Page 157 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

Victoria

Viking Society

Victoria

(1819–1901)
Queen of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland

ictoria reigned as queen of Great Britain and Ireland
Vfrom 1837 until her death. Her empire grew to be
the world’s largest, including at its height 25 percent of
the earth’s population. In 1877 parliament conferred on
her the title Empress of India. Her nine children married
royalty and she became grandmother to Europe.
Victoria was born to Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth
son of George III, and Victoria, a widowed German
princess of Saxe-Coburg. Her parents intended to pro-
duce an heir in an effort to have parliament make good
her father’s debts. After her father died before Victoria
was a year old, her mother raised her strictly in prepara-
tion for her inheritance.William IV,Victoria’s uncle—her
father’s older brother, produced no legitimate heirs and
so with her father’s death Victoria was next in line. Vic-
toria slept in her mother’s bedroom until she ascended to
the throne.Victoria immediately asserted herself by sleep-
ing alone and by dispensing with her mother’s comp-
troller, who had exploited his position. Estrangement
from her mother left the eighteen-year-old queen under
the tutelage of her prime minister, Lord Melbourne, who
instilled in his charge a strong, unquestioned sense of her
central role in politics.
In 1840 she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Excluding him from governing at