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Documentary, Queen Victoria's Children - Part 1 - The Best Laid Plans
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00:00Victoria, a queen in a passionate marriage with Prince Albert.
00:12Yet behind closed doors, their domestic life was a battlefield.
00:17Victoria and Albert had terrible rows.
00:21Think of the worst row you've ever had with a partner and then magnify it.
00:25But it wasn't the only stormy relationship in Victoria's life.
00:29She had nine children who didn't always do what she wanted.
00:34He had tantrums, he threw his book on the floor, he pulled his brother's hair, he screamed,
00:38he threw his pencil, he was rude.
00:41I mean, he was really a sort of nightmare of a schoolboy.
00:44In this series, we will explore the turmoil and drama for Queen Victoria's children
00:49as they grew up struggling with domineering parents.
00:52She expected them to be beaten and to be made to understand how they should behave.
01:01Victoria and Albert's dream of blissful domesticity was vital to the values of the age
01:06and to rescuing the monarchy from the threat of revolution.
01:10But it came at a huge personal cost.
01:13She wanted to control the children's lives.
01:17Somebody said the Queen is absolutely insane when it comes to asserting her own maternal authority.
01:25Victoria and Albert wanted their children to strengthen and redefine royalty for generations to come.
01:31But their plan for the family led to a 60-year war between the children and their mother.
01:39Christmas, Windsor, 1860.
01:53Queen Victoria, her beloved husband Albert and their nine children gathered round.
02:00They exchanged presents.
02:03Family games and billiards were played.
02:05It was royalty putting aside its state and becoming in words, acts and deeds one of ourselves.
02:17I have never seen more real happiness than the scene of the mother and all her children.
02:25It was a happy family image that Victoria and Albert were determined to make popular.
02:31They knew they had to find a fresh way of relating to their subjects.
02:35The danger of revolution loomed large.
02:41Many other European monarchies were threatened.
02:44The royal couple needed to save the British monarchy
02:47by connecting with a middle class expanding with wealth and empire.
02:52Their children were key to this plan.
02:55Albert came up with this idea that the royal family should be presented as respectable
03:00and as a close-knit loving family.
03:03So from very, very early on you have a very strong image of a close-knit, almost middle-class family.
03:13It's as if Albert and Victoria are trying to reach out to their middle-class subjects and say,
03:19look, we are like you, trust us.
03:25But behind the facade of this model family was a hornet's nest of hostilities.
03:31The royal household was not this chocolate box image of gorgeousness where everybody loved each other.
03:38It was a place of simmering tensions, huge resentments, extraordinary conniving.
03:45A family life riddled with conflict was perhaps inevitable given the couple's own experiences.
03:50Prince Albert was born near Coburg, Germany, the son of a duke.
03:57It's very hard in those days to find suitably upmarket candidates to marry someone like Victoria.
04:05You know, they had to be without, you know, stain on their character.
04:08They had to have an absolutely exemplary background, which Albert fitted because he was very moral
04:14and very upright and very dutiful and there was not a stain on his character.
04:20Victoria was probably the best catch in Europe at the time.
04:24I mean, queen of a huge and growing empire.
04:28She was an extraordinary catch from modest little prince like Albert, from this rather obscure duchy.
04:36In 1839, the handsome German prince arrived at Windsor Castle
04:41for an arranged meeting with his first cousin, the queen.
04:46From the start, their mutual passion was obsessive.
04:50Oh, how I love him.
04:54How intensely, how tenderly, how ardently.
04:59Your image fills my whole soul.
05:02Even in my dreams, I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth.
05:06It wasn't love at first sight, the relationship between Queen Victoria and Albert, but it was pretty near to it.
05:15The second time that they met, Queen Victoria rushed back and said that she had seen Albert again and he is beautiful.
05:24I mean, she was full of admiration for him, and it was really a love match, I think, or the useful coincidence of something that was politically useful.
05:36But Albert was daunted by his role as a subject to his feisty queen.
05:44My future lot is high and brilliant, but also plentifully strewn with thorns.
05:50The young couple married the following year.
05:55They faced a public with both a distrust of the monarchy and an intense dislike for Albert, who was seen as a humorless German intellectual.
06:04One of the strange things was that in Victorian England, there were all sorts of rather obscene lamphoons,
06:12one of which, about the wedding night, went something like this, that Albert entered by Bushy,
06:20he advanced through Maidenhead, penetrated Virginia water and left stains behind.
06:27Not the sort of thing that you'd expect in Victorian England, but it was a reflection, I think, of the antipathy that Albert had created.
06:38Here he was, this priggish, pompous foreigner, who'd arrived in order to exploit the wealth and the dignity of Britain by marrying the Queen.
06:50Although besotted with Albert, Victoria did not concede any political power to him.
06:56He complained.
06:58I am only the husband and not the master in my house.
07:02And the power play was only just beginning.
07:07I think she was very stroppy and argumentative, and there's a funny comment Albert made not long after he was married to her in 1840.
07:15He wrote home to his brother and he said, well, Victoria's shaping up very well.
07:18She's only had two tantrums recently, and his attitude was her, was sort of knocking her into line, making her calm down and be the dutiful, meek little wife.
07:31Within weeks of their marriage, Victoria would give them both a project to work on.
07:36She was pregnant.
07:40The royal couple's own experiences of family life had not been happy.
07:46Albert's early years in Germany were overshadowed by the dramatic collapse of his parents' marriage.
07:52Well, he comes from a totally dysfunctional family, and he had these traumas from childhood onwards because his father more or less broke up the family.
08:05He was cheating on his wife and discarded her when she got too old.
08:11I mean, his father was having affairs with underage girls, and when his own wife was over 21, he just, you know, got rid of her.
08:20And, of course, to have such a father is pretty awful, and Albert wanted to love him, respect him, but at the same time resented him for all this that had happened.
08:30So, of course, Albert wanted to be completely different.
08:32He rebelled against the bad behaviour.
08:35He wanted to be the model son and later father.
