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00:00Victoria.
00:06The royal who invented the modern monarchy.
00:11Queen who made Britain an empire.
00:15Victoria's Britain is ruling the waves, ruling the world.
00:19But who was the real woman beneath the crown?
00:23In this series, we discover Victoria as we've never seen her before.
00:27A sensuous young queen.
00:30He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again.
00:37A reluctant mother of nine.
00:39Victoria definitely didn't like babies, almost grosses her out to see her own children.
00:46A devastated widow.
00:49She was suicidal, absolutely. She was inconsolable.
00:54And a passionate wife.
00:55It's not Victoria the Virgin, it's Victoria the Hot Mama.
01:01Using remarkable archive treasures and through her own words in journals and diaries, we tell the story of a complex, very human queen.
01:11Those tiny seconds of moving film, they completely change how we see this monarch.
01:20This is really exciting new evidence about Victoria.
01:26We think we know everything, but we don't.
01:28We don't.
01:29We don't.
01:30In this program, the youngest monarch for 290 years becomes a wife.
01:34They stayed up all night on the wedding night.
01:37She did not get any sleep and she said it in her journal and why would she?
01:41But soon struggles to balance life as a wife, a mother and a monarch.
01:50This is a marriage that has a central fault line running through it.
01:54She is the queen.
01:55She is the boss.
01:57Albert is not the king.
01:58He's simply her bloke, her husband.
02:00This is the private life of Queen Victoria.
02:18Monday, 10th of February.
02:21The last time that I slept alone.
02:26London, 1840.
02:29Inside Buckingham Palace, the 20-year-old Queen Victoria is hours away from her wedding.
02:36A ruling queen hasn't got married in England for nearly 300 years.
02:41And she's feeling the nerves.
02:43All brides, of course, wake up nervous, excited on their wedding day.
02:47But can you imagine Victoria waking up in this palace over here?
02:51She can hear the crowds already assembling.
02:54And she's waking up and knowing this is her wedding day and that she's the star.
02:58Just two years earlier, those crowds were roaring for Victoria's coronation.
03:04But that day, she'd been a queen.
03:07Today, she was determined to be something else.
03:10A wife.
03:14Albert is so excessively handsome.
03:16My heart is quite going.
03:20Victoria's husband-to-be is her German cousin, Prince Albert.
03:25Victoria is super in love with Albert.
03:29She's super in love because, of course, she hardly knows him.
03:32They have got engaged within a few weeks and married a few weeks after that.
03:36It's like a girl who gets her first boyfriend and just thinks, this is amazing.
03:41We can't underestimate just the simple kind of leap of hormones.
03:54Besides butterflies over the ceremony, Victoria has another reason to be nervous.
03:59Up till now, royal weddings have tended to take place in a palace, often in the evening, always behind closed doors.
04:08There was no public involvement.
04:09But Victoria's wedding is different.
04:12The crowds were enormous right here outside Buckingham Palace.
04:17All of the trees in this area, people were scrambling to get a better view by climbing up them.
04:22People really wanted to see what the queen looked like, what she was wearing for her wedding.
04:27At her coronation, Victoria wore heavy royal robes.
04:32But today, she's a wife.
04:34And that meant a very different outfit.
04:37At half past twelve, I set off.
04:40I wore a white satin gown.
04:43To modernize, Victoria looks a bit like a standard bride.
04:47You know, she's wearing a white dress.
04:49But actually, what she was wearing was really surprising.
04:52She's making a statement.
04:54And the point is this.
04:56She wants to be married as a woman.
04:59And not as a monarch.
05:01White itself, although we see it as a symbol of purity, actually in the time it was more of wealth.
05:06Because you had to be rich enough to clean a white dress.
05:10Which obviously Victoria was.
05:12And it was publicized everywhere.
05:15It was in all the papers.
05:16People copied it.
05:17Victoria is the reason why people wear white dresses to their wedding dress.
05:21Today.
05:22As the royal carriage set off from the palace.
05:25Victoria was overjoyed by the welcome she got from the public.
05:30I never saw such crowds of people as there were in the park.
05:34And they cheered most enthusiastically.
05:38We're all used to Harry and Meghan.
05:40Kate and Wills.
05:41Earlier Charles and Diana.
05:42They're big events.
05:43People celebrate.
05:44But that wasn't the case before Victoria.
05:46This was the very first big public royal wedding.
