* British royalty: Victoria and Albert marriage









Victoria and Albert's Marriage


Figure 1.--The marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was conducted in t. James Palace (February 10, 1840). It was one of the great love affairs of history and certainy the most important marriage of thr 19th century. The marriage of the Princess Royal, their oldest child was full of children, here there is only one child. We are mot sure who she was, but was not one of the bridesmaids. This portrait of the ceremony was painted by George Hayter.

Four months after proposing, Victoria married Albert in February 1840. Some mocked the irony of wedding vows when Albert pledged to endow the queen with all his worldly goods. The royal couple honeymooned at Windsor. Albert's marriage to Victoria brought him to the throne of the most powerful country of the day, a huge step for an impoverished German aristocrat. The marriage was not at the time popular with her advisers or subjects. Many objected to the Queen marring a poor noble--and a foreign one at that. Parliament refused to grant Albert a title. The young Queen was however, determined on the marriage and insisted on it. Victoria was in some ways very un-Victorian. She was deeply in love with Albert and had a passionate love affair with him. Albert's initial thoughts are less clear. They must have been influenced by the improvement in his dynastic status, although he could hardly commit such thoughts to paper. The union proved a most felicitous one, marked by a degree of mutual affection rarely found in unions of state. Although Victoria believed that women had little place outside the home, she played an active, even aggressive role in public life, especially in foreign affairs. Albert was only to become the Prince Consort and not a co-ruler with his wife. His untimely death was to devastate Victoria. At first Albert was given no official duties. Victoria did not want to give up any of her royal prerogatives. He served as the Queen's secretary and at first his duty was to blot her signature. Gradually the Queen came to increasingly rely on her advice. Albert quickly learned English, read voraciously. The Queen's advisers came to see him as thoughtful, and more flexible, easier to approach than Victoria. It was Victoria's pregnancies, however, that forced Victoria to rely on Albert who gradually became a defacto monarch without the title. Albert read the ministerial red boxes carefully and carefully without upsetting Victoria took charge. He help to expose the Queen to new ideas and make her aware of the social and technological developments that were sweeping Britain. Albert was a social liberal and brought Victoria along to his point of view. Albert's tactful advise to his poorly educated wife proved to be of great value to England. Perhaps the most important was his success in convincing the Queen to support of the Corn Laws. England's landed gentry imposed high tariffs to keep food (especially grain) prices high. This meant that cheap grain could not be imported from America. It almost meant great hardship among the urban working class, many of whom lived on the edge of starvation. There were many other examples, the final one was his advise that England not support the South in the American Civil War. Albert took the education of their heir, the future Edward VII very seriously. Despite the attention given to the care and education of the children, many serious mistakes were made and a program was pursued that was not suitable for a boy of limited intelligence and volatile temperament.







HBRC








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Created: 11:37 PM 1/14/2020
Last updated: 11:37 PM 1/14/2020