08:38Victoria, too, had much to react against.
08:43She had grown up secluded at Kensington Palace under the control of her domineering mother, the Duchess of Kent.
08:51I had led a very unhappy life as a child, had no scope for my very violent feelings of affection, and did not know what a happy domestic life was.
09:01She goes for a period of referring to her mother as the Duchess, which would be rather like us calling our mothers Mrs Smith.
09:07I mean, so, so estranged.
09:09She tells Melbourne in 1838 that she doesn't think Mama has ever loved her.
09:13So she's beginning to become a mother herself just at the time when her feelings about her mother are still very, very, very frosty.
09:21With their own sad childhood still fresh in their minds, the couple were resolved to create a happy family of their own, a model for the dynasty and the nation.
09:34They're determined, like all conscientious parents, that they're going to make it better this time.
09:39They are, in a sense, going to cure or heal their own childhoods by doing it right with their own children.
09:45And, you know, everybody, lots of us have been there.
09:48It's a very, very common impulse to think that you can put right in the next generation what went wrong in your own family life.
09:55The first child, called Victoria, but known as Vicky, was born in 1840.
10:13The young queen, busy with royal duties, only saw her new daughter twice a day.
10:19She did, however, make time to spend with Albert.
10:29Queen Victoria was infatuated with Albert on a physical plane.
10:34She was excited by his good looks.
10:37She adored watching him shave and put on his stockings and talked about the excitement of seeing nothing, that there was nothing underneath them.
10:47He was so cold, dear angel, being in grand tenue with tight white Casimir pantaloons, nothing under them, and high boots.
10:59The unfortunate by-product of this infatuation was, of course, children.
11:04They didn't know anything about contraception, and the children arrived with monotonous regularity.
11:11Within a year of Vicky's birth, Albert Edward, known as Bertie, was born.
11:21Our little boy is a wonderfully strong and large child.
11:26I help and pray he may be like his dearest papa.
11:30Vicky is not at all pleased with her brother.
11:32Over the next five years, another three children appeared, Alice, Alfred and Helena.
11:48She didn't like babies.
11:50She always said they were horrible, ugly little things, and they were not even acceptable to look at or hold till they were about six months old.
11:57An ugly baby is a very nasty object.
12:05The prettiest are frightful when undressed, as long as they have their big body and little limbs and that terrible frog-like action.
12:15Victoria not only found her own babies repulsive, she also refused to breastfeed them, having a...
12:22..totally insurmountable disgust for the process.
12:27She installed a wet nurse in Buckingham Palace.
12:32I think the idea of giving over her body for another six months, for another 12 months, to these frog-like people is absolutely disgusting to her.
12:43I think the central relationship for her is always the one with Albert.
12:46We know that they enjoyed a very vigorous sex life, and I think she had that feeling that her breasts were for Alberts, they weren't for the children.
12:55Her breasts were sexual rather than maternal.
12:59The couple's vigorous sex life brought more children, Louise, Arthur, Leopold and Beatrice, making nine born over 17 years.
13:09Having a large family wasn't just about purging the couple's unhappy past.
13:18For the survival of the monarchy, Victoria and Albert knew it was vital to distance themselves from the louche Hanoverians,
13:26as epitomised by Victoria's notorious uncle, George IV.
13:30George IV, the prince regent, had been famous for being fat, unfaithful and spending a very great deal of money,
13:38and his other brothers were no better.
13:41In fact, one of them, Cumberland, was famously involved in all sorts of accusations that he'd murdered his valet.
13:49So, really, the royal family before Victoria had been extremely publicly unpopular.
13:56So, Albert came up with this idea that the royal family should be presented as respectable and as a close-knit, loving family.
14:10Victoria and Albert needed to create a fresh image that would be approved of by their most important audience,
14:17the expanding middle class.
14:20Family values were key to this new bourgeois ideal, as the artist Landseer understood.
14:27Landseer painted a portrait of Victoria and Albert and the Princess Royal in 1841,
14:36and it's called Windsor Castle in Modern Times.
14:39And that title is really important because it's signalling very clearly that there's been a change,
14:46that this is about a modern version of the monarchy.
14:50I think what's the most interesting aspect of that painting is the way that the couple,
14:59Victoria and Albert themselves, are shown.
15:04She holds a posy of flowers in her hands,
15:06so it clearly demarcates that she represents femininity, gentleness, purity.
15:13I think Landseer's painting shows us the way in which the royal family were using images of the family,
15:24intimacy, femininity, in order to support and promote a new image of the monarchy.
15:33They say no sovereign was ever more loved than I am.
15:38I am bold enough to say, and this is because of our domestic home and the good example it presents.
15:44One place more than any other gave them a stage on which to play out their domestic ideal.
15:53Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
15:56Queen Victoria enthused,
15:58During these holidays, the children absorbed some of the most cherished values of the middle classes on their vast royal estate.
16:20Enjoying modest pleasures, they hunted butterflies and played on Osborne's beach.
16:36They learned to be self-sufficient in a specially built Swiss cottage,
16:40where they were taught to cook, and where Albert helped them grow fruit and vegetables.
16:45He and Queen Victoria were very keen that they should learn real skills.
16:51All the princesses could cook and bake beautifully, which astounded people.
16:56In later life, they'd just assumed they would have always had cooks.
16:58They would never have had to do this kind of, you know, servant's work themselves.
17:02They all learned to tend gardens, to grow vegetables and flowers.
17:05They learned about the natural world.
17:07They learned all sorts of really important life lessons as well.
17:11This was, I think, a way of trying to genuinely engage with the business of everyday life
17:18and acquire skills, domestic skills.
17:21I mean, even if they weren't really going to use them very much in later life,
17:24Albert certainly thought it was important that those children knew what to do in a kitchen,
17:30you know, knew how to grow a carrot, these sort of things.
17:33They were important to him.
17:34Celebrations of the family ideal were created throughout the house and gardens at Osborne.
17:45Victoria and Albert's initials are intertwined.
