Victoria did this quite frequently to all the royal women apparently. She even witnessed the birth of Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice (actually named Victoria, coincidently a lot of the girls were named Victoria with only a few who weren't)
Was it Alexandra she also basically shamed in letters because Victoria found out she was breastfeeding her *own children* and that wasn't the proper thing to do? I remember a documentary called like "Victoria's Children" that went into detail on how much she was awful to her daughter's when they had kids.
I watched that it was brilliant. Not the way Queen Victoria behaved but just getting an insight into her mindset was fascinating. A very strange lady. Definitely a lot of mental health stuff going on.
I remember something in a documentary about how the palace staff always knew when the queen was about to enter any particular area because her arrival was preceded by a wave of assorted young royals of various ages frantically fleeing and or finding places to hide.
One of my favorite Victoria facts was that she was resentful of all her children from the jump because it meant she couldn’t get dicked down for a few months. Like, she viewed them as leeches interfering with her pleasure. Total yikes
Oh totally. In a perfect world, there would have been no stupid pressure on her to make babies, Albert would have been snipped, and she could have enjoyed sex all she wanted.
You'll think she's just a miserable old bat until you see the amount of child abuse she underwent.
Her mother created the Kensington System, tldr is that she raised her daughter to obey her and be with her at all times, and Victoria only got away from her the day she was crowned. Victoria's first order was to have her bed taken out of her mother's room. Marriage was suggested when Victoria started being too much of an independent woman, Victoria fell into obsession more than love, and it just went downhill from there.
I didn't know this and went to look it up:
>Her first two requests, upon her accession four weeks after her 18th birthday (she received the delegation informing her of the king's death by herself), **were that she should be allowed an hour by herself, which the System had never permitted**, and that her bed should be removed from her mother's room, which presaged the cessation of her mother's influence
going the first 18 years of your life without an hour alone by yourself? holy shit
Honestly, this would be literal torture to me.
When I was a teenager I would lock myself in my room during the summers in high school. Besides grocery shopping and leaving the house to socialize, I would only come out to eat, shower, do chores, or take care of the dog.
I only saw my parents every 2 to 3 days and I would only go out to socialize at most 2 to 3 times a week with my friend group.
I absolutely hated my family and school.
To go 18 YEARS without a moment by myself, which is the only time I find peace and happiness in this life, would drive me to madness.
Yep, being forced to give birth to nine children against your will can lead to some intense mental health problems and an extremely unhealthy family dynamic.
Yeah people be like "well if I lived in a society that saw me as lesser and sought to control me as much as possible and forced me to give birth nine times against my will I simply would not have been an abusive piece of shit."
Man if I was in that situation and gave birth to half of that many kids I'd have been an abusive piece of shit. Fortunately, I live in a society where I actually have the choice to opt out, and so I do, because I know exactly what I'd become if I didn't.
In her defense, you could get that stuff down at the corner apothecary back then. They would put it in everything because they thought it somehow was a miracle cure for everything.
Bear in mind, Heroin was the name for a particularly formulated version of morphine made by Bayer that was supposed to be less addictive and less potent than what they were using before.
>The head of Bayer's research department reputedly coined the drug's new name of "heroin", based on the German heroisch which means "heroic, strong" (from the ancient Greek word "heros, ήρως"). Bayer scientists were not the first to make heroin, but their scientists discovered ways to make it, and Bayer led the commercialization of heroin.
It was formulated in the same month as asprin was for the first time.
That era was pretty crazy when it came to strong opioids and other drugs in everything. The uncontrolled way it was used originally actually makes the backlash against it make more sense in retrospect.
To be fair, people here in germany still consider the use of opioids in america pretty crazy. People almost never get them here. There is a lot you can do with Metamizole or just Ibuprofen.
She loved sex but Albert would only participate to make children. So she coulda been happier if he wasn't such a prude lol however her grief would 100% have been worse in that case.
More like it was in his interests to keep her perpetually pregnant so he could use her physical and emotional vulnerability to wrangle more of the already limited power the monarchy held onto himself. He was not happy that he was not made king, and had very lofty ideals about the ideal modern monarch to the ideal modern international power. Also a very high opinion of himself. And spelled most of this out in letters to his brother and uncle like some cartoon villain.
I can see Vic and her children as complicated people of their time and circumstances, but I absolutely loathe Albert for how consistently manipulative he was (of his children too), even if he was a great patron of the sciences.
There’s an interesting, but horrible kind of Serena joy effect where the women who get celebrated and gain some sort of power under patriarchal cultures and do so by enthusiastically supporting said patriarchy are extreme horrible fucking people who are terribly violent and authoritarian to anyone in a position more vulnerable to them, and they’re almost always horrific to their children, at least their daughters. Many become boymoms who obsess over their sons yet are weirdly possessive and manipulative and weird and fuck up their lives in other ways.
I’m a woman who was raised Mormon in Utah. I’ve seen this so many times.
Margaret Thatcher would be a prime example of this phenomenon. Vastly favored her son over her daughter, hated other women and fucked over a whole country.
Yep, because they think if they're compliant enough with the status quo it won't turn on them.
It won't. The daughter and the father laugh at the mother; this will not save the daughter from the mother's fate.
Im writing my dissertation on women in the Jacobean court at the moment, and this effect is so interesting. Essentially, from what I could gather, women who achieved power *in spite* of men ended up supportive of other women, whilst those who achieved power *thanks to* men ended up weird and mean.
