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Secrets of the Royals - Births, Marriages and Deaths (2025) Season 1 Episode 1
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Some call it a fever. Some call it delirium. Others call it love.
00:08For a Foresight, it can be both a blessing and a curse.
00:14The Foresights continues Monday at 9. Watch. Stream on 5.
00:20The future king, William, is ready to reshape the royal family.
00:25I think it's going to usher in a new golden age for the monarchy.
00:28He's got to make it relevant.
00:30How far will he go?
00:32There's going to be a big shake-up.
00:34William, when he becomes king.
00:36Next Saturday at 5 past 9. Watch. Stream on 5.
00:42Both strong, caring and with an overwhelming sense of duty.
00:46What else did they have in common?
00:48Catherine and Queen Elizabeth, a special relationship is at 5 past 9.
00:52Granny First, Secrets of the Royals, Births, Marriages and Deaths.
00:58Greatness is seeing my dad smile again.
01:02Great British Stories on 5. Sponsored by Help for Heroes.
01:08My crown I am. But still my griefs are mine. Still am I king of those.
01:22Royal births, marriages and deaths have determined the course of British history.
01:27It's about power, it's about position.
01:34And this power is passed down by line of succession.
01:43Henry was absolutely over the moon.
01:51Bonfires were lit. Celebrations were had across the city.
01:56The birth of Archie was a major international event because he was in line to the throne.
02:02A royal wedding is a new start. It's glitz and glamour and optimism.
02:13On the happiest day of his life, the prince was drunk, crying,
02:18Why am I marrying this woman?
02:25Lord Dawson took a syringe and he injected morphine into the king's neck.
02:31This was regicide.
02:33Here in the archives, we can hear these voices.
02:43The hopes wrapped up in a longed-for royal baby.
02:47The fairytale weddings that end in disaster.
02:50This is where we find the grisly deaths.
02:54This blessed plot.
02:59This earth.
03:01This realm.
03:11The final days and hours leading up to a royal death are usually very private affairs.
03:17Family moments shrouded in mystery.
03:20But for Queen Victoria's death, there are incredible personal diaries written by those who were there,
03:25which give us an almost hour-by-hour account of exactly what happened behind palace walls.
03:32James Reed, Victoria's personal physician, wrote an intimate diary of her last days.
03:39So James Reed was very close to Queen Victoria.
03:42She grumbled to him about everything that she wanted to grumble about.
03:47Sometimes he would say I was the lightning rod to absorb all her tension between her family
03:51because she was always in conflict with her family.
03:54Without his diaries, we would have a rather sanitized account of her dying.
04:01His diaries explain exactly what happens.
04:04We understand the fights between the children because everybody was in denial about the Queen dying.
04:10And we even have the words of Victoria herself in the entry she wrote in her own journal.
04:16Now part of the Royal Archives, the papers of the royal family itself.
04:21Queen Victoria began keeping her diaries when she was 13 years old in 1832,
04:26and she continued writing the diaries right up until her death in 1901.
04:33She trusted very few people around her,
04:36and it was only really in her diaries that she could confide the full truth of her life.
04:41These sources allow us to reconstruct Victoria's final days in unprecedented detail.
04:47And what they reveal is a squabbling household, a nation in denial,
04:52and a Queen whose servants she trusted more than her own flesh and blood.
04:58The demise of this great Queen began in the winter of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight,
05:04where she'd gone to spend a quiet Christmas with two of her daughters.
05:09Victoria's always in Osborne for the winter, for the Christmas.
05:12Start of the new year, it's bleak weather, it's snowing, it's cold.
05:17It was fairly quiet. The Prince of Wales was off shooting in the country.
05:21Most of her children were spread around.
05:23Only her two daughters were there.
05:25So it was a fairly sombre place, not too much fun.
05:29And there's an entry in Victoria's journal written at Osborne House,
05:33which gives us an intriguing glimpse into her state of mind just three weeks before her death.