17:49The children, cherub-like, adorn furniture as characters in a new kind of royal drama.
17:59Albert, the patriarch, was crucial to the design of this utopia.
18:03It was meant to be a stark contrast to society life in London.
18:10Albert hated the loose morals of lavish dinners, cards and parties.
18:16Despite cultivating an ordinary domestic image,
18:19the royal family was in a class of its own, living in splendid isolation.
18:26Morally upright in the extreme, Albert was everything his amoral father hadn't been.
18:31He became emblematic of a new kind of fatherhood, totally loyal to his wife, with a hands-on approach to his children.
18:42Albert adored the eldest, Vicky.
18:46Lady Littleton remembered him playing with his daughter.
18:49Albert tossed and romped with her, making her laugh and crow and kick heartily.
18:55The Queen, however, didn't join in, saying,
18:59He is so kind to them and romps with them so delightfully and manages them so beautifully and firmly.
19:05Albert is not an absent aristocratic dad wandering over the grouse moor and seeing his children, you know, once a year and not even remembering their names.
19:16Prince Albert is this new kind of man, this new kind of bourgeois father who gets most of his pleasure and definition from what goes on at home,
19:25who's intimately involved in the nursery, who comes home after a hard day at the office,
19:29or in the case of Prince Albert, hard day signing papers, and plays and romps with the children.
19:38Albert, considering himself an expert on human behaviour, was fascinated by the progress of his brood.
19:45There is certainly a great charm as well as interest in watching the development of feelings and faculties in a little child.
19:52Albert wasn't just curious about the children.
19:57He organised a fastidious plan for moulding his offspring into role models for the nation and for Europe.
20:05Prince Albert observed,
20:07Upon the good education of princes, and especially those who are destined to govern,
20:13the welfare of the world in these days greatly depends.
20:16Prince Albert himself was the product of an efficient German education.
20:23He developed a kind of educational programme,
20:27which his advisor, Baron Stockmar, said anybody who carried this out would develop brain fever immediately,
20:35that it was too much for them to have to undergo.
20:42Albert's plan for the children began when they were infants.
20:46The chief objects here are their physical development,
20:50the actual rearing up, the training to obedience.
20:54The young Alice received a real punishment by whipping for telling a lie.
21:00She wasn't the only one subject to Albert's harsh discipline.
21:04When Vicky misbehaved, he was perfectly prepared to have her hands tied behind her back,
21:11and she was whipped, and Bertie was whipped,
21:13and when Louise played the piano, for example,
21:18and she hit a wrong note,
21:21Albert would hit her fingers,
21:23and she hit quite a lot of wrong notes.
21:26So Albert was not, by any means,
21:30an enlightened modern father,
21:33but he wasn't an ogre either.
21:35As part of his plan,
21:48Albert trained the children relentlessly in social graces.
21:52They practised at what he called circling,
21:55to enter a room and make one's way around it,
21:58speaking to each of the assembled company in turn.
22:01Victoria and Albert's children were educated at their station in life.
22:08I mean, obviously, only one of them was going to, well,
22:11accede to the throne,
22:12but they had to all take part, as it were, in royal life.
22:16So they had to learn how to make conversation,
22:19how to circulate at levées and parties,
22:22all the sort of politesses that were necessary for a royal education,
22:27and also things like languages.
22:29I mean, after all, they knew they were going to meet other royal households,
22:33so the education in language is very important, too.
22:36It was a strict regime.
22:41Fortunately, the eldest child, Vicky, was extremely bright.
22:45Under Albert's regime, she was first taught French
22:48when she was just 18 months old.
22:51Albert, right from the time when she's a tiny baby, dotes on Vicky.
22:55And, you know, the arrival of more children
22:56doesn't shake his absolute devotion to Vicky.
23:00Vicky's almost an infant prodigy.
23:02She's speaking Latin, she's speaking French,
23:04she's reading Shakespeare, all at a very early age.
23:06Lady Lyttelton, a governess,
23:10noted that the princess, before her seventh birthday,
23:14might pass for a lady of 17
23:16in whichever of her three languages
23:18she chooses to entertain the company.
23:22Vicky, like all her siblings, could speak German.
23:27In private, Victoria and Albert didn't hide their German roots,
23:31but to the public, the Queen was anxious to appear completely British.
23:37The prince and queen speak English quite as much as German.
23:41One of the things that's most surprising about Queen Victoria
23:46is how much she preferred Germany to England,
23:49although she was Queen of England.
23:51She obviously was half German herself, and she married a German.
23:54And in private, the family conversation was in German.
23:57All of the royal children were commented on as having quite prominent German accents.
24:03Even in old age, their friends would comment on them as speaking with a German accent.
24:08And there's a lovely letter that remains from one of Princess Louise's ladies-in-waiting,
24:13who said that when Prince Arthur came to visit Princess Louise,
24:17when they were quite elderly,
24:18and they were reminiscing about their childhood in the nursery,
24:22their accents became incredibly Germanic.
24:25And she said it was as if they'd started speaking in a completely different language.
24:29They were still speaking English,
24:30but their accent sounded as though they were Germans newly arrived in England
24:35because they went back to their childhood.
24:39Victoria and Albert had a clear mission for their children,
24:42but the couple's obsessive relationship would threaten to derail it.
24:48Victoria was distracted from her role as mother
24:51by her intense passion for Albert.
24:55Even after the exhaustion of having many children,
24:58the Queen was still longing for sensual pleasure.
25:03Besotted with Albert, Victoria idolised him in front of the children.
25:08None of you can ever be proud enough
25:11of being the child of such a father
25:13who has not his equal in the world,
25:16so great, so good, so faultless.
25:20Victoria worshipped Albert so ardently,
25:23she wanted her children to be made in his image.
25:25When pregnant with Bertie, the heir to the throne,
25:28she remarked,
25:29I wonder very much who our little boy will be like.
25:32You will understand how fervent my prayers,
25:35and I am sure everybody's must be,
25:36to see him resemble his angelic, dearest father
25:39in every, every respect, both in body and in mind.