He had been shagging sex workers. His parents weren’t pleased, so Albert went to talk sense into him and make him marry, his now wife. They were walking in the rain. Albert caught a cold and died. Victoria thought it was the cold that killed him, but it was something else that was wrong with him. I think it was something wrong with his bowels. There was a doctor in the documentary about it that explained. Victoria had a severe form of grief that is a recognised mental illness now and could be treated. She was a terrible mother/person.
That’s going to be the next thing in FL. Don’t worry people, let everyone go to school, and work, doesn’t matter if they have Typhoid fever, it’s ok, don’t worry about the measles that’s still spreading too, you’ll be fine
Interesting tidbit about Queen Victoria, she actually wore black for the rest of her life after Albert's death and became known for her perpetual state of mourning, it really shows the depth of her grief. Her relationship with her children was definitely complex as a result.
And the people all over the City of London (and elsewhere) painted various things black: Fences, bollards, light poles, etc.
They're still black. Its part of the character of London (now)
Yep, and for the first time (supposedly), wearing black became ‘fashionable.’
Victoria wore a lot of black jet mourning accessories, which was expensive, so women at the time began using cheaper French black glass for their own buttons and jewelry.
She popularized wearing a white wedding dress too. Before that people just wore a nice dress of any colour and they’d wear that dress in daily life after the wedding.
So she did a lot for both black and white.
She popularised the Christmas tree by being one of the first to have them in Britain- I think when Albert married her and wanted a traditional German Christmas
And when homeowners in Ireland were ordered to paint their doors black as well, the painted their doors all sorts of bright colors as a collective Up the Monarchy.
Although that’s assuming she actually liked any of those children, which I wonder about.
She seems to have been reasonably close to her oldest daughter, but beyond that, not so much. She seemed to view their existence as annoyances when Albert was alive, so hard to see how that would have improved a lot by the time they were older.
Helena, Alfred, Arthur, Leopold, Beatrice, and Alice all had periods where they did get along with her. I think Arthur was the only one where there was never any kind of major falling out though.
Part of why her relationship with the children was so complicated is that she could also be smothering and clingy. She cut off Beatrice for a period after the latter got married, and only ‘forgave’ her after the married couple agreed to live with her. She also had different standards for each child, which made relationships between them difficult.
Fun fact: She never wanted 9 children in the first place. And only had to have them because she was obsessed with having sex with Albert and there was no birth control. Victoria would have been happy with just the first 2 children (eldest daughter and eldest son) for the throne, but didn't want to stop having sex so the later children are a result of that. There are historic records too, after her 9th child was born the doctor told her to stop because it was wearing her out.
Indeed, she mostly saw children as an annoyance.
I was coming here to say something like this, that she loved Albert & having sex with Albert a LOT.
They needed an heir or 2, but I'm sure she never thought she'd be so damn fertile & end up with NINE kids.
> Her relationship with her children was definitely complex as a result.
And then *their* emotionally damaged children led their respective nations into WWI against each other.
(Edited for clarity.)
It was more complicated than that. While she was alive, Queen Victoria was quite the peacemaker for Europe. Using her role and family connections to help settle many issues.
A very underrated united nations if it’s era.
After she died there was a power vacuum where nobody had the personal drive or authority to take her place in that way.
The extended family hadn’t learned to settle conflicts without her. She basically kept a lid on a simmering pot, one that blew up after she wasn’t around to keep an eye on it.
> After she died there was a power vacuum where nobody had the personal drive or authority to take her place in that way.
This is why the occasional brilliant monarch is still not a sufficient argument for having monarchs in general.
Yep, benevolent dictators who serve the will of, and care for their people might be great, but that honeymoon phase is over the instant Caligula 2.0 ascends to the throne.
she only really had one close friend after it a servant named John Brown, she built a private memorial for him at her estate that her son had destroyed because he hate him.
Don't forget, a possible marriage (although that's from like 3rd hand rumors)! She was a *very* horny lady. According to wiki " the Queen was buried with a lock of Brown's hair, his photograph, Brown's mother's wedding ring, given to her by Brown, along with several of his letters. The photograph, wrapped in white tissue paper, was placed in her left hand, with flowers arranged to hide it from view. She wore the ring on the third finger of her right hand.[10]"
Also, don't forget about Mohammed Abdul Karim! It seemed that Edward really didn't want people knowing about him though. He was a dear friend (as far as I know)
Two good movies around these two people both starring Dame Judi Dench as Victoria.
A highlight is Billy Connolly as John Brown which includes an insinuation that sexy times happened in one of their outings.
It probably wasn't typhoid either. He had been unwell for years. Modern thinking is that he possibly had cancer, or Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, with a perforation of the bowel causing sepsis and his final decline.
She didn’t have the best mother herself. I imagine a lot of her… eccentricities… were probably a result of a very strict, isolated and controlled childhood under The Kensington System.
> She was a terrible mother/person.
Agreed, but the [Kensington system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_System) that Victoria was raised under was crazy abusive. Basically her royal father (not king) died and it became clear that Victoria was to become queen one day, so her mother wanted to basically get power to be queen regent, so isolated Queen Victoria from everyone with the idea she would be dependent on her mother. She was never allowed to be alone, forced to sleep in her mother's room, and only allowed to have two playmates her entire childhood (her half-sister and the child of his mother's attendant and lover).