05:51Just before one o'clock the bride arrived at St. James's Palace.
05:57I entered the chapel.
05:59At the altar to my right stood my precious angel.
06:04By now the congregation could see the bride close up.
06:09Victoria prided herself on being able to suppress her emotions.
06:14And not show what she was feeling.
06:16But every orange flower in her hair was quivering.
06:19And she had red eyes as though she hadn't slept.
06:22So it's really clear that Victoria was feeling anxious and nervous on her big day.
06:28Victoria's feelings can't have been helped by the wedding vows she was about to make.
06:34Which had the congregation on the edge of their seats.
06:39The big question that everybody wondered when they watched Victoria walk up the aisle.
06:44Is she going to swear to obey her husband or not?
06:49The obey question is really a question about power.
06:53It's about who is actually in charge.
06:56She is the monarch.
06:57She's meant to be the top of the totem pole, the top of the tree.
07:00Nobody is supposed to have power over her.
07:03The promise of marital obedience was a key part of the Victorian wedding service.
07:08A woman would make the vow.
07:11But would a queen?
07:13Everyone was waiting with fated breasts to see what the vows would actually contain.
07:18And here they are.
07:20This is what the Archbishop of Canterbury said to Victoria.
07:23Wilt thou obey him and serve him?
07:26Love, honour and keep him so long as you both shall live.
07:31Her Majesty looked up affectionately into Prince Albert's face and replied loud enough to be heard in every part of the chapel.
07:39I will.
07:40So it was emphatic.
07:41She almost shouted these words.
07:43She wanted everyone to hear and they did.
07:45Queen Victoria had promised to obey Prince Albert.
07:49In promising to obey her husband, Victoria was trying to build a secure, happy family she'd been denied as a child.
07:57She wanted to obey Albert because she wanted to be in all ways a wife to him.
08:03Just for that moment in that ceremony, she wanted to be 100% the little girl now made into a wife that she'd dreamed about.
08:12But how easy would the young queen find it to obey her husband?
08:20After a long day on public display, the couple arrived at Windsor Castle, Victoria's finally alone with her new husband.
08:30She was completely beside herself.
08:33Very excited.
08:34Very excited both for the wedding day and the wedding night, I think.
08:38I think she'd been thinking quite a lot about that and was very happy to finally be there.
08:44I never, never spent such an evening.
08:47He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again.
08:53Victoria is, I think it's fair to say, bowled over by the whole concept of sex.
08:57She is so very up for it that it is impossible to say quite how much.
09:02When day dawned, for we did not sleep much.
09:06And I beheld that beautiful, angelic face by my side.
09:10It was more than I can express.
09:14He does look so beautiful in his shirt only, with his beautiful throat seen.
09:19They stayed up all night on the wedding night.
09:24She did not get any sleep and she said it in her journal and why would she?
09:28To lie by his side and in his arms and on his dear bosom and be called by names of tenderness I have never yet heard used to me before was bliss beyond belief.
09:42There's a scene where she talks of Albert helping her to put her stockings on in the morning, stockings which at that point would have been held up by ties.
09:51So really a very intimate moment indeed.
09:53I mean, let's face it, if a man is in your giggle zone, because when you get that far you're laughing, then really that is a relationship which is all about lust.
10:02With her new man on her arm, Victoria wanted to dress to impress and she loved a party.
10:14In the early 1840s, Victoria was a tiny person.
10:19Not only was she very short, she was about five foot, five foot one.
10:23She also had a tiny waist.
10:26And so these large flouncing silhouettes were very important to her as a way of kind of taking up space and getting attention.
10:34This dress is a reproduction of the kind of dress that Victoria was wearing in the very early years of her marriage.
10:41For balls, court events and other formal occasions.
10:46It is wonderfully made.
10:49It was a balance for her between her great love of food and excess, but also her love of appearing in this very controlled, contained body.
11:00And she took great pains to keep that hourglass silhouette.
11:06But although he was always by her side, Albert wasn't quite as much of a party animal as his young wife.
11:13Albert was a bit more quiet, a bit more bookish, and was less excited about the parties.
11:20But Victoria was very much in charge of both the country and the marriage.
11:25So Victoria got what she wanted, ultimately, and that was the parties.
11:30It wasn't just the couple's social life where Victoria was laying down the law.
11:46When Albert discovered they were only to get three days for their honeymoon, he asked Victoria for a longer break.
11:53She soon put him in his place.
