Queen Victoria

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From a young age, Queen Victoria wrote extensive journals, two of which were published with great success during her lifetime. Other selections from her journals, collections of her letters, and drawings and watercolours from her sketchbooks were published posthumously.

Milestones

24 May 1819

Alexandrina Victoria , fifth in line to the throne and the future Queen of England, was born at Kensington Palace.
Longford, Elizabeth. Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed. Harper and Row.
22, 24
Munich, Adrienne. Queen Victoria’s Secrets. Columbia University Press.
xiii

31 July 1832

Princess Alexandrina Victoria (later QV ) began writing her journal to record the events of her first formal tour of Britain; she kept a detailed diary for the rest of her life.
Longford, Elizabeth. Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed. Harper and Row.
42

22 January 1901

QV died peacefully of old age at Osborne House.
Strachey, Lytton. Queen Victoria. Harcourt Brace.
422
Munich, Adrienne. Queen Victoria’s Secrets. Columbia University Press.
xx

Biography

QV came from the Hanoverian line of the English monarchy and learned English as a second language to German from the age of three. She occupied an anomalous role as the white female ruler of a vast British empire which eventually allowed her, as its Empress, to count one quarter of humanity as her subjects. The peculiarity of her role, along with the portliness emphasized by her short stature, is evoked in Anna Leonowens 's tongue-in-cheek report
Leonowens, Anna. The English Governess at the Siamese Court. Oxford University Press.
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Longford, Elizabeth. Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed. Harper and Row.
25-7
of a Siamese ambassador's comment that QVmust be of pure descent from a race of goodly and warlike kings and rulers of the earth, in that her eyes, complexion, and above all her bearing, are those of a beautiful and majestic white elephant.
Leonowens, Anna. The English Governess at the Siamese Court. Oxford University Press.
145
Leonowens details the elaborate and costly ceremonials surrounding the white elephant. Her sense of their ridiculousness connects to the notion, derived from Siamese culture, of white elephants as a burdensome possession,
Brewer, E. Cobham. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Avenel Books.
which suggests that the ambassador's remark may have had an anti-imperial twist.
Although she was obviously an aristocrat, QV 's sensibilities in many respects allied her with the middle classes. She defined herself against the excesses of the Regency, and her public performance of domesticity and wifely devotion, as well as many of her tastes and opinions, helped to legitimise bourgeois values in the period that was named after her.