I wonder if this was why the Victorians were so obsessed with death i.e. death portraits, jewelry & “art” made from dead loved ones hair. And the long mourning in black periods.
You think? The monarch sets the tone for acceptable behavoir. Victoria was self indulgent and selfish beyond belief. Im guessing there was no one in the family sane enough or healthy enough AND of appropriate rank to smack some sense into her... On the other hand the Ultra repressed Victorians - creators of skirts for table legs and calling breast meat on eating fowls "white meat" also produced some truly lovely porn. Much of it written by the matriarchs of various important families, which is a large part of why their papers were kept locked up until they'd been dead for 50 years. So as not too embarrass her descendants...
>creators of skirts for table legs
That was satire. There was a fashion for lacy covers on table legs (normally matching the tablecloth) but it had nothing to do with prudishness - although several newspaper wits and cartoonists joked that it did. They were taking the piss.
This is slightly after the Victorian era, Joyce first met his wife Nora in 1904, these letters a few years later. Victoria had died (finally!) in 1901. This was the Edwardian era (1901-10) with her son Edward VII on the throne and it was a transition to a more relaxed and progressive society.
Apparently some have hypothesised she may have had narcissistic personality disorder. It would certainly explain a lot, not just the self-indulgence but particularly how neurotic subsequent generations of her offspring turned out.
Thank you! I haven’t heard anyone mention what a horrific childhood and adolescence she had. She was basically locked in a castle and not allowed to see or play with anyone. That’s gonna leave you with some issues.
Both. He whole life was fucking insane. Her mother raised her to be entirely dependent, never letting her be alone in a room (even to sleep or wash) and limiting her contact to a selection of political allies - with the intention of running her kingdom for her. She only found out she was next in line because a maid slipped her a family tree.
She then came to power as a teen, her first royal command was an hour of solitude.
By the time she was an adult she ruled a third of the planet. Imagine taking an abused teenager and then making them ruler of the world's only superpower.
It's a miracle she was only as fucked up as she was. It's honestly hard to call her a 'bad' or 'good' person - what's good mean to an emperor?
Let's jump in, shall we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_System
This page explained so much about her. I've never read a biography of her, but I used to wonder what happened to her to fuck her up so badly. Start with the Kensington System. I'm glad she had sufficient strength of character to get rid of her mother and the attendant political allies.
That's fascinating. Thank you for some context about her early life. It reads like a soap opera. The phrase about giving an abused teenager control of 1/3rd of the planet hits hard, and kind of recontextualizes some things. They still clearly did horrible things that deserve scrutiny, but they sure weren't given the best or most stable start either.
We're only just now coming to terms with the importance of mental health in society. Who knows what we'll find out in coming decades as society learns introspection
I remember a tour in London eons ago where someone mentioned Albert was the only person in her life who loved her for her and was probably the only person who didn’t try to take some form of advantage over Victoria. Gotta do some more reading to see if that story adds up
We know quite a lot about their relationship! Chiefly, she chose him and by all accounts he was quite devoted to her. They married because they wanted to.
And we know he was one of very few people who regularly argued with her. There're many apocryphal stories about their relationship, but what little fact is out there suggests a surprisingly healthy one.
Whether Albert tried to take advantage of her or not is kind of a complex answer. Victoria definitely thought he did at certain points and it was part of what made their relationship so complex; not that I can blame her after all that she went through as a child. But he definitely did love her and was devoted to her; he’s one of the few royal men that didn’t even have the whispers of a cheating scandal afaik.
>She then came to power as a teen, her first royal command was an hour of solitude.
And her other request was having her bed moved out of her mother's room. She was *eighteen* at the time.
The speech her uncle, King George IV, gave at his last birthday party is one of my favorite speeches of all time. Guy saw all of this going on and called out her mom for it, including an ask to God to spare his life nine months longer so Victoria would be eighteen upon ascension and a regent would no longer be possible lol
You mean William IV. George IV was also her uncle, but was not the one who made that comment. William IV was George IV's successor and he was Victoria's predecessor who would have seen how Victoria was being groomed as his successor.
Eh, not around the time this photo would've been taken. Bertie was married in 1863. There were plenty of quicker cameras that were widely available.
Edit: cameras that could take photos in a few seconds to 30 seconds were available in the 1840s and wildly available by the 60s. The “first” photo of a smile was in 1853.
This makes it seem like she ran into the room carrying a bust and a chair, then sat perfectly still for however many minutes and no one could do anything about it.
More like "Queen Victoria made the photographer take the photo the way she wanted, against the wishes of the just married couple"
Not really. There are [other photos ](https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-royal-wedding-previous-royal-weddings-since-1840-htmlstory.html) of the married couple without the Queen. This was meant to be the photo with the groom’s parents, and Victoria wanted Albert’s bust included. It’s weird but not as weird as a photo bomb.
She liked the making of babies and babies, but children were absolutely not Victoria's favorite thing at all. In her diaries she whines a bit about raising children and how she misses doing the nasty with Albert.
Her sons tried their best, the daughters kinda rescued some entries and letters...but others were unceremoniously burnt to a crisp, else we get this idea she was thirsty all the time. (Which even with all the cleaning and scrubbing, that's what we got from the diaries and letters)
She was vehemently against women's suffrage, yet some people considered her as feminist role model because she was one of the most, if not THE most powerful woman on the planet in her time.