11:57You forget, my dearest love, that I am the sovereign and that business can stop and wait for nothing.
12:04It is quite impossible for me to be absent from London.
12:08And she's quite patronising at that point.
12:11It's as if she's explained, you know, look, darling, mummy's really quite busy.
12:15Mummy's got important work to do.
12:17So I'm afraid that's not going to happen.
12:19Victoria had always been someone who was very stubborn.
12:23She was very determined to have her way.
12:26As a royal prince, Albert expected status and power in his marriage.
12:32He complained, I'm only the husband and not the master of the house.
12:37Right from the beginning of the marriage, obey was always going to be an issue.
12:42Victoria was incredibly status conscious.
12:45And so to suddenly have someone else, someone she barely knew, let's face it, that only met three times, saying to her, no, no, no, I want this.
12:52I want that.
12:53I demand a longer honeymoon.
12:54I mean, no way, please.
12:56And this is a marriage that has a central fault line running through it from the start.
13:01And it's basically this.
13:02She is the queen.
13:03She is the boss.
13:05Albert is not the king.
13:06He's simply her bloke, her husband.
13:09I mean, Albert wonders what on earth he's there.
13:11What is he there for?
13:13Before long, early cracks begin to show, as Albert wonders whether the marriage is so perfect after all.
13:26Four months into her marriage, Victoria is happier than she's ever been.
13:33She's 21 and madly in love.
13:37And for the British public, the young monarch is a breath of fresh air.
13:43Monarchs preceding her, her family, her relatives, they are debauched.
13:48They are immoral.
13:49They have illegitimate children scattered everywhere.
13:53The British public had really lost faith in the monarchy.
13:57They'd lost support.
13:58It was something that was satirized.
14:01It was something that people really took the mickey out of.
14:04Victoria really changes that.
14:06She challenges it.
14:07And she seems to make it her mission to make the royal family respectable again.
14:12Victoria's marriage to Albert gave the royal family a desperately needed kickstart.
14:19In many ways, Victoria's wedding day is actually more important than her coronation.
14:24Because the wedding means that she is going to start a succession.
14:29And Britain didn't have to wait long for the patter of tiny feet.
14:34By summer 1840, less than four months after the wedding, news was already sweeping the country that Victoria was pregnant.
14:43Her public were over the moon.
14:49But inside palace walls, there was one person who wasn't at all happy about the pregnancy.
14:55I am really upset about it.
14:58And it is spoiling my happiness.
15:00Victoria fired off angry letters to relatives, revealing how the news had ruined her blissful marriage.
15:08I have always hated the idea.
15:11I cannot understand how anyone can wish for such a thing, especially at the beginning of a marriage.
15:17She wanted time to enjoy her beautiful new husband.
15:21She wanted time to have a lot of energetic sex and to party and to generally behave like a married woman,
15:27which gave her a certain status, but also someone who was young and up for it.
15:32As the due date got closer, the palace doctors made detailed plans.
15:39180 years on, at the Royal College of Physicians in London, one of the doctor's diaries still survives.
15:50It was only published in 2016.
15:53And it offers a remarkable insight.
15:55For Victoria, there was no such thing as a private birth.
16:00Robert Ferguson's diary really takes us behind the scenes.
16:04It takes us into a place where none of the public could go.
16:08The Queen is in her room, which is at the end of a long chain of interconnecting rooms with double doors.
16:16And right at the other end of the chain, you have the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Archbishop of Canterbury, all waiting in that room.
16:23And the point here is that the Queen does not want to see these old men watching her in childbirth.
16:29And I mean, who would? You can't blame her.
16:31I think no mother today can imagine this happening.
16:35A room full of sort of, you know, imagine you'd have Boris in there.
16:38The doctors rigged up a makeshift screen to give the mum-to-be at least a little bit of privacy.
16:48At last, Her Majesty's bedroom door was flung open.
16:52The ministers could see the actual bed, though not Her Majesty, for a screen was elevated in that half of the footboard of the bed on which she lay.
17:02Throughout her pregnancy, Victoria had prayed for a son.
17:07After a good many hours' suffering, a perfect little child was born at two in the afternoon.
17:13But alas, a girl, and not a boy.
17:18Ferguson writes,
17:20The very first words which I heard were from the Queen.
17:23I fear it will create great disappointment.
17:29Having a baby, even though it was a very healthy girl, none of that was enough.