25:44I think Victoria was more interested in recreating Albert
25:48in her children than she was in actually seeing
25:50what kind of personalities they had themselves.
25:52She is really heir to a much older tradition
25:56of thinking of children as blank slates.
25:59In a sense, whatever you put into them,
26:01they will become.
26:02So if she puts into them the qualities of Albert,
26:06the best qualities,
26:07his rationality, his good sense,
26:09his prudence,
26:12you will get it back.
26:14You will produce lots of little alberts.
26:16Some of them will wear breeches,
26:17some of them wear skirts,
26:19but basically they're all little alberts.
26:21She treats them as if they were
26:22a particularly tricky engineering project.
26:24And if you sort of get the mechanics right,
26:26you will get a nice, sturdy result
26:29that will go forth in the image of their father.
26:35Victoria, like Albert,
26:37believed that she could shape
26:39her children's character and destiny.
26:41But this master plan for saving the monarchy
26:44was creating a battlefield.
26:47Victoria and Albert had terrible rows.
26:49I mean, think of the worst row
26:52you've ever had with a partner
26:53and then magnify it.
26:55It involves lots of slamming doors,
26:57people being sort of locking themselves
26:59into rooms, lots of shouting.
27:01Come down, come down, come down.
27:03Open the door.
27:05Victoria's saying, you know,
27:06I never realised I'd be so miserable being married.
27:09I mean, absolutely appalling.
27:14The first huge row
27:15came two years into their marriage.
27:17An argument developed over who else
27:20should have a say in the children's upbringing.
27:24Victoria's closest and most powerful confidant,
27:27Baroness Leysen, looked after the nursery.
27:30But Albert hated the German governess.
27:34It's a position of great power.
27:36Now, when Victoria marries Albert,
27:38Albert clearly realises that Leysen
27:41is the one he's going to have to watch.
27:43But he's prepared to play a softly, softly game at first.
27:46And so when the first baby comes along,
27:48Vicky, the Princess Royal,
27:50Victoria puts Leysen in charge of the nursery.
27:53And Albert's prepared to go along with it for a while.
27:56But he clearly, clearly has problems with Leysen.
27:59What he does is...
28:01I mean, everybody in this psychic drama
28:03does very complicated manoeuvring.
28:04So they shuffle off the bits they don't like about somebody
28:07and put them on to somebody else.
28:08So what Albert does is he blames Leysen
28:11for everything he doesn't like about Victoria.
28:13A heated quarrel broke out
28:18over Leysen's treatment of baby Vicky,
28:21who is losing weight.
28:23Albert wrote to advisor Baron Stockmar.
28:27Victoria is too hasty and passionate for me
28:30to be able often to speak of my difficulties.
28:33She will not hear me out,
28:35but flies into a rage
28:36and overwhelms me with reproaches of suspiciousness,
28:40want of trust, ambition, envy.
28:44Queen Victoria herself wrote to Stockmar.
28:48There is often an irritability in me
28:50which makes me say cross and odious things.
28:54Of the family row,
28:55Stockmar despaired.
28:56The nursery gives me more trouble
29:00than the government of a kingdom.
29:03Albert, vying for control,
29:06described Leysen as...
29:07The hag,
29:09obsessed with the lust of power,
29:11a crazy, stupid intriguer
29:13who regards herself as a demigod.
29:17So, in a sense,
29:18they are on a collision course.
29:19One of them has got to go.
29:21They are two very, very tough Germans.
29:22And there isn't really room
29:25for two tough Germans in the Royal Nursery.
29:28One of them's got to go.
29:29And in the end, it's Leysen.
29:33Albert was also deeply troubled
29:36by Victoria's fierce temper.
29:38It was a reminder
29:39of a particular royal family legacy.
29:42Insanity.
29:44Albert scalded Victoria,
29:46particularly when she lost her temper.
29:48And there was a whole sort of atmosphere
29:50around Victoria losing her temper.
29:52I mean, it wasn't just
29:53that she had a filthy temper,
29:54which she did,
29:55but there was also this sort of fear
29:57that, you know,
29:57if the Queen loses her temper,
29:59this is the sign of the beginning
30:00of the madness of George III.
30:03They were all very conscious
30:04of the idea that Victoria
30:05might have inherited
30:06this awful Hanoverian malady.
30:09Of course she hadn't.
30:09She was incredibly sane.
30:11But it means that Albert
30:12tiptoes around Victoria
30:14and the doctor says
30:14you mustn't confront her
30:15when she has a temper
30:17because it'll make it much worse.
30:18You must just walk away.
30:19Sir James Clarke,
30:22the royal doctor,
30:23advised,
30:24Regarding the Queen's mind,
30:27unless she is kept quiet,
30:29the time will come
30:30when she will be in danger.
30:32Much depends upon
30:33the Prince's management.
30:37Increasingly,
30:37the Prince consort
30:38treated Victoria
30:39as he did his children.
30:41He sought control
30:42over his Queen
30:43and began to remould
30:45her character.
30:47He made her
30:48his own creature.
30:50And I think in a way
30:50it's rather sad
30:51because the one thing
30:52I like about Victoria
30:53was her wonderful spontaneity,
30:56her honesty,
30:57and in a way
30:58her impetuosity
30:59was very charming.
31:01Before she married Albert,
31:02she loved to stay up late
31:03and dance till two
31:04in the morning
31:05and gossip with her ladies.
31:07And he knocked
31:08all that out of her.
31:09You know,
31:09they went to bed at ten.
31:11He didn't like staying up late
31:12because he'd fall asleep.
31:14He didn't like dancing late.
31:16And he kind of knocked
31:18that wonderful,
31:20rounded,
31:21vibrant personality
31:22down into the kind of mould
31:25of this rather dutiful
31:26and dowdy little housefrau.
31:29Victoria,
31:30still obsessional
31:31and insecure,
31:32would seek Albert's approval
31:34after an outburst.
