Victoria episode 1

[seasidesally]

anyone watching

am pretty ignorant about history so am looking forward to this

So am I Boss. It seems shoehorned in to give the plebs something to identify with. I cant see why it's interesting. The political bits i quite like.

Agreed guineapigs. I'd rather they stuck to the political manoeuvring and her attempts to navigate it. Sir John is vile too but at least he's doing it for an interesting reason!

there's so much corruption within the palace and politicians,i suppose i shouldnt really be a surprise

must be awful knowing people are waiting for your downfall and plotting against you

Agreed. And I've been googling Sir John. He was actually vile and manipulative in real life. The random servants and their manouverings is just fiction for the sake of it when there are more interesting tales to tell.

Losing interest tbh. The downstairs shenanigans are just too OTT.

Didn't it turn out that Sir John had stolen lots of money from Victoria's mother?

The rats on the cake were horrible! I hope we don't have to put up with Penge for the duration. I might have to record it and fastforward. I don't think id miss much of the plot.

They are really trying to Downtonise this, aren't they, with the servant with a secret that they did to death on there. I hope the servants have a point to them when we get to the Chartists in the next episode.

yes apparently ( according to Wiki) he did once the Duchess of Kents accounts were open it was found that he had embezzled loads of money from her. He also put in place a system to make Victoria completely dependent on him and her mother, to give him all the power when she became Queen. Victoria was a very strong woman!

In one of her diary entries, Victoria described sex as 'a foretaste of Heaven' as I recall.

i love all these facts that people are putting on here,really helps setting the scene

Yes, she enjoyed epic sex sessions with Albert. That's why they had nine children.

Going to ffwd over servants in future episodes.

The morning after her wedding night, Victoria wrote in her diary "Oh, what heavenly bliss....." I imagine she had led such a sad and cheerless young life, and suddenly found herself living with a man she adored!

The young Queen had a 22" waist and took the equivalent of a size 6. I think she looked very pretty as a young woman - despite the frumpy hairstyles that were so popular! Albert was no oil painting!

Didn't she become addicted to laudanum (an alcohol based medicine containing morphine) in later life?
I'm sure I heard it on a random documentary sometime.
Apparently she first took it to relieve pain of childbirth and developed a taste for it - and possibly childbirth too given that she had 9 children!

She loathed childbirth and wasn't that keen on her children, but loved sex

I can't understand why they decided to shoehorn so much into the 11 months between Victoria's accession in June 1837 and her 19th birthday in May 1838. The scandal with Lady Flora Hastings and Melbourne's resignation after the Jamaica Bill took place in 1839, after her 20th birthday. There just isn't any need to pretend that they happened so much earlier.

Ahh the feed the birds scene, I also thought it reminded me of something!

Who's the actor playing the mother?

And can someone remind me how Victoria came to inherit the throne? Wasn't it all a bit unexpected?

It wasn't all that unexpected. She became heir presumptive at the age of 10. Her uncles who were ahead of her in the succession up to that point had no legitimate heirs so it was actually fairly likely that she would succeed.

Sir John's bottomed face is so fecking creepy and distracting.

I was wondering how she became Queen too. But I presumed she was the second son's daughter, but aren't they Duke of York, not Duke of Kent? None of the other uncles had children. She seems to have changed the fertility fortunes of the Royal Family. They werent very good at their heir and a spare until her, were they?

I've just checked on IMDB and I regret to inform you that Penge is in all 8 episodes .

Roger Fulford wrote 'The Royal Dukes' which is a good account of this period. George IV's marriage to Caroline of Brunswick was disasterous, but they had one child, who was safely married and pregnant, so it was assumed that the succession was safe. She then died in childbirth and her uncles scrambled around to get married and produce an heir. One of them - The Duke of Clarence - was living with Mr Jordan, an actress and had several illegitimate children. He promptly left her to marry someone respectable.