05:39This entry is from the first of January,
05:42but far from feeling excited about a new year and indeed a new century,
05:46she complains that she's feeling so weak and unwell that I enter upon it sadly.
05:53She's always been quite resolute, quite upbeat.
05:56But here there's definitely a sense of weariness of the world closing in upon her.
06:02It's almost as though she's losing her zest for life.
06:06In fact, the previous twelve months have been tough for the Queen,
06:10who'd been beset by personal tragedy.
06:13She'd had a grim year leading up to the Christmas.
06:17Her daughter had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
06:21Her daughter was the Dowager Empress of Germany and mother of the Kaiser.
06:26Her favourite son, Alfred, had died from throat cancer.
06:31Her grandson, who'd been fighting out in the Cold War, died on a journey back to England.
06:39And then her closest friend, Lady Jane Churchill, died on Christmas morning.
06:46And that was her last close friend.
06:50So really, Christmas was a bit grim for the Queen.
06:53Losing so many loved ones had taken its toll.
06:57And a rather mundane detail Victoria also records gives us a further insight
07:02into not just her melancholy frame of mind, but her physical frailty.
07:08This entry describes how the Queen spent the day visiting her local convalescent home.
07:13When she returned to Osborne, she rested for a while
07:16and was able to take a little more food for her supper than she had for the last three days.
07:21To be quite frank, Queen Victoria was notoriously greedy.
07:26So to hear that she didn't have much appetite is definitely a sign that something was wrong.
07:30And in the last few weeks of her life, in fact, the Queen was only able to digest baby food.
07:37And as January progressed, very quickly, Victoria's health started to go downhill.
07:43She has these moments of exhaustion, breathlessness.
07:47And by the 12th of January, her doctor was getting quite worried.
07:53In an age before the internet, the palace issued written bulletins to inform the press of royal news.
07:59And Sir James was convinced the Queen would want her subjects to know about her health.
08:05He asks the Prince of Wales, shall I put in something?
08:08And the Prince of Wales says, no, definitely not.
08:11So this is going on till the 18th of January.
08:15Reid is getting more and more worried.
08:18And he says, we need to put out something.
08:20So this very bland statement is put out saying, the Queen is not in her full health.
08:26In fact, we now know Victoria had just four days left to live.
08:31Sir James knew the Queen was dying, but absolutely everybody refused to acknowledge that she was not going to recover.
08:39It was a situation that Sir James felt needed to be remedied.
08:43So he began secretly to contact those he felt should be told.
08:47The first person he does want to inform is actually the Kaiser, the Queen's grandson.
08:53Kaiser Wilhelm II was the Emperor of Germany.
08:57And there was no love lost between him and Victoria's children, his aunts and uncles.
09:02The Kaiser had told Reid, the family will block me when she dies.
09:07Please let me know when she is poorly.
09:09Kaiser had once called the Prince of Wales an old peacock.
09:13And he had also referred to the Queen's daughters as the petticoats.
09:19They weren't fond of him, he wasn't fond of them.
09:21But such a high profile and unexpected visit was bound to cause a public stir.
09:26Much excitement in London, the Kaiser has arrived.
09:30He's quite a figure, you know, some are fond of him, some don't like him, whatever.
09:35But he's excited the press.
09:37But before the Kaiser had even managed to get to Osborne,
09:40unbeknownst to the now curious journalists,
09:43the Queen suffered what was believed to be a series of strokes.
09:47In the face of this new crisis, Victoria's children began to descend on Osborne House.
09:53The family were all summoned to come to Osborne House.
09:56And following them were a bunch of journalists who began to camp outside the gates.
10:03And the press bulletins over the next 48 hours reveal Victoria's final days were nothing less than a roller coaster.
10:12Initially, Victoria defied expectation.
10:15But within eight hours, it was a very different story.
10:19By midnight that day, her condition worsens.
