting according to his advice.
In , Melbourne resigned following several parliamentary defeats. Tory Robert Peel stepped forward to become prime minister, on one condition: he requested that Victoria dismiss some of her existing household — who largely held Whig sympathies and were loyal to Melbourne — and replace them with Tory ladies.
The queen had already been criticised for her over-reliance on Lord Melbourne, and now she was widely condemned for being not just politically partisan, but unconstitutional. As her mother and governess both hailed from Germany, Victoria grew up speaking the language and at one stage reportedly even had a German accent, which had to be erased by tutors.
Although Albert was fluent in English, he and Victoria could often be heard talking — and indeed arguing — in German when in private. Later in life, Victoria also experimented with some of the languages from across her vast empire. Over the course of the six decades she sat on the throne, Victoria saw many prime ministers come and go.
Yet while she established a remarkably close bond with some, others failed spectacularly to win her favour. Over the course of her reign, Victoria witnessed a mammoth expansion of the British empire. The queen herself took a great interest in imperial affairs. The queen had pushed for the title for several years, but, concerned about its absolutist connotations, Disraeli had been hesitant to agree.
By , however, Victoria had become so insistent he felt he could not resist any longer, for fear of offending her. Over the course of their year marriage, Victoria and Albert raised nine children together.
Kaiser Wilhelm reportedly remarked that had his grandmother still been alive, the First World War may never have happened, as she simply would not have allowed her relatives to go to war with one another.
It is believed that the queen was a carrier of haemophilia and had unwittingly introduced the rare inherited disease into her bloodline.
Over subsequent generations the condition resurfaced in royal families across the continent. Listen: Deborah Cadbury shows how Queen Victoria sought to influence the future of Europe through the marriages of her descendants, on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast :. During the course of her year-long reign, Victoria came out unscathed from at least six serious attempts on her life, some of which were terrifyingly close calls.
In June , while four months pregnant with her first child, Victoria was shot at while on an evening carriage ride with Prince Albert. For a moment it seemed as though the queen had been hit, but Albert spurred the driver to speed away to safety and the would-be assassin, Edward Oxford, was apprehended.
Oxford — who was later acquitted on grounds of insanity — proved to be the first of many to target the queen while she was driving in her open-top carriage. In , as the carriage slowed down to pass through the gates of Buckingham Palace, retired soldier Robert Pate ran forward and managed to strike the queen sharply on the head with a small cane.
Although it transpired that the cane weighed less than three ounces, so could not have done much damage, the incident nonetheless unnerved Victoria. She escaped several more assassination attempts while riding in her carriage in , and As the prince was aged just 42 and generally enjoyed good health, his death from typhoid was highly unexpected.
It came as a huge blow to the queen, who had been intensely reliant on his support, practically and politically as well as emotionally. One of history's most iconic Queens , Victoria was an era-defining figure whose fascinating life continues to inspire storytellers today. While you've surely heard of the long-reigning British monarch, there's plenty about Victoria that will still surprise you.
Born in Kensington Palace on May 24, , Queen Victoria was originally named Alexandrina Victoria, after her godfather, Tsar Alexander I , but always preferred to go by her second name, or the nickname 'Drina. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession for the British crown, behind the four eldest sons of George III, including her three uncles and her father, Edward.
This made Queen Victoria the first reigning monarch to take up residence at Buckingham , though her move did not come without its struggles. As the royal family's website puts it , "Her marriage to Prince Albert in soon showed up the Palace's shortcomings. The Palace was in need of extreme renovations if it was going to be a family home as Queen Victoria intended it to be. Victoria put in the work, adding an entirely new wing, and years later, Buckingham continues to serve as a place of royal business and the London residence of Queen Elizabeth.
Less than a month after turning 18, Victoria was Queen. Less than a year after Queen Victoria's birth, her father, Edward, Duke of Kent the fourth son of George III died of pneumonia, leaving the young princess to be raised by her mother.
Following his death, Victoria's mother, Duchess Victoria, was prepared to rule alongside her daughter if Victoria's uncle died and she ascended to the throne before she was officially of age. For this reason, Victoria's mother used a strict code of discipline to shape the Queen-to-be. Later known as the "Kensington System," it involved a strict timetable of lessons to improve Victoria's morality and intellect.
This meant she rarely got to interact with children her own age because of the demands on her time. Princess Victoria was under constant adult supervision and was also made to share a bedroom with her mother until she became Queen. The young queen was an adept linguist, fluent in both English and German.
Her mother and governess both had German roots, so Victoria grew up speaking the language and later used it frequently when speaking to her German husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Queen also studied French, Italian, and Latin. Toward the end of her reign, when servants from India arrived at Windsor Castle in , her attendant, Abdul Karim , taught the Queen many Hindu and Urdu phrases to better communicate with her servants. During her reign, several attempts were made at Queen Victoria's life , all of them unsuccessful.
Oxford was accused of high treason for his crime and was ultimately found not guilty for reasons of insanity, according to the History channel's website.
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