To think Queen Victoria was a nutter

[Loveweekends10]

I watched 'Queen Victorias children' last night and was shocked at what an absolute nutcase she was.

Did anyone else see it? Poor Victorian people. Her poor kids.

I think the reason it's become such a focus is the way Victoria and her family were represented in society as the perfect family. They were held up as an image to aspire to so it is interesting to find out what was really going on.

Victorians had very strange photographic settings - I won't put links up, but becasue peopel often didn't have recourse to new technology - such as cameras, often the only photo of a child was after death. I find them sad and poignant - but others would be upset. Easy enough to google if you are inclined

Back to that wedding photo - I see the logic of that - Victoria is in black, still in mourning, albert is dead, the bust is a way of bringing him into a family photo. She's looking at her husband, natural to my mind.

Edward/Bertie was a profligate rake, womaniser, gambler, cad with oodles of mistresses. She's prpbably thinking 'bloody hell, I hope Alex has the wearwithall to calm him down a bit!'

Holly I am fascinated by the death photographs some of them are very strange ,

It was a fascinating program and I've recorded Mrs Brown to watch tonight.
I did not realise the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland was based on Queen Victoria because of her vile and unpredictable tantrums.
So it was clearly public knowledge at the time that she was out of control?

I didn't know that. So people must have known then.

Thanks for the link, but I dont think the photo is too bad either (though odd by our modern standards and the sort of photos we are used to seeing of family groups), and may well have been "staged" not her deliberate pose - to me it looks liek the 2 couples are supposed to be in simialar poses, maybe the point being something about love being forever and death being no barrier

definitely overthinking this now!

Social history is fascinating.

I cant think who it was, minor gentry/wealthy merchant, anyway he was at Qvs coronation, aged 4, in the crowd.

By todays standards a 4yo is but a child, 200 odd years ago he would have been considered a rather small adult and expected to behave as such. He yelled loudly that he needed the toilet. his mother was so overcome with embarassment that she didnt speak to him again until he was in his 20's.

That aside, the poster who said you cannot look at yesterday with todays eyes has it spot on.

Socially, children being cherished is a recent phenomenon - less than 100 years ago -Edwardian times - when women were still having a child every year, no viable contraception and you had the penny insurance agents coming to collect their dues. It was very common to smother a baby to get the life insurance to enable food and education for an older sibling who had made it past the infant mortality stage. Children were disposable.

Again marriage - and those of you into geneology will have come across this - wasn't all that common place in the lower classes. Yes there were life long relationships but marriage became vogue during the Boar War and then stepped up during WW1 simply because the educated officers realised that no war widows pension would be paid to an unmarried women. Servicemen were instructed to formalise their unions as a means of protection for their children and 'wives'.

But it´s also looking with our "standards" that makes it so interesting.

That said, I have a feeling that QV´s attitude to her children (if correctly portrayed) may have been pretty unusual even for then!

Fascinating stuff, will have to look on iPlayer for this.

That photo was a bit spooky, but to be fair i find all very old black and white photos to be kinda spooky.

That photo is hilarious - Alexandra is looking at the camera (happy bride), Edward is looking at Alexandra's breasts (happy groom) and Queen Victoria has her back turned to Alexandra (unhappy MIL) whilst staring at the bust.
Psychologists could have a field day with that!!

Holly I have looked into my family history and have records back into the 1600's all the men had official wives and this is shown on census' s and parish records. So I beg to differ.

Mrs Bucket - it might be a regional thing then. It was kind of at the time some of the newer churches were springing up, like Baptist or Methodist, which didn't have formal recognition and preachers were considered 'ley' rather than CofE - so unions then had to be formalised in a proper recognised church, rather than these Victorian offshoots. It seemed to be a city thing, word didn't spread quite so quickly in those days, so in the rural areas everything was still mainstream CofE.

Fascinating the little snippets you find.

Marriage is about protection of property so if you had nothing to protect you didn't bother that much.