31:35How sadly deficient I am
31:37and how oversensitive
31:39and irritable
31:39and how uncontrollable
31:41my temper is
31:42when annoyed and hurt.
31:43Have I improved
31:44as I ought?
31:46I think she was difficult
31:47to worry about
31:48and I think Albert
31:48actually in his way
31:49was a little bit difficult.
31:51He was rather schoolmasterly.
31:52He sort of treated Victoria
31:54rather like an errant child,
31:56which of course
31:56in a sense she was.
31:58You know,
31:58he was all for improving her
31:59and he would congratulate her
32:01if he felt she had improved.
32:05Albert praised her
32:06for what he called
32:07unbroken success
32:09in the hard struggle
32:11for self-control.
32:13Unlike their father,
32:15the children had no escape
32:16from their mother's
32:17unpredictable
32:18and stormy temper.
32:20Victoria would consent
32:22to her children
32:22being beaten.
32:24She expected them
32:25to be beaten
32:27and to be made
32:28to understand
32:28how they should behave.
32:29There's famously
32:31a comment in one
32:32of the ladies-in-waiting's
32:33diaries
32:33about when Prince Leopold
32:35was being naughty
32:36as a little boy
32:36and Queen Victoria
32:37wanted to beat him
32:38and we must remember
32:39that Leopold was
32:39haemophiliac
32:40and Queen Victoria's
32:41mother said,
32:43please don't beat him,
32:44he's just a little boy,
32:45he's just being a little boy.
32:46How can you bear
32:47to hear him crying?
32:49And she says,
32:49once you've had nine,
32:50mother,
32:50you don't notice it anymore.
32:55Unsurprisingly,
32:55the children would always
32:56be scared of Victoria.
32:59The Queen's private secretary
33:00once recalled seeing
33:01the children flee their mother.
33:04We were suddenly nearly
33:05carried away
33:06by a stampede of royalties,
33:08headed by the Duke of Cambridge
33:09and brought up by Leopold,
33:11going as fast as they could.
33:13We thought it was a mad bull,
33:15but they cried out,
33:16the Queen,
33:17the Queen!
33:20I imagine the children
33:21were fairly,
33:22certainly in awe of Victoria,
33:25as, you know,
33:25as more,
33:26I mean,
33:26Vicky certainly wasn't.
33:28Vicky would give
33:28as good as she got.
33:30Edward, I think,
33:30largely Bertie,
33:31largely ignored her,
33:33but I'm sure
33:33the younger children
33:34would have been,
33:36you know,
33:36been pretty much
33:37in awe of her,
33:38of course,
33:38scared of her tempers.
33:42Victoria's harsh parenting
33:44frustrated Albert.
33:46It is indeed a pity
33:48that you find
33:49no consolation
33:50in the company
33:50of your children.
33:52The root of the trouble
33:53lies in the mistaken notion
33:55that the function
33:56of a mother
33:57is to be always correcting,
33:59scolding,
33:59ordering them about.
34:03She wanted to control
34:04the children's lives,
34:06absolutely,
34:07right down to the last T,
34:09and she went on doing that
34:11into their adulthood.
34:12It was most extraordinary.
34:14Somebody said,
34:15the Queen
34:15is absolutely insane
34:17when it comes to
34:18asserting
34:19her own maternal authority.
34:21The rouse
34:28and Victoria's temper
34:29were not the only
34:30cause of problems
34:31for the family.
34:33Albert's heavy workload
34:34also created tensions.
34:37Being trapped
34:38in the perpetual cycle
34:40of pregnancy
34:40and childbirth
34:41forced Victoria
34:42to allow Albert
34:43to take on
34:44some of her political duties
34:46on top of his own
34:47ambitious projects.
34:50Albert,
34:51attempting to be
34:52the role model father,
34:54struggled to balance
34:55work and family.
34:59He loved his children
35:00when he had time
35:02for them,
35:02but Albert was on
35:03this self-created
35:05treadmill
35:06of work,
35:07work,
35:07duty,
35:08endlessly wearing himself
35:10out on 101 committees
35:12doing this,
35:12that and the other.
35:13The more Albert worked,
35:21the more he was away
35:22not just from the children,
35:24but his needy wife.
35:26You cannot think
35:28how much it costs me
35:29or how completely
35:30upset I am
35:31and feel
35:31when Albert is away.
35:33All the numerous children
35:34are as nothing
35:35to me
35:36when he is away.
35:42In the absence
35:43of her husband,
35:44Victoria came
35:45to resent the children.
35:47No one recognises
35:48more than I do
35:49the blessings
35:50of having children,
35:51but the anxieties
35:52and trouble,
35:54not to say sorrows,
35:55are quite as great
35:56as the blessings.
36:02Despite the tensions
36:04between parents
36:05and children
36:05behind closed doors,
36:07the public face
36:08of the plan
36:09was a great success.
36:10Victoria and Albert
36:13were setting
36:13the moral tone
36:14for a new age,
36:16helped by a fledgling
36:18technology
36:18in the 1850s,
36:20photography.
36:24This is the first
36:25publicly shown photograph
36:27of the royal family,
36:28taken at Osborne
36:29in 1857,
36:31of Victoria,
36:32Albert
36:32and all nine children.
36:34They have their
36:38official portraits,
36:39they have their
36:39family album,
36:40but they also
36:42become a kind
36:43of surrogate family
36:44or an extra family
36:47for the rest
36:48of the country
36:48because you can
36:49collect pictures
36:50of the royal household.
36:52It was a hugely
37:01successful rebranding
37:03exercise
37:04because for the
37:05first time
37:06the monarchy,
37:08instead of being
37:10seen as
37:11a kind of
37:13abstract
37:13form of power
37:16that people
37:17couldn't relate to,
37:19instead
37:19they started
37:20to see as
37:21a distorted
37:22reflection of
37:23their own families,
37:25of their own lives.
37:26The queen became
37:26a person,
37:28the children
37:28became real people.