17:33It's really rather sad that she felt that she hadn't, you know, a great disappointment.
17:37But Victoria then said,
17:39Never mind, I expect the next one will be a boy.
17:42Despite her disappointment, Victoria had made history.
17:46She was the first ruling monarch ever to give birth in England.
17:51Already balancing the duties of wife and queen,
17:55Victoria now had a new role that she'd find far harder than both of these.
18:00Victoria was a new mum, but she also had new staff to help.
18:15Aristocratical royal parents weren't expected to do the day-to-day care for their children.
18:19There would be a complete staff of servants for the nursery.
18:22So there were nursemaids, nannies.
18:25The baby was never alone.
18:27The nursery would be close to Victoria and Albert.
18:30It was often on a different floor to them, often the floor above.
18:33They could access the children whenever they wanted to, but they didn't do the day-to-day care.
18:37Which may have been just as well as, for Victoria, motherhood didn't always come naturally, as she revealed in brutally honest letters.
18:49An ugly baby is a very nasty object.
18:52And the prettiest is frightful when undressed.
18:55That terrible, frog-like action.
18:58For new mothers, Victoria's words were just as harsh.
19:03I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments.
19:09So she had a wet nurse for the baby.
19:12It was a woman who obviously had their own baby and was still able to nurse.
19:16They would move into the nursery and take the majority of the care of the royal infant as soon as they were born.
19:22But if Victoria had her bad days as a new mum, she also found real pleasure in her baby daughter,
19:29who she named after herself, though the little girl was always known as Vicky.
19:34This was drawn by Queen Victoria, and it is a picture of her baby.
19:40So her eldest child, Princess Vicky, it's such a beautiful image.
19:45You get a real sense that Victoria knew this child intimately.
19:49This is a mother who's clearly besotted with her child and wants to record an image of her child looking particularly cute and particularly lovely,
19:58as modern parents do with cameras.
20:00It's so clear that it was drawn from a place of love.
20:06I think it's unfair to tar Victoria completely with the brush of being a bad mother.
20:10Yes, she did openly say that she disliked babies.
20:13She also wrote letters praising her children, loving her children, saying how cute she found babies to be.
20:19In many ways, she was just human.
20:22At one point, she wanted to strangle her children.
20:24At another point, she wanted to sweep them all up into her arms and protect them from the world.
20:29Just one year after her daughter, Victoria gave birth to the son and heir she'd always wanted.
20:36At last, at 12 minutes to 11, I gave birth to a fine large boy.
20:42Oh, how happy, how grateful did I feel.
20:46Prince Edward was a healthy, bouncing baby.
20:50He was given the affectionate name Bertie.
20:53But Victoria's happiness didn't last.
20:56For decades, historians didn't know what happened next.
21:00But now, a remarkable piece of evidence tells the full, shocking story.
21:07Three weeks after Bertie was born, royal doctor Robert Ferguson was summoned to see not the baby, but the mother.
21:15His diary, which lay hidden for over a century, reveals why.
21:21Ferguson writes, she, that's Victoria, had been gloomy and desponding.
21:27There were illusions both of the eye and the ear.
21:30By the one sense, she was deceived into a belief that she saw spots on people's faces, which turned into worms, and that coffins floated before her.
21:40This is the most extraordinary piece of new material about Queen Victoria, because what's being described here is hallucinations.
21:48The worms on people's faces, the coffins floating before the Queen.
21:54I mean, it must have been truly terrifying.
21:57During his visit, Ferguson spoke to a worried Albert.
22:01His face close to mine, and with pale and haggard looks, he broke out.
22:06The Queen has heard that you have paid much attention to mental disease, and is afraid that she is about to lose her mind.
22:14Then Ferguson met Victoria herself in her bedroom.
22:18She was lying down, and the tears were flowing fast over her cheek as she addressed me.
22:23Overwhelmed with shame at the necessity of confessing her weaknesses, and impelled by the very burden of her mind and her sorrows to seek relief.
22:32This is really exciting new evidence about Victoria.
22:36We think we know everything, but we don't.
22:39The intensity of Victoria's hallucinations, and this terrible fear that she's losing her mind,
22:44this really suggests that Victoria's life at this time is really much darker than we ever knew.
22:51And certainly, nobody at the time knew this. It was kept a very close secret.
22:58Victoria's state of mind brought back a fear that haunted the royal family.
23:04She was the granddaughter of George III, and he is Britain's mad king.