I watched a bit but ended up shouting at the TV. You can't talk about an individual without looking at their context. As others have said, lots of things about Victoria were 'normal' for the time.
They showed a sexual joke about Victoria and Albert saying it suggested lack of respect for Albert, but I have read much worse in Victorian porn. It is all context, if that was in Punch it might signify disrespect but not in other publications.
I can't stand history in the present tense either!

Then of course we can go back further to when nobility, with their arranged marriages, wouldnt actually marry the woman until she was pregnant, to make sure she wasn't barren - couldn't possibly be his fault

I really enjoyed the last two programmes in the series - I missed the first but I have spent most of the morning researching the children on line, when I should have been ironing school uniforms.

The family tree is intertwined with most royal families in Europe, it's very complicated.

I felt fery sad for Louise - married off to the handsome Lord, who was probably homosexual - and having her lover die in her arms.

I thought the two programmes were really well done
(I also trust the BBC history dept!!)

Looking forward to the third episode.

Even realise the context of her behaviour it's hard not to be

I haven't seen all of the programmes yet but from what I have seen this strand is basically a hatchet job. If you read Victoria's letters and those of her children to her yourself you will get a far more complex picture.

Breastfeeding - yup she was horrified by it - like many 'modern' mothers

Daughters marrying - The only child she did not want to marry was Beatrice and that was from the selfish motive that she needed her with her. Victoria was active in finding the 'right' husbands for her other daughters although news of an engagement - any engagement generally also found her whimpering about loss of innocence and being burdened with pregnancy. Given high maternal mortality at the time even amongst royality the latter concern was justified.

Look of babies - yup she though they were ugly. Again that hardly makes her a monster. If you read the oft quoted passage to the end she says something like by the age of 3 or 4 they are often very pretty.

If anybody is interested in Vicky this is an excellent book.

The bit that scared me most of all was how much her actions reminded me of my late mother, especially following the death of my father. Maybe she was just on the extreme end of known tendencies for mothers or widows?

The programmes were fascinating. YANBU btw - she was a loon, and a nasty one at that. I don't care about the historical context.

I'm not sure about children being disposable. I understand that infant mortality was dreadfully high but I don't believe that parents didn't love their children the way we do. Other than seriously damaged, sociopathic parents I suppose - but then that's just like today.

There are gazillions of historical artifacts - toys, graves, writing and so on - demonstrating that (other perhaps in areas of Spartan and Victorian society ) is was generally normal to treat children with love and gentleness (albeit maybe for fewer years).

I haven't watched the end of the first programme yet so I don't know if this was mentioned but Albert died in the same year as Victoria's mother. Her mother's death had a terrible effect on her - partly because her natural tendancy was to prostrate at anything but also because their relationship had been so complex and there was a lot of grief, regret and conflict to work throug. She hadn't really got passed that when Albert (who had also been much grieved at his aunt's (as well as being mil) death, died himself. You also have to remember that Albert had basically been a co-monarch with Victoria handling massive amounts of paperwork. With him dead the pressure of work was real. Would a woman widowed today be expected to keep working in a high pressure role as well as being responsible for 8 children and countless hangers on? The grief reaction was at least partly a defense mechanism. Incidentally the apparently so despised Leopold was the only child who ever came close to being allowed the same role as his father as mother's secretary and adviser........

I got the impression that Leopold was her favourite.

I definitely got the impression she was terrified something would happen to Leopold, and wanted to keep him with her to protect him.

She was controlling and over-protective and possessive of him, but in that case I could see why.

I've always had the impression that Arthur was - like Leopold she was happy with his private life but she didn't have the anxiety about him that Leopold's hea;th produced. Definately not poor Bertie or Affie - but having said that if you read the letters you will find plenty of remarks about how good dear Bertie is. Alexandra his wife doesn't come off as well - too shy, too proud, children too sickly, too fond of 'society'