37:31You could understand
37:31them,
37:32you could sympathise
37:33with them,
37:33you could gossip
37:33about them.
37:37The royal couple
37:38learned to turn
37:39lack of privacy
37:40into an advantage.
37:42The public
37:43lapped up
37:43these nuggets
37:44of royal intimacy.
37:49But behind
37:50the media image,
37:51the plan for the
37:52family was not
37:53going as smoothly
37:54as it could have been.
37:56It soon became
37:57apparent that
37:58personalities might
37:59get in the way
38:00of Victoria and
38:02Albert's desire
38:03for princes and
38:04princesses to be
38:05made in the image
38:06of their father.
38:08It was Bertie,
38:10the heir to the throne,
38:11who presented
38:12the biggest problem.
38:13From an early age,
38:14he refused to conform
38:16to Albert's plan
38:17for the children's
38:18education.
38:18unlike his sister
38:20Vicky,
38:21he found learning
38:22difficult and
38:23couldn't concentrate.
38:26Bertie was,
38:27I think,
38:29abnormally
38:31backward.
38:33He just couldn't
38:35focus his mind.
38:38Perhaps he really
38:39didn't have much
38:40of a mind to focus.
38:41His tutor,
38:45Frederick Gibbs,
38:47remarked,
38:48I had to do
38:49some arithmetic
38:49with the Prince
38:50of Wales.
38:52Immediately,
38:52he became
38:53passionate.
38:54The pencil was
38:55flung to the end
38:56of the room,
38:57the stool was
38:58kicked away,
38:59and he was hardly
39:00able to apply
39:01himself at all.
39:04With him,
39:05it was a complete
39:06and utter failure,
39:08right from a very
39:09early age.
39:11He acted out.
39:13He had tantrums.
39:14He threw his book
39:15on the floor.
39:16He pulled his
39:16brother's hair.
39:17He screamed.
39:18He threw his pencil.
39:19He was rude.
39:20I mean,
39:21he was really a sort
39:21of nightmare
39:22of a schoolboy.
39:25Bertie was forever
39:27chastised by Victoria
39:28for his...
39:29Systematic idleness,
39:32laziness,
39:33disregard of everything.
39:34Later in life,
39:38Victoria would recognise
39:39a fundamental
39:40shortcoming
39:41in the grand plan.
39:43You will find
39:44as your children
39:44grow up that as a rule
39:46children are a bitter
39:46disappointment,
39:48their greatest object
39:49being to do
39:49precisely what
39:50their parents
39:51do not wish
39:52and have anxiously
39:53tried to prevent.
39:54And often when
39:55children have been
39:55less watched
39:56and less taken care of,
39:57the better they turn out.
39:59This is inexplicable
40:00and very annoying.
40:01We all as parents
40:03would like our children
40:05to turn out
40:05exactly as we want
40:06and one of the things
40:08you have to accept
40:09is that children,
40:10you know,
40:10are not little mini-me's
40:11and they are not
40:12going to do
40:12exactly what you want
40:13and you have to
40:14accept that
40:15and build that
40:16into your plan
40:16and if you don't,
40:17you're going to be
40:18disappointed.
40:20Victoria and Albert
40:21weren't just hoping
40:22to gain public approval
40:24through their children.
40:25They had aspirations
40:26for the dynasty.
40:29The royal couple
40:30had a vision
40:31of a harmonious
40:32Europe
40:32with an Anglo-German
40:33dynasty at its heart.
40:35They believed
40:36a marriage
40:36between daughter
40:37Vicky and Fritz,
40:39heir to the Prussian throne,
40:41could create
40:41a pro-English Germany.
40:43A meeting was arranged
40:45at Balmoral.
40:46The meeting at Balmoral,
40:48this very erotically
40:49charged meeting
40:50between Fritz and Vicky
40:51in Scotland,
40:53was supposed to be
40:55entirely secret
40:57and immense efforts
40:58were made
40:58to keep it secret.
40:59But, of course,
41:00these efforts
41:00were completely
41:01in vain
41:01and no sooner
41:03had the meeting
41:04occurred
41:04than the news
41:05leaked out.
41:07The leading papers
41:07had people
41:08at court
41:09who were listening,
41:10picking up tidbits
41:11for them.
41:15When the arrangement
41:16was announced
41:17in the press,
41:18far from celebrating,
41:20the British public
41:21were horrified.
41:22Prussia had refused
41:23to unite with Britain
41:24in the Crimean War
41:25just a few years earlier,
41:27intensifying anti-German
41:29feelings.
41:31One newspaper commented,
41:32The supposed political
41:34character of the match
41:35and the distrust
41:36of a policy
41:36for Germanising England
41:38have been the real causes
41:39of the general disfavour
41:41with which the proposed
41:42marriage has been regarded.
41:45Prince Albert knew
41:47he had to spin
41:47the marriage
41:48as a love match,
41:49despite his political ambition
41:51for a redrawn Europe.
41:53The more it is made clear
41:55that our children's marriage
41:57is the outcome
41:58of mutual attraction
41:59rather than
42:00of political motives,
42:02the more certain it is
42:03that any storm
42:04which might rise
42:05between now
42:05and the date
42:06of the wedding
42:07will pass by.
42:09Albert was very aware
42:11of how the royal family
42:13were written up,
42:14how they were perceived.
42:15He was quite interested
42:16in managing that process
42:18and the marriage
42:19of his eldest daughter
42:20was something that,
42:22you know,
42:22he wasn't going to be asleep
42:25about the implications
42:26of this.
42:27It was, in effect,
42:28a kind of political match.
42:30Unity between England
42:32and Germany
42:33was something
42:34that everybody wanted.
42:39Despite being part
42:40of the plan,
42:41both Victoria
42:42and Albert
42:43were devastated
42:44at losing
42:44their totally inexperienced
42:4617-year-old daughter
42:47in this child marriage.
42:50Days before the wedding,
42:51Victoria wrote,
42:53After all,
42:54it is like taking a lamb
42:55to be sacrificed.