23:09He spent the last few decades of his life unable to rule at all.
23:13There's a real worry that perhaps Victoria has inherited that as a sort of taint, that there is something rotten at the heart of this family, that it's bad blood and that it's going to come out.
23:27As she struggled with parenthood, Victoria found being mother, wife and queen quite hard to manage.
23:37For now, she's grateful to her supportive husband. Albert, however, decides to make a bid for power.
23:44By her 23rd birthday, Victoria was a wife and a mother of two.
23:53But she was also queen in one of the most powerful nations on earth.
23:58With an empire rapidly circling the globe, Britain needed a strong government.
24:04And that meant a dedicated Victoria.
24:08As queen, Victoria was very, very busy.
24:10She would expect to meet with her prime minister.
24:13Papers requiring her signature arrived daily.
24:16She would receive government boxes setting out policy, asking her to look over documents, perhaps amend them.
24:22Victoria very much did have political power.
24:25Although her workload was large, Victoria had no intention of sharing any of her royal duties with her husband.
24:34Albert very much had other ideas and right from the start of their marriage was pushing for more access.
24:40He wanted to see what was in the government boxes.
24:44He wanted to be consulted on government policy.
24:47He wanted to help direct the way that the country was going.
24:52At first, Victoria kept Albert well away from her day job, but gradually she began to relent.
24:59Once Victoria gives birth and goes on giving birth, it becomes impossible, even for as hard a worker as she.
25:07She has to hand over stuff to Albert.
25:11Albert was obviously incredibly ambitious, but that was matched by his drive for hard work.
25:16He would be up before Victoria and he would work later and he would work and work and work.
25:21At first, she finds it incredibly difficult to give away power and control.
25:25But actually, once you start realising that actually, if I have this very competent, extremely hard working person by my side, it's like waiting to exhale.
25:35Maybe there's a point at which she kind of goes, oh, I don't have to do everything.
25:40Maybe I can share.
25:42Maybe I can share.
25:43Maybe I can share.
25:44But you are not sure how to live.
25:45Hope you're watching.
25:46I can share it with you.
25:47A little girl from the middle of the road here.
25:48Maybe I can share.
25:49Maybe I can share it with you.
25:50And I have that.
25:51Maybe I can share it with you.
25:52Maybe I can carry it with you.
25:53And I just miss you.
25:54And I feel like it's in the middle of my way that I am.
25:55Maybe I can share it with you.
25:56It's all times great, but you become very beautiful, but you will be so beautiful.
26:00You will do everything.
26:01By the age of 29, Victoria had five children.
26:09Since becoming queen, she'd lived at Buckingham Palace.
26:13But as her family grew, she was getting itchy feet.
26:17Buckingham Palace, right in the middle of London,
26:19was not seen as being very private.
26:21There were tremendous issues with the public breaking in or with noise.
26:25There weren't really any good sewer systems
26:28in the streets surrounding Buckingham Palace.
26:30What happened when the palace was built
26:32was it was kind of built on top of a sewer,
26:35but no-one quite realised that.
26:37So every time it rained, that particular sewer,
26:39which ran under the kitchens, would flood.
26:42It was just awful. The courtyard would flood.
26:44There'd be turds bobbing up and down in puddles.
26:47It is crowded. It is dirty. It smells terrible.
26:52The air in the morning is full of brewing and of tanning,
26:55and these are sulphurous, horrible, rotten, eggy smells.
27:00It's terrible.
27:02And you can't escape it anywhere.
27:04So it's not somewhere that is healthy for really anyone,
27:09but especially not if you have a young family like Victoria does.
27:12For the first time in her life,
27:16Victoria wanted a brand-new house of her own.
27:27Osborne House on the Isle of Wight
27:29was Victoria's dream home.
27:32She and Albert bought the estate for £28,000,
27:36or £2.2 million in today's money,
27:39and built an Italian-style villa.
27:43Victoria, she's very, very keen on the idea
27:46of coming to the Isle of Wight.
27:47She wants somewhere, honestly,
27:48where she can have Albert with her all the time,
27:51because Albert has been bustling around all over the country.
27:54He's never at home.
27:56By royal standards, Osborne House was a modest affair.
28:00The kitchen was much, much smaller than the kitchens elsewhere,
28:03so too were the staffing arrangements.
28:05There were usually about 11 cooks at Osborne House,
28:08as opposed to the 45 that you would have back at Windsor.