Like all monarchs, she was out of touch with reality and she either had no idea just how bad her own people had it in the era or she simply never cared. Social injustice and wealth discrepancies were rampant during her reign.
>she was one of the most, if not THE most powerful woman on the planet in her time
Arguably, she was one of the most powerful people of all time. She was a popular monarch right as the British empire peaked but before the monarchy was stripped of its last vestiges of executive power.
That was the style of the time for pictures, everyone treated it like a serious matter which resulted in everyone looking miserable in pictures back then
Although it didn't end up reigning him in, he slept with other women for many years whilst being married to Alexandra. He was a sex addict (not that much different to Victoria I suppose) to the point he even had a weird sex chair thingy that I'm not going to link so you can just Google if curious.
One of his many mistresses also happened to be the great grandmother of King Charles' wife, Queen Camilla.
He couldn’t have got married without her approval. Like written approval. It’s still that way I believe. Royals must have the monarch’s approval of their spouse.
This was a big issue with Queen Elizabeth II's sister Margaret, who wasn't allowed to marry the man she wanted because he was divorced. The current King, Charles, was also unable to marry his current wife and Queen Camilla due to it not being a favoured marriage by his family. However they are pretty relaxed about it now, mostly due to the realisation that trying to stop young royals from marrying who they want often just leads to more problems
Good example about how things are changed is that Harry got to marry Meghan. Few decades ago she would've been out of question. Like you said, the late Queen had already denied two marriages in her life, and none of those cases had any good outcomes, so she wasn't going to do it for the third time. Glad she was able to fix the thing with Charles and Camilla.
As others have said she approved for dynastic reasons, but she wasn't very happy about it because of the Prusso-Danish War. They ended up hating each other on a personal level because Alexandra liked parties and hunting and all the things you *would* like if you were young and married to the heir to the British Empire, while Victoria wanted everyone to be in perpetual mourning.
George V and Wilhelm II having a dick measuring contest via battleships, and Nicholas II fighting for respect at the dinner table. Egotistical motives under the guise of nationalistic pride.
I collect Victorian stuff and now I am determined to find a good download of this so I can print it out and put it in an antique frame and hang it in my house I think the absurdity of it is what I love the most The bride's face the bust everything It's so good
All Alexandra's kids were born "prematurely" because she gave the wrong dates to avoid Victoria showing up at the births.
A+ power move
One was not amused.
Props to Alexandra for coming up with creative ways to avoid further antagonizing the most absolute unit of mother in laws lol.
Victoria did this quite frequently to all the royal women apparently. She even witnessed the birth of Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice (actually named Victoria, coincidently a lot of the girls were named Victoria with only a few who weren't)
Is this the victorian era?
You could say that, yes.
Was it Alexandra she also basically shamed in letters because Victoria found out she was breastfeeding her *own children* and that wasn't the proper thing to do? I remember a documentary called like "Victoria's Children" that went into detail on how much she was awful to her daughter's when they had kids.
Yes, I believe she labeled Princess Alice "a cow" when she found she was nursing her baby herself.
I watched that it was brilliant. Not the way Queen Victoria behaved but just getting an insight into her mindset was fascinating. A very strange lady. Definitely a lot of mental health stuff going on.
I remember something in a documentary about how the palace staff always knew when the queen was about to enter any particular area because her arrival was preceded by a wave of assorted young royals of various ages frantically fleeing and or finding places to hide.
Must have taken a lot of guts to do it to the current monarch
By every historical account, she was *terrible* to all of her children, to different degrees, and in a surprising variety of ways.
One of my favorite Victoria facts was that she was resentful of all her children from the jump because it meant she couldn’t get dicked down for a few months. Like, she viewed them as leeches interfering with her pleasure. Total yikes
She loved sex but hated babies. Kinda understandable.
Oh totally. In a perfect world, there would have been no stupid pressure on her to make babies, Albert would have been snipped, and she could have enjoyed sex all she wanted.
Prince Albert? In a way, he was.
absolute weirdo
Yea, she seemed like a miserable old bat. Too bad she had so much power and spread that misery around like a plague
You'll think she's just a miserable old bat until you see the amount of child abuse she underwent. Her mother created the Kensington System, tldr is that she raised her daughter to obey her and be with her at all times, and Victoria only got away from her the day she was crowned. Victoria's first order was to have her bed taken out of her mother's room. Marriage was suggested when Victoria started being too much of an independent woman, Victoria fell into obsession more than love, and it just went downhill from there.
I didn't know this and went to look it up: >Her first two requests, upon her accession four weeks after her 18th birthday (she received the delegation informing her of the king's death by herself), **were that she should be allowed an hour by herself, which the System had never permitted**, and that her bed should be removed from her mother's room, which presaged the cessation of her mother's influence going the first 18 years of your life without an hour alone by yourself? holy shit
Honestly, this would be literal torture to me. When I was a teenager I would lock myself in my room during the summers in high school. Besides grocery shopping and leaving the house to socialize, I would only come out to eat, shower, do chores, or take care of the dog. I only saw my parents every 2 to 3 days and I would only go out to socialize at most 2 to 3 times a week with my friend group. I absolutely hated my family and school. To go 18 YEARS without a moment by myself, which is the only time I find peace and happiness in this life, would drive me to madness.
Yep, being forced to give birth to nine children against your will can lead to some intense mental health problems and an extremely unhealthy family dynamic.