42:58The pang of parting
42:59was great on all sides
43:01and the void
43:02which Vicky has left
43:03in our household
43:04and family circle
43:05will stand gaping
43:07for many a day.
43:09Yet the queen,
43:10characteristically,
43:11seemed even more concerned
43:13with her own feelings.
43:17One of the stories
43:18that I found
43:19very poignant and sad
43:20is that this is
43:21during Albert's lifetime.
43:23When her daughter,
43:24Vicky,
43:24gets married
43:25and she moves to Prussia,
43:26she's been married
43:26for a few weeks,
43:27maybe five or six weeks,
43:28and she writes
43:29to her mother saying
43:30how difficult
43:31she's finding life
43:32in Prussia.
43:33There's always
43:33other people around,
43:35she's constantly having
43:36to go to official functions
43:37and she longs
43:39for the times
43:39when it's just her
43:41and Fritz,
43:41her husband,
43:42who she loves very much
43:44and she wants
43:44to be on her own with.
43:46And her mother responds
43:47to a woman
43:48who's just married
43:49and says,
43:50Oh darling,
43:51at last you understand
43:52why I always resented
43:55you children being around.
43:56I only ever wanted it
43:58to be me and Papa.
44:01Their first child
44:02was out of the nest
44:03as part of the plan,
44:05but there were further
44:06strains on the family.
44:08Albert found his enormous
44:09workload exhausting.
44:13By May 1860,
44:15he compared himself
44:16to a donkey on a treadmill.
44:20He too would rather
44:22munch thistles
44:23in the castle moat.
44:25Small are the thanks
44:26he gets for his labour.
44:30He had a tremendously
44:32toilsome approach
44:36to life
44:37and ultimately,
44:41I think you might well say
44:42that this exhausted him
44:44and perhaps killed him.
44:49Albert's health
44:50was declining.
44:50By this point,
44:52he was pained
44:53with neuralgia
44:54and toothache,
44:55insomnia
44:55and fits of shivering.
44:58But Victoria
44:58had little room
44:59for sympathy.
45:04Having given birth
45:05to nine children,
45:06she thought Albert
45:07was weak
45:07in his inability
45:08to endure pain
45:10and found it
45:11and found it
45:11most trying.
45:16The attitude
45:17to Albert's illness
45:18that you see
45:19in Victoria often
45:20is, oh, it's man flu,
45:21you know.
45:22He's putting on
45:23a big act
45:24about how ill he is
45:25and we women
45:26are sterner stuff.
45:27We women
45:28have to endure childbirth.
45:29So she always felt
45:31Albert was rather
45:32putting on the agony
45:33and didn't take it
45:34very seriously.
45:35Victoria was a very selfish,
45:37egocentric person.
45:38She had a place
45:39for Albert.
45:39She needed Albert.
45:40She needed Albert
45:41to be a rock.
45:43She needed him
45:43to be somebody
45:44she could rely on
45:46and, of course,
45:46if he was weak
45:47and ailing,
45:48she couldn't rely on him.
45:49She had to care for him
45:51and I think, obviously,
45:52she then got scared.
45:53I mean,
45:53the possibility
45:54of losing Albert
45:55seemed to her
45:56quite dreadful.
45:57How on earth
45:57would she carry
45:58on her life
45:58without him?
45:59To add to the strains
46:07on the family,
46:08in early 1861,
46:10Victoria's mother died.
46:13Although they had
46:13never been close,
46:15the Queen was devastated.
46:19Prince Albert wrote,
46:21She is greatly upset
46:23and feels her whole
46:24childhood rush back
46:25once more upon her memory
46:27with the most vivid force
46:29and with those
46:30recollections
46:31come back the thought
46:32of many a sad hour.
46:35I do not want
46:36to feel better.
46:37I love to dwell on her
46:38and not to be roused
46:40out of my grief.
46:43In an orgy of despair,
46:44Victoria was reluctant
46:45to acknowledge
46:46Albert's ill health.
46:48Writing to daughter Vicky,
46:50Victoria spelt out
46:51her frustration.
46:52Dear Papa never allows
46:55he is any better
46:55or will try to get over it,
46:57but makes such a miserable face
46:59that people always think
47:00he is very ill.
47:03Despite his wife's criticisms
47:05and feeling desperately sick,
47:07Albert was determined
47:08to realise his vision
47:10for the children
47:10and arranged another
47:12dynastic marriage
47:13between Bertie,
47:14the first in line
47:15to the throne,
47:16and Princess Alexandra
47:18of Denmark.
47:18Once again,
47:22a wholesome public image
47:24mattered.
47:25It was crucial
47:26the marriage was passed off
47:27as a love match,
47:28not a political alliance.
47:31The heir to the throne
47:33had to appear
47:34to have a chaste life.
47:36But in the summer of 1861,
47:39Bertie started training
47:40with the Grenadier Guards
47:42in Dublin.
47:43His fellow officers,
47:49with whom he became
47:50very chummy,
47:51managed or arranged
47:53one night
47:54for a sort of
47:55camp follower
47:57of the regiment,
47:58a lady called
47:59Nellie Clifton,
48:00to join Bertie
48:01in his bed.
48:03And so,
48:03on three occasions,
48:05Bertie slept
48:05with,
48:06lost his virginity
48:07with Nellie Clifton.
48:09And then,
48:09of course,
48:10eventually,
48:10the story started
48:11to trickle out.
48:13And Albert
48:14heard about it.
48:15And he wrote
48:16Bertie
48:18the most terrible letter,
48:20sort of hysterical,
48:22completely overwrought,
48:23in which he
48:24says that he foresees
48:26for his son
48:27this future
48:27of kind of
48:28paternity suits
48:29and, you know,
48:30the terrible slide
48:32into total
48:33evil
48:35and, you know,
48:36low moral character.
48:38to thrust yourself
48:42into the hands
48:43of one of the most
48:44abject of the human species,
48:46to be by her
48:47initiated
48:48in the sacred
48:49mysteries of creation,
48:51which ought to remain
48:52shrouded in holy awe
48:54until touched
48:55by pure
48:56and undefiled hands.