28:11The meals, as well,
28:13they were much more scaled-down versions
28:15of the ones that people would have eaten at Windsor.
28:17There were no huge state banquets.
28:19There were no massive balls.
28:20This was very much a sort of private palace
28:23for small-scale entertaining
28:25and for living like a family.
28:30At Osborne,
28:31Victoria initially tried to make time for the children.
28:34There was swimming in the sea,
28:36a military fort,
28:38and even a replica Swiss cottage in which to play.
28:42It soon became one of Victoria's favourite residences.
28:46We are so thankful for this beautiful seaside home
28:49and all the pleasures of the country.
28:52It is really a paradise.
28:53But despite what Victoria wrote,
28:58behind the scenes,
28:59the family home wasn't as ideal as it seemed.
29:03In fact, there was trouble in paradise.
29:06The headstrong Victoria could be impatient with her older children
29:10and often struggle to find anything in common with them.
29:14She never comes across as the more involved parent.
29:26It's often Albert driving the relationship with the children.
29:31Albert plays with the children a lot.
29:33You know, he's always on all fours
29:34pretending to be a horse or whatever it might be.
29:37She wasn't an actual mother
29:38because she'd never been properly mothered herself,
29:41we would say now.
29:41She didn't know what it was to be mothered.
29:43So how on earth could she kind of work out how to do it herself?
29:47Albert seems to have a natural skill,
29:49so she's very happy to pass over a lot of the mothering to him.
29:53But the amount of time Albert spent with his children
29:55caused problems.
29:58With Victoria, her eldest daughter,
30:00Vicky is obviously very intelligent and bright,
30:02just like her father.
30:04And Victoria herself is very proud of that.
30:06But then again, there's this element of jealousy
30:08that, oh, my daughter's stealing my husband away
30:10and, you know, they're close and I'm not.
30:13I often grudged you children being always there
30:18when I longed to be alone with dearest Papa.
30:22Those are always my happiest moments.
30:26Victoria resented her children for taking away her husband.
30:31The grudge, like the family, kept getting bigger.
30:34At 33 years old, Queen Victoria became pregnant with her eighth child.
30:43For the earlier births, she'd suffered pain and depression,
30:47but now a medical breakthrough offered to take the pain away.
30:53Chloroform was a new drug
30:54and it gave pain relief during childbirth.
30:57You might think that that was a sort of no-brainer
31:00that everybody would support, but that was not the case.
31:04Some religious figures claim the Bible said
31:07women had to suffer during labour,
31:09while some doctors were concerned that chloroform was dangerous
31:13and potentially fatal.
31:15But despite the risks, Victoria chose to have it.
31:21At a quarter past one, a boy was born for great happiness to me.
31:26Dr Snow administered that blessed chloroform
31:29and the effect was soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.
31:36You can see a certain stubbornness and willfulness,
31:40but, you know, she'd made up her mind
31:41and, as it turned out, she was right.
31:43The impact of Victoria's decision went way beyond the palace.
31:49It meant that chloroform and pain relief in pregnancy
31:51became socially acceptable and it was used quite widely.
31:56And this, in a sense, was Victoria doing something for women.
32:00But if the birth had been smooth,
32:02the weeks that followed were rocky.
32:05Victoria's postnatal illness returned,
32:08as did screaming rows with Albert.
32:12It was absolutely flaming on some occasions.
32:16They would be ferocious, screaming fits,
32:19at the peak of which he would rush from the room
32:22and she would rush from the room.
32:24We have to imagine Victoria pursuing Albert down the corridor,
32:28Albert retreating into his room,
32:30and while she is on one side of the door,
32:33him, you know, writing her a serious letter
32:35about how she was at fault,
32:37which she would then receive and agree with.
32:40Victoria's response to these letters
32:41is always to submit and to blame herself
32:45and to apologise and to describe her weaknesses
32:48and her failings.
32:50Victoria kept a record of her bad behaviour
32:52and she had a special notebook for it.
32:55In her private notebook,
33:06a distraught Victoria listed her failings
33:09as a woman and a wife.
33:12Have I improved as much as I ought?
33:15I fear not.
33:17To my beloved and perfect husband,
33:20I fear also I have been a great trouble.
33:22It's almost like she has become an extra child
33:27in the palace nursery.
33:29She shows the notebook to Albert every now and then
33:33and he responds either saying,
33:36you've done very well or perhaps more often,
33:39you need to show more control
33:40and you need to be a bit better.