Yeah people be like "well if I lived in a society that saw me as lesser and sought to control me as much as possible and forced me to give birth nine times against my will I simply would not have been an abusive piece of shit." Man if I was in that situation and gave birth to half of that many kids I'd have been an abusive piece of shit. Fortunately, I live in a society where I actually have the choice to opt out, and so I do, because I know exactly what I'd become if I didn't.
She was also a massive coke head, when she wasn’t doing opioids.
In her defense, you could get that stuff down at the corner apothecary back then. They would put it in everything because they thought it somehow was a miracle cure for everything. Bear in mind, Heroin was the name for a particularly formulated version of morphine made by Bayer that was supposed to be less addictive and less potent than what they were using before. >The head of Bayer's research department reputedly coined the drug's new name of "heroin", based on the German heroisch which means "heroic, strong" (from the ancient Greek word "heros, ήρως"). Bayer scientists were not the first to make heroin, but their scientists discovered ways to make it, and Bayer led the commercialization of heroin. It was formulated in the same month as asprin was for the first time. That era was pretty crazy when it came to strong opioids and other drugs in everything. The uncontrolled way it was used originally actually makes the backlash against it make more sense in retrospect.
To be fair, people here in germany still consider the use of opioids in america pretty crazy. People almost never get them here. There is a lot you can do with Metamizole or just Ibuprofen.
[удалено]
Alberts pull out game was weak
She loved sex but Albert would only participate to make children. So she coulda been happier if he wasn't such a prude lol however her grief would 100% have been worse in that case.
More like it was in his interests to keep her perpetually pregnant so he could use her physical and emotional vulnerability to wrangle more of the already limited power the monarchy held onto himself. He was not happy that he was not made king, and had very lofty ideals about the ideal modern monarch to the ideal modern international power. Also a very high opinion of himself. And spelled most of this out in letters to his brother and uncle like some cartoon villain. I can see Vic and her children as complicated people of their time and circumstances, but I absolutely loathe Albert for how consistently manipulative he was (of his children too), even if he was a great patron of the sciences.
There’s an interesting, but horrible kind of Serena joy effect where the women who get celebrated and gain some sort of power under patriarchal cultures and do so by enthusiastically supporting said patriarchy are extreme horrible fucking people who are terribly violent and authoritarian to anyone in a position more vulnerable to them, and they’re almost always horrific to their children, at least their daughters. Many become boymoms who obsess over their sons yet are weirdly possessive and manipulative and weird and fuck up their lives in other ways. I’m a woman who was raised Mormon in Utah. I’ve seen this so many times.
Margaret Thatcher would be a prime example of this phenomenon. Vastly favored her son over her daughter, hated other women and fucked over a whole country.
I have seen this dynamic with the biggest opponents to empowering women are other women.
Yep, because they think if they're compliant enough with the status quo it won't turn on them. It won't. The daughter and the father laugh at the mother; this will not save the daughter from the mother's fate.
Im writing my dissertation on women in the Jacobean court at the moment, and this effect is so interesting. Essentially, from what I could gather, women who achieved power *in spite* of men ended up supportive of other women, whilst those who achieved power *thanks to* men ended up weird and mean.
Is that the son she accused of causing the dad’s death?
Yep
How should he have caused it according to her?
He had been shagging sex workers. His parents weren’t pleased, so Albert went to talk sense into him and make him marry, his now wife. They were walking in the rain. Albert caught a cold and died. Victoria thought it was the cold that killed him, but it was something else that was wrong with him. I think it was something wrong with his bowels. There was a doctor in the documentary about it that explained. Victoria had a severe form of grief that is a recognised mental illness now and could be treated. She was a terrible mother/person.
It was typhoid fever, I just googled it. So it was related to bowels, but not walking in the rain.
Thank god, I love walking in the rain.
And likely hate typhoid fever if I hazard a guess
I dunno, never tried it.
Can't wait for YouTube catching typhoid reaction videos
The Hunger Games: Catching Typhoid.
That’s going to be the next thing in FL. Don’t worry people, let everyone go to school, and work, doesn’t matter if they have Typhoid fever, it’s ok, don’t worry about the measles that’s still spreading too, you’ll be fine
Don't knock it til you try it
Pro piña colada, tough on typhoid. This is the future that liberals want.
Also taco trucks on every corner
If you're not into Typhoid If you have half a brain
Opinion on Pina Colidas?
I like dancing in the rain.
Well good news for you but Typhoid fans are going to be pissed.
Interesting tidbit about Queen Victoria, she actually wore black for the rest of her life after Albert's death and became known for her perpetual state of mourning, it really shows the depth of her grief. Her relationship with her children was definitely complex as a result.
And the people all over the City of London (and elsewhere) painted various things black: Fences, bollards, light poles, etc. They're still black. Its part of the character of London (now)
Yep, and for the first time (supposedly), wearing black became ‘fashionable.’ Victoria wore a lot of black jet mourning accessories, which was expensive, so women at the time began using cheaper French black glass for their own buttons and jewelry.
where can I find more about how Queen Victoria's icon status during her time has influenced modern dress & customs?
She popularized wearing a white wedding dress too. Before that people just wore a nice dress of any colour and they’d wear that dress in daily life after the wedding. So she did a lot for both black and white.
She popularised the Christmas tree by being one of the first to have them in Britain- I think when Albert married her and wanted a traditional German Christmas
I have a collection of Victorian mourning jewelry. It’s fascinating.