10:23Reed is convinced that she's not going to make it through the night.
10:26He's now called a team of doctors and they're all looking after the Queen,
10:30who is drifting in and out of consciousness.
10:33But as dawn broke, the Queen again defied the odds.
10:37So here we go again. It's like a constantly swinging pendulum.
10:41But by the evening of Monday the 21st of January, it was clear the end was in sight.
10:47It's a very stressful night, Reed.
10:50And finally that bulletin has to go out.
10:52That Queen is deteriorating.
10:54It is actually happening.
10:56As the moment of Victoria's death drew nearer,
11:00and whilst the press waited, we now have astonishing detail about her final hours.
11:05By now, Queen Victoria had been moved to a little divan bed.
11:09She's having trouble breathing. There's an oxygen mask on her.
11:12The room was packed.
11:14Her daughter, Princess Beatrice, was telling the Queen who was there.
11:18I mean, they were all devoted to their grandmother or their mother.
11:22I mean, they were really fond of her.
11:24She's a good granny.
11:25There is this din in this room because all the household is there.
11:30They are weeping.
11:31Kaiser, he will not move.
11:33He's standing on the right side of the bed.
11:35He says, this is my place.
11:37And he actually props her up so she can breathe.
11:40The Queen remained conscious throughout this, even though she couldn't speak.
11:44So James Reed was feeling her pulse.
11:47She suddenly became alert and she stared at a picture on the wall,
11:51which was the entombment of Christ.
11:54And then a few minutes later, she died.
12:03Reed notes the time.
12:05And then the Prince of Wales, he gets up and he closes her eyes.
12:10Suddenly, it's all quiet. It's over.
12:14It's the end of an era.
12:17Coming up, the funeral of a queen that broke royal precedent.
12:28She didn't want to be embalmed.
12:29She didn't want black.
12:31And she didn't want a hearse.
12:33And the storm that threatened to disrupt an autumn wedding.
12:37There's a thunderstorm and Her Majesty walks in and the tree goes flying.
12:41My head be it.
12:43Every bride and groom want every aspect of their big day to be perfect, from the dress to the cake.
13:00But with the entire country tuning in, royal weddings mean it's not just family and friends who are watching.
13:06And on the 12th of October 2018, when Princess Eugenie was due to marry her long-term boyfriend, Jack Brooksbank, at St George's Chapel, Windsor, every detail was under scrutiny.
13:20When the public watch a royal wedding, they are paying into a fairy tale, a vision of what life and love should and could be like.
13:31And one of the most important elements is the flowers.
13:35I was very honored to be asked to be part of Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie and Jack's wedding ceremony at Windsor Castle.
13:43Both Her Royal Highness and Jack were very involved with the whole look of the whole ceremony.
13:50And with an October date, the couple chose an autumnal theme.
13:54It was mid-autumn and that was the perfect time, you know, to bring in all these beautiful autumnal British flowers, foliages and trees and all in keeping with autumn.
14:05On the day before the wedding, after months of planning, Rob and his team were finally allowed inside the castle gates to turn this royal floral vision into a stunning regal reality.
14:18But such a historic building posed some rather unique challenges.
14:22You're not allowed to put any nails or structures as such that might damage the building.
14:28We had to come up with using lots of sandbags to secure the trees, tying the backward ropes to the staircase handrail, you know, because you can't do any damage to a building like that.
14:39But at the same time, we deal with the royal family.
14:42You know, you don't want anything to start flying on the day and injuring anybody.
14:47So that was quite a stressful period of, yeah, making everything secure.
14:54The result was a stunning array of autumnal blooms, fit for a princess.
15:00And the focal point were full-size liquid amber trees framing the entrance to the chapel.
15:06We brought in these massive big trees to place on the staircase, you know, to get that big impact.
15:11We had oak leaves, we had hydrangeas, lots of dahlias.
15:16So it was a whole abundance of autumnal.