33:43Marks for good behaviour were just the beginning.
33:46As the years went by,
33:47Victoria grew ever more dependent
33:50on her domineering husband.
33:52She calls him master,
33:55he calls her child.
33:57It's he who chooses the wallpaper.
33:59It's he who tells her what she ought to wear.
34:02And I have to say, in the last two instances,
34:04he should probably be shot for that
34:05because her wallpaper was incredibly busy
34:07and her clothes did not flatter her.
34:11She could have probably done a better job herself.
34:13But if Victoria was obsessed with Albert,
34:18she soon had trouble with another man in her life.
34:22Bertie, Victoria's eldest son,
34:25was becoming a teenage nightmare.
34:28The expectation had been
34:29that Bertie would turn into another Albert.
34:33He'd been educated for that
34:34and his education had been a complete failure.
34:36He was always smoking or drinking or being caught out.
34:39He seemed to be far too interested in girls,
34:43far too interested in fashion.
34:45You have a Prince of Wales
34:47who is essentially a playboy.
34:50He was just what the monarchy didn't need.
34:52In the private notebook she used to list her own failings,
34:56Victoria now wrote scathing remarks about her own son.
35:00His intellect, alas, is weak, which is not his fault.
35:04But what is his fault is his shocking laziness,
35:07which I fear has been far too much indulged.
35:10He seems in a sort of dreaminess,
35:12which alarms us for his brain.
35:15By 16, Bertie's features were fully developed,
35:19but his mother wasn't impressed.
35:22His nose and mouth are too enormous
35:24and he pastes his hair down to his head.
35:26I think the things that annoyed Victoria most about Bertie
35:40were all the things that reminded her of her young self.
35:44At one point she complains about him having a want of chin,
35:48to which you really want to say,
35:50well, just look at yourself, madam.
35:51The fact that he has a very bad temper,
35:56you feel like saying, hello,
35:58do you ever wonder where he got it from?
36:00There's also his huge appetites for food, for sex,
36:05which again you feel like saying,
36:07well, perhaps he got that from his mother.
36:10The idea of Bertie inheriting her throne
36:13filled Victoria with dread,
36:16as she wrote in horror to her daughter.
36:18I tremble at the thought.
36:22I tried to shut my eyes to that terrible moment.
36:27This is going to be disastrous for Britain.
36:30He is going to make a rotten ruler.
36:33It must have been absolutely terrifying for her to see that,
36:36to see, as it were,
36:38this car crash coming towards her.
36:41Victoria believed that only a short, sharp shock
36:44could save Bertie from disaster.
36:46I only hope he will meet with some severe lesson
36:50to shame him out of his ignorance and dullness.
36:54Victoria didn't know it,
36:56but that severe lesson was on its way.
37:00Instead of saving Bertie,
37:02it would tear her own life to shreds.
37:04By the age of 42,
37:10Queen Victoria had been on her throne for over two decades.
37:14The mother of nine children,
37:16she'd finally won the love of her family and her nation.
37:20Yet she was about to face the most devastating year of her life,
37:25thanks to the antics of her eldest son.
37:28In the summer of 1861,
37:33Bertie went to train as an officer with the army in Ireland.
37:37What the parents didn't realise
37:39was that Bertie's fellow officers
37:41had managed to smuggle into his bed one night
37:44a lady of the night, they called her,
37:47who was known as Nellie Clifton.
37:49Bertie spent three nights with Nellie.
37:51The gossip soon spread back to the palace.
37:55Victoria is absolutely appalled to learn
37:58that Bertie has been set up with a prostitute.
38:02She thinks it's disgusting, it's awful, it's dirty.
38:06She and Albert had worked so hard
38:08to raise the profile of the royal family,
38:12raise her popularity,
38:13to present this moral family to the world.
38:16And in three nights, he had simply undone that.
38:19It was perfectly normal for a young man
38:22of Bertie's background and class
38:24to have sex with a prostitute.
38:26This was what happened at that time.
38:29What was not normal was the reaction of Prince Albert.
38:32Albert becomes almost sort of hysterical about this.
38:37By now, Bertie had left Ireland to study in Cambridge.
38:43And it was here that a fateful meeting took place.
38:46Albert goes to Cambridge where Bertie was
38:49and they have a long walk
38:51and they come back having made it up.