48:58He was terrified
49:00that she might go
49:01to the papers,
49:02to the courts,
49:03that she might end up
49:04pregnant
49:04and make all kinds
49:06of financial
49:07and other demands.
49:08But I think
49:09this was an extreme reaction
49:10to what he'd seen
49:11with his own father
49:12and brother's behaviour.
49:13So it was tough
49:15on Bertie
49:16because what should
49:17have been pretty much
49:18brushed under the carpet
49:19turned into
49:21this enormous issue.
49:22And Albert,
49:24the minute he heard,
49:25was pacing up and down
49:27night after night,
49:28not sleeping,
49:29worrying.
49:30And he literally
49:31wore himself
49:32into a frazzle
49:33about this one
49:35transgression
49:36of Bertie's.
49:40To Albert,
49:41Bertie's fall
49:42was not only a threat
49:43to his dynastic marriage,
49:45but to the monarchy
49:46itself.
49:49You must not,
49:51you dare not
49:51be lost.
49:53The consequences
49:53for this country
49:54and for the world
49:55at large
49:56would be too dreadful.
49:57What I think
50:02we can say
50:02for certain
50:03is that
50:04Bertie's misdemeanour
50:07upset Albert
50:09in an utterly
50:10visceral way.
50:12It really
50:12got in among him
50:14and he was
50:15deeply, deeply upset
50:17and you can tell this
50:18by the anguished
50:19letter that he wrote
50:21to Bertie.
50:23It's more or less
50:24saying,
50:24you know,
50:25this isn't just
50:26a little sin,
50:29it's something
50:30which could
50:31shake the throne.
50:36The plan
50:38for perfect children
50:39had failed
50:39and the dynastic dream
50:41was at stake.
50:42Victoria went
50:43on the defensive.
50:45Wicked wretches
50:47had led our poor
50:48innocent boy
50:49into a scrape.
50:51The sickly Albert
50:52travelled to Cambridge
50:53to meet his son
50:54and make him
50:55understand the
50:56disgrace he had
50:57brought on himself
50:58and his family
50:59and also the
51:00urgent need
51:01to get married.
51:03Albert went down
51:04to Cambridge
51:05to have it up
51:06with Bertie
51:07about his fall
51:08and they went
51:08for a long
51:09private walk
51:10in the rain
51:10and they had
51:11this long conversation.
51:12We don't know
51:12what they said
51:14but we do know
51:14that Albert came back
51:15absolutely wet through
51:17and that Bertie
51:18thought that he had
51:18been forgiven.
51:19So in a way
51:20it's sort of
51:21a, you know,
51:22it's a resolution
51:23of the conflict.
51:27But it was a cold
51:29and wet winter day.
51:31After the long walk
51:32with his son
51:32Albert was wracked
51:34with pain in his legs.
51:36Over the next few weeks
51:37his symptoms worsened.
51:40Albert wrote
51:40to his daughter Vicky.
51:42I am at a very low ebb.
51:45Much worry
51:46and great sorrow
51:47about which I beg you
51:48not to ask questions
51:50have robbed me
51:51of sleep
51:51during the past fortnight.
51:54I personally believe
51:55having done the research
51:56that Albert did have
51:58a long-standing
51:59gastric problem
52:00that was wrongly diagnosed
52:02as typhoid fever.
52:03I don't believe
52:03he died of typhoid fever.
52:05I believe he died
52:06of a flare-up
52:08of probably Crohn's disease
52:10which goes into
52:11periods of remission
52:12and then flares up
52:13during times
52:14of extreme stress.
52:15and in 1861
52:17he'd had to deal
52:18with a whole chain
52:19of stressful things
52:21happening
52:21which precipitated
52:23a final decline
52:24aggravated then
52:26by contracting
52:28a chill
52:28and a fever
52:29and his body
52:30just packed up
52:31on him.
52:32He wore himself out.
52:36In mid-December
52:37when Albert grew worse
52:39Bertie was ordered
52:40home to see
52:41his ailing father.
52:43Albert died
52:43the following day
52:44aged only 42.
52:47For Victoria
52:48the loss of the man
52:50on whom she had come
52:51to utterly depend
52:52could not have been
52:53more devastating.
52:55He was my father
52:56my protector
52:57my guide
52:58and advisor
52:58in all and everything.
53:00My mother
53:01I might say
53:02as well as my husband.
53:04I suppose
53:04no one ever was
53:05so completely altered
53:06and changed
53:07in every way
53:07as I was
53:08by dearest Papa's
53:09blessed influence.
53:11Queen Victoria's
53:14overbearing grief
53:15would dominate
53:16the royal household
53:17and the nation
53:18for decades.
53:27In life
53:28Prince Albert
53:29was the central figure
53:30within the family.
53:32He had engineered
53:32the upbringing
53:33of his children
53:34and it hadn't
53:35gone to plan
53:36but he had also
53:38been the visionary
53:38behind a very
53:40modern image
53:40of the royal family.
53:42The monarchy
53:43was not a greatly
53:44popular institution
53:45at the beginning
53:46of the 19th century
53:48and actually
53:48I think we can
53:49thank Albert
53:51for stabilising it
53:52as a concept.
53:54The fact that we
53:55still have
53:56the monarchy
53:56today
53:57I think is quite
53:58a lot to do
53:59with the way
53:59that Albert
54:00and Victoria
54:01quite consciously
54:02presented themselves
54:03to the public
54:05as some version
54:07of an ordinary
54:08middle class family.
54:12Following Albert's
54:13death
54:13the plan to mould
54:15perfect princes
54:16and princesses
54:17had to go on
54:18but in the process
54:19the children
54:20would become
54:21locked in decades
54:22of warfare
54:23with their mother.
54:53All right.
55:01I'm sorry.
55:01All right.
55:16All right.
55:16All right.
Recommended
55:02
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