15:19With everything in place, it seemed as if nothing could possibly go wrong.
15:24But as Rob was doing his final touches, there was one ominous sign of something he couldn't control.
15:32It was so windy and the weather was, like, dodgy.
15:36Like, was it going to rain? Was it going to stay dry? So, sleepless nights.
15:41And later that night, the forecast didn't bode well.
15:46One of the year's biggest storms, Storm Callum, was about to hit British shores.
15:53An autumn wedding is very romantic in theory, a little bit risky in practice.
15:59You are battling that great British character, the weather.
16:04That will rule over everything.
16:06As the day of the wedding dawned, and the first guests made their way to the beautifully decorated chapel, Storm Callum was making his presence felt.
16:17It was extremely grim, very windy, not great if you've got full-sized trees parked outside your wedding party.
16:27As the royal guests finally arrived, with nearly four million people watching across the UK, for Rob, it wasn't just his reputation at stake.
16:37One strong gust of wind could spell absolute royal disaster.
16:42My husband and I, we were very lucky enough to be invited to the export ceremony.
16:48And I was shaking like that, and said to my husband, what's wrong with you?
16:51I went, have you seen these doors outside? It's blowing.
16:55I went, you've made sure everything is secure, but you still...
16:58If there's a thunderstorm and Her Majesty walks in and the trigger is flying, it might have been it.
17:04But as the bride made her way down the aisle, any major incident seemed to have been averted.
17:10Thank God, you know, there were guardian angels looking after us.
17:13Everything went very smoothly.
17:15People still say to me, why don't you get nervous?
17:18You know, you've done this for over 40 years, and of course you get nervous.
17:21I think that's only normal when you're dealing with something like this, you know, where the whole world is watching.
17:26You know, it's a huge privilege.
17:29The bride and groom were over the moon, and that's what we want.
17:33The British monarchy isn't usually associated with big surprises.
17:47It stands for tradition, stability, a tried and trusted port in any storm.
17:54But by the mid-1960s, as Queen Elizabeth was about to give birth at Buckingham Palace to her fourth child,
18:01there were surprises in abundance.
18:04And the first involved the pioneering monarch throwing off the shackles of royal birthing tradition
18:09and deciding to embrace the changing times.
18:13There was something very unusual and unorthodox about the birth of Prince Edward,
18:19which is that Prince Philip was indeed present.
18:22That's shockingly modern, new-fangled behaviour for the royal family.
18:27The Queen had been reading some women's magazines which were suggesting that, in fact,
18:32it would be a good idea for these ancillary objects called the fathers to be present at the birth of their own children.
18:39So there he was, Prince Philip, in the room.
18:43Worst having your husband at your side during labour might not sound like cutting-edge progress.
18:48It was a big shift for this royal couple.
18:51For her fourth son, Edward, this was a complete change.
18:56The first child, Prince Charles, Prince Philip had no interest in staying there.
19:03He went off to play squash and he just said,
19:06let me know when it happens and I'll come back.
19:10I think men, at one point, would be very scared of seeing something like that and still are, perhaps.
19:17But, you know, he'd moved with the times and he held her hand and he talked to her
19:23and he was absolutely amazed by it.
19:27Prince Philip, I suspect, would have been as keen on this.
19:32I don't think he would have needed any encouragement.
19:34He was very much a sort of pioneer,
19:36so I suspect that was as much down to him as down to the Queen.
19:41But the decision for Philip to be at the arrival of his son
19:44wasn't the only surprise with this royal birth.
19:47In fact, Prince Edward arrived a week before his due date,
19:50on the 10th of March 1964,
19:52and his parents-to-be had no idea they were even expecting a boy.
19:58Prince Edward, it was thought that he was going to be a girl
20:01because he was a very small baby,
20:05so she obviously had a very small bump
20:07and the projections that the child was going to be rather small,
20:10I think he was about five or six pounds,
20:11and so there was a sort of surprise
20