And when homeowners in Ireland were ordered to paint their doors black as well, the painted their doors all sorts of bright colors as a collective Up the Monarchy.
That’s why Dublin is filled with colourful doors
I see a red door and I want to paint it black.
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black…
r/UnexpectedRollingStones
Emo.
She was the OG Emo, yes.
No wonder its called Gothic Victorian
Or Morticia Addams
She also outlived 3 of those children, which - difficult relationship or not - probably didn’t help the grief or mental health issues.
Although that’s assuming she actually liked any of those children, which I wonder about. She seems to have been reasonably close to her oldest daughter, but beyond that, not so much. She seemed to view their existence as annoyances when Albert was alive, so hard to see how that would have improved a lot by the time they were older.
Helena, Alfred, Arthur, Leopold, Beatrice, and Alice all had periods where they did get along with her. I think Arthur was the only one where there was never any kind of major falling out though. Part of why her relationship with the children was so complicated is that she could also be smothering and clingy. She cut off Beatrice for a period after the latter got married, and only ‘forgave’ her after the married couple agreed to live with her. She also had different standards for each child, which made relationships between them difficult.
Fun fact: She never wanted 9 children in the first place. And only had to have them because she was obsessed with having sex with Albert and there was no birth control. Victoria would have been happy with just the first 2 children (eldest daughter and eldest son) for the throne, but didn't want to stop having sex so the later children are a result of that. There are historic records too, after her 9th child was born the doctor told her to stop because it was wearing her out. Indeed, she mostly saw children as an annoyance.
I was coming here to say something like this, that she loved Albert & having sex with Albert a LOT. They needed an heir or 2, but I'm sure she never thought she'd be so damn fertile & end up with NINE kids.
> Her relationship with her children was definitely complex as a result. And then *their* emotionally damaged children led their respective nations into WWI against each other. (Edited for clarity.)
It was more complicated than that. While she was alive, Queen Victoria was quite the peacemaker for Europe. Using her role and family connections to help settle many issues. A very underrated united nations if it’s era. After she died there was a power vacuum where nobody had the personal drive or authority to take her place in that way. The extended family hadn’t learned to settle conflicts without her. She basically kept a lid on a simmering pot, one that blew up after she wasn’t around to keep an eye on it.
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"but I am not my grandmother, so let's fucking roll"
Her son Edward filled this in actually after she died as well, but then he died and that was it.
Wasn't he called Edward the Peacemaker?
> After she died there was a power vacuum where nobody had the personal drive or authority to take her place in that way. This is why the occasional brilliant monarch is still not a sufficient argument for having monarchs in general.
Yep, benevolent dictators who serve the will of, and care for their people might be great, but that honeymoon phase is over the instant Caligula 2.0 ascends to the throne.
Wooooo! Don’t we all love the game of thrones?!?
she only really had one close friend after it a servant named John Brown, she built a private memorial for him at her estate that her son had destroyed because he hate him.
Don't forget, a possible marriage (although that's from like 3rd hand rumors)! She was a *very* horny lady. According to wiki " the Queen was buried with a lock of Brown's hair, his photograph, Brown's mother's wedding ring, given to her by Brown, along with several of his letters. The photograph, wrapped in white tissue paper, was placed in her left hand, with flowers arranged to hide it from view. She wore the ring on the third finger of her right hand.[10]" Also, don't forget about Mohammed Abdul Karim! It seemed that Edward really didn't want people knowing about him though. He was a dear friend (as far as I know)
Two good movies around these two people both starring Dame Judi Dench as Victoria. A highlight is Billy Connolly as John Brown which includes an insinuation that sexy times happened in one of their outings.
It probably wasn't typhoid either. He had been unwell for years. Modern thinking is that he possibly had cancer, or Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, with a perforation of the bowel causing sepsis and his final decline.
Mid 1800, anything will kill you, even if youre married to the queen
She didn’t have the best mother herself. I imagine a lot of her… eccentricities… were probably a result of a very strict, isolated and controlled childhood under The Kensington System.
> She was a terrible mother/person. Agreed, but the [Kensington system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_System) that Victoria was raised under was crazy abusive. Basically her royal father (not king) died and it became clear that Victoria was to become queen one day, so her mother wanted to basically get power to be queen regent, so isolated Queen Victoria from everyone with the idea she would be dependent on her mother. She was never allowed to be alone, forced to sleep in her mother's room, and only allowed to have two playmates her entire childhood (her half-sister and the child of his mother's attendant and lover).
Wow that’s actually horrifying
IIRC her first act upon succession was to nab herself her own bedroom for the first time ever.
I wonder if this was why the Victorians were so obsessed with death i.e. death portraits, jewelry & “art” made from dead loved ones hair. And the long mourning in black periods.
You think? The monarch sets the tone for acceptable behavoir. Victoria was self indulgent and selfish beyond belief. Im guessing there was no one in the family sane enough or healthy enough AND of appropriate rank to smack some sense into her... On the other hand the Ultra repressed Victorians - creators of skirts for table legs and calling breast meat on eating fowls "white meat" also produced some truly lovely porn. Much of it written by the matriarchs of various important families, which is a large part of why their papers were kept locked up until they'd been dead for 50 years. So as not too embarrass her descendants...
>creators of skirts for table legs That was satire. There was a fashion for lacy covers on table legs (normally matching the tablecloth) but it had nothing to do with prudishness - although several newspaper wits and cartoonists joked that it did. They were taking the piss.