38:54But it was absolutely pouring with rain
38:56and Albert caused a chill
38:58and that chill turned into an increasingly serious illness.
39:06Albert returned to Windsor and took to his bed.
39:10The doctors can't work out what the matter is with him.
39:15Is it typhoid?
39:16Is it, in fact, something that's long, long in the making?
39:21Some medical historians think that he may have had stomach cancer.
39:25But whatever their private theories,
39:28the royal doctors didn't share them with Victoria.
39:30Good, kind old Sir James Clarke has been here since yesterday
39:35and reassured me, saying there was no cause for alarm,
39:39either present or future.
39:41Nobody likes to tell Victoria
39:44because they knew how she would react,
39:46how upset she would be.
39:48Soon, Albert's true condition was impossible to hide.
39:52I went in at seven.
39:55He seemed to me a little incoherent.
39:58Went back to my room and felt as if my heart must break.
40:02May God help me and protect him.
40:06Within days, Albert was suffering from a fever
40:09and experiencing hallucinations.
40:12Yet the doctors still reassured Victoria
40:15that all would be well.
40:17Dr. Watson, whom I like and who is very kind,
40:23said he had seen many infinitely worse cases recover.
40:30On the morning of the 14th of December,
40:34Victoria went in early as usual to be by Albert's side.
40:39It was a bright morning,
40:41the sun just rising and shining brightly.
40:43Never can I forget how beautiful my darling looked lying there
40:48with his face lit up by the rising sun,
40:51his eyes unusually bright,
40:54gazing, as it were, on unseen objects
40:57and not taking notice of me.
41:00The doctors told Victoria to go for a short walk.
41:05Minutes later, they called her back.
41:07I took his dear left hand, which was already cold.
41:13All, all was over.
41:16I stood up and kissed his dear heavenly forehead
41:20and called out in a bitter and agonizing cry,
41:24Oh, my dear darling!
41:27And then dropped on my knees.
41:30They'd been inseparable for 20 years,
41:33but now Albert was dead.
41:36After Albert had died,
41:38Victoria left the room where he'd died
41:40and she went up to the nursery
41:42where she collected up her youngest daughter, Beatrice,
41:44who was four years old,
41:46and carried her back to her own bed.
41:48And she then lay weeping next to Beatrice
41:51for the entire night.
41:54This was the love of her life.
41:56This was a man upon whom she completely relied.
41:58This was her only friend.
41:59Victoria was just 42 years old.
42:06My life as I considered it is gone, past, closed.
42:11It is like death in life.
42:15Utter desolation, darkness and loneliness.
42:19It was the end of one of the greatest partnerships
42:23in British history and perhaps the most important
42:27in modern royalty.
42:29They reinvented this monarchy.
42:31They put this stamp on it
42:32of something people could look up to,
42:35something to respect,
42:37something that would last the years.
42:39And I think this saves the monarchy
42:41because at a time when monarchies were toppling in Europe,
42:46the British monarchy survives.
42:48And the reason for this is Victoria and Albert.
42:53Victoria had found a way to do
42:55what no English woman had done before.
42:59She'd been a new mother, a wife and a queen.
43:03But suddenly she was alone.
43:06Paralyzed by grief, she doubted she could carry on.
43:10It's like starting all over again,
43:12but without the buoyancy of youth,
43:15without the optimism of being a young woman.
43:17How is she going to manage this?
43:20The thought of ruling without Albert
43:23was devastating to Victoria,
43:24but she had no choice.
43:26She had to go on and she had to go on alone.
43:29Victoria had to rediscover the confidence
43:32she'd shown as a young woman with one difference.
43:35She'd given away power once,
43:38but she never would again.
43:40No one person, may he be ever so good,
43:46is to lead or dictate to me.
43:51Next time, Victoria's left a widow
43:54after the death of her beloved Albert.
43:56She simply didn't want to be sovereign.
44:02She wanted to be alone.
44:04She runs away from public life
44:06and leaves Britain without a queen.
44:09MPs are openly saying
44:11it's time to wind the monarchy up.
44:14But Victoria fights back
44:16to win power and the love of her people.
44:18There's a sense in which the empire comes home
44:20and it puts on an amazing show.
44:24She suddenly realised that what she'd missed
44:26was huge crowds of people there
44:28for her and her alone.
44:32Sunday at 5pm,
44:34host Ricardo Gonsalves
44:35shines a light on the innovators
44:37playing a vital role
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44:43don't miss the new season
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