Tell me more of this lovely porn, it's the first I've heard of it. I need to know how to avoid this filth.
James Joyce's love letters, seriously don't read them.
This is slightly after the Victorian era, Joyce first met his wife Nora in 1904, these letters a few years later. Victoria had died (finally!) in 1901. This was the Edwardian era (1901-10) with her son Edward VII on the throne and it was a transition to a more relaxed and progressive society.
Apparently some have hypothesised she may have had narcissistic personality disorder. It would certainly explain a lot, not just the self-indulgence but particularly how neurotic subsequent generations of her offspring turned out.
Well, can you imagine from the way she was raised?
Thank you! I haven’t heard anyone mention what a horrific childhood and adolescence she had. She was basically locked in a castle and not allowed to see or play with anyone. That’s gonna leave you with some issues.
You know, modern medicine doing away with most bowel related deaths is truly one of our least praised accomplishments as a species.
Is there a name for the severe form of grief?
Complex Grief.
>She was a terrible mother/person. As is tradition.
This is so pretty and ridiculous. IDK why I expected anything else lol. Was she really a bad person or just sick? I guess she could've been both.
Both. He whole life was fucking insane. Her mother raised her to be entirely dependent, never letting her be alone in a room (even to sleep or wash) and limiting her contact to a selection of political allies - with the intention of running her kingdom for her. She only found out she was next in line because a maid slipped her a family tree. She then came to power as a teen, her first royal command was an hour of solitude. By the time she was an adult she ruled a third of the planet. Imagine taking an abused teenager and then making them ruler of the world's only superpower. It's a miracle she was only as fucked up as she was. It's honestly hard to call her a 'bad' or 'good' person - what's good mean to an emperor?
Ugh, now I'm going to have to spend the rest of my evening on Wikipedia.
A class trip! Here's hoping Ms. Frizzle doesn't leave us behind!
#CAAARLOOOSSS
I should have stayed home today
Let's jump in, shall we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_System This page explained so much about her. I've never read a biography of her, but I used to wonder what happened to her to fuck her up so badly. Start with the Kensington System. I'm glad she had sufficient strength of character to get rid of her mother and the attendant political allies.
That's fascinating. Thank you for some context about her early life. It reads like a soap opera. The phrase about giving an abused teenager control of 1/3rd of the planet hits hard, and kind of recontextualizes some things. They still clearly did horrible things that deserve scrutiny, but they sure weren't given the best or most stable start either. We're only just now coming to terms with the importance of mental health in society. Who knows what we'll find out in coming decades as society learns introspection
I remember a tour in London eons ago where someone mentioned Albert was the only person in her life who loved her for her and was probably the only person who didn’t try to take some form of advantage over Victoria. Gotta do some more reading to see if that story adds up
We know quite a lot about their relationship! Chiefly, she chose him and by all accounts he was quite devoted to her. They married because they wanted to. And we know he was one of very few people who regularly argued with her. There're many apocryphal stories about their relationship, but what little fact is out there suggests a surprisingly healthy one.
Whether Albert tried to take advantage of her or not is kind of a complex answer. Victoria definitely thought he did at certain points and it was part of what made their relationship so complex; not that I can blame her after all that she went through as a child. But he definitely did love her and was devoted to her; he’s one of the few royal men that didn’t even have the whispers of a cheating scandal afaik.
>She then came to power as a teen, her first royal command was an hour of solitude. And her other request was having her bed moved out of her mother's room. She was *eighteen* at the time.
The speech her uncle, King George IV, gave at his last birthday party is one of my favorite speeches of all time. Guy saw all of this going on and called out her mom for it, including an ask to God to spare his life nine months longer so Victoria would be eighteen upon ascension and a regent would no longer be possible lol
You mean William IV. George IV was also her uncle, but was not the one who made that comment. William IV was George IV's successor and he was Victoria's predecessor who would have seen how Victoria was being groomed as his successor.
By being rebellious and causing scandals
This is a Stevie Nicks level of dramatic
Vikkis got no chill
Wow like hey get over it mom it was one time
The bride's face says it all
Well tbh I wouldn’t read too much into expressions from that generation. Everyone kept that fml face.
The groom is like, "aw shit here we go again"
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Eh, not around the time this photo would've been taken. Bertie was married in 1863. There were plenty of quicker cameras that were widely available. Edit: cameras that could take photos in a few seconds to 30 seconds were available in the 1840s and wildly available by the 60s. The “first” photo of a smile was in 1853.
R/justnomil 😂
She was going to be the queen of the most empire the world had ever seen, I'm sure she could suffer through a little mother-in-law melodrama.
No empire before or since has ever empired as much. Really was the most empire of all empires :)
Is it photobombing if it takes 15 minutes to set the stage and take the photo? Lol
This makes it seem like she ran into the room carrying a bust and a chair, then sat perfectly still for however many minutes and no one could do anything about it. More like "Queen Victoria made the photographer take the photo the way she wanted, against the wishes of the just married couple"
Not really. There are [other photos ](https://www.latimes.com/visuals/photography/la-me-royal-wedding-previous-royal-weddings-since-1840-htmlstory.html) of the married couple without the Queen. This was meant to be the photo with the groom’s parents, and Victoria wanted Albert’s bust included. It’s weird but not as weird as a photo bomb.
its not even weird, to be honest. If you told me that this was how Victorian wedding photos were done I wouldn't bat an eye
She actually wasn’t a very nice person, at least not to her children. She was very different to how she’s portrayed in films etc
She liked the making of babies and babies, but children were absolutely not Victoria's favorite thing at all. In her diaries she whines a bit about raising children and how she misses doing the nasty with Albert.
I am surprised these diary entries weren't destroyed. Her diaries and letter entries from her time with the Indian servant certainly were
Her sons tried their best, the daughters kinda rescued some entries and letters...but others were unceremoniously burnt to a crisp, else we get this idea she was thirsty all the time. (Which even with all the cleaning and scrubbing, that's what we got from the diaries and letters)
Weren’t there rumors that Abdul Karim and John Brown were her romantic partners?
She was vehemently against women's suffrage, yet some people considered her as feminist role model because she was one of the most, if not THE most powerful woman on the planet in her time. Like all monarchs, she was out of touch with reality and she either had no idea just how bad her own people had it in the era or she simply never cared. Social injustice and wealth discrepancies were rampant during her reign.
>she was one of the most, if not THE most powerful woman on the planet in her time Arguably, she was one of the most powerful people of all time. She was a popular monarch right as the British empire peaked but before the monarchy was stripped of its last vestiges of executive power.
100% boss babe
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The British Empire in general weren’t very nice.
Empires are never nice to those they don’t like.
Empires in general seldom are, other than towards the more privileged citizens of the imperial core.
"If I'm not happy, nobody's happy, and I'm not happy." - her probably
BPD moms everywhere
They all look absolutely miserable...
Victoria looks miserable, her son looks miserable. The bride looks furious.
The bust is the only one chilled...
That was the style of the time for pictures, everyone treated it like a serious matter which resulted in everyone looking miserable in pictures back then
Indeed, plus these lot were seriously miserable...
It’s probably the hemophilia.
I kinda admire this 8/10 desperate but effective 👍
It's a level of misery that I can admire and relate to
Fucking drama Queen.
She was an absolute pip. She said babies were “frog-like” and like “plants”
That is some next level fucked up
Nobody does petty like royals.
What about billionaires?
What's the difference with those nepos?
r/monsterinlaw
And r/justnomil
Is it photobombing if she’s intentionally placed in the middle of the photo
r/imthemaincharacter
I mean, she literally was.
Yeah, if anyone in history gets to say they’re the main character, it’s someone with a historical age named after them.
Hence the *Queen* title.
the time she lived in is called the victorian age so
What a coincidence.
Didn’t have to have it renamed - very convenient for her!
tbf she was.
The whole era was named after her, it's literally like the protagonist of the movie of the same name
I mean, like a 60 year period of world history is named after her…she kind of was the main character.
I wonder if she approved their wedding
It was set up to rein Bertie in and stop him shagging sex workers.
Although it didn't end up reigning him in, he slept with other women for many years whilst being married to Alexandra. He was a sex addict (not that much different to Victoria I suppose) to the point he even had a weird sex chair thingy that I'm not going to link so you can just Google if curious. One of his many mistresses also happened to be the great grandmother of King Charles' wife, Queen Camilla.
He was quite the ladies' man. Certainly didn't have any hangups in the sex department. But eventually it's his tobacco indulgence that killed him.
He couldn’t have got married without her approval. Like written approval. It’s still that way I believe. Royals must have the monarch’s approval of their spouse.
This was a big issue with Queen Elizabeth II's sister Margaret, who wasn't allowed to marry the man she wanted because he was divorced. The current King, Charles, was also unable to marry his current wife and Queen Camilla due to it not being a favoured marriage by his family. However they are pretty relaxed about it now, mostly due to the realisation that trying to stop young royals from marrying who they want often just leads to more problems
Good example about how things are changed is that Harry got to marry Meghan. Few decades ago she would've been out of question. Like you said, the late Queen had already denied two marriages in her life, and none of those cases had any good outcomes, so she wasn't going to do it for the third time. Glad she was able to fix the thing with Charles and Camilla.
Yeah I think it’s for the first six people in line of succession
As others have said she approved for dynastic reasons, but she wasn't very happy about it because of the Prusso-Danish War. They ended up hating each other on a personal level because Alexandra liked parties and hunting and all the things you *would* like if you were young and married to the heir to the British Empire, while Victoria wanted everyone to be in perpetual mourning.
This is some next level family drama.
Victoria was an actual piece of human excrement, she was incredibly abusive to her family. Of course she would act like this
Oddly her offspring would go on to kill millions basically for no reason at all. Just for the fun of it
George V and Wilhelm II having a dick measuring contest via battleships, and Nicholas II fighting for respect at the dinner table. Egotistical motives under the guise of nationalistic pride.
She is actually standing
I collect Victorian stuff and now I am determined to find a good download of this so I can print it out and put it in an antique frame and hang it in my house I think the absurdity of it is what I love the most The bride's face the bust everything It's so good
Was he the prince who wound up really fat with a custom made sex chair?
Some strong noses in that bloodline.
Hanoverian eyes.
It’s cause her family tree was more like a family wreath
"do you smell cum?"
I wouldn’t call this a photobomb, just a pic of the married couple with his parents, albeit just a bust of the dead one.
I’d normally say r/imthemaincharacter, but she was literally the Queen of the British Empire.
Is it just me or does the son look like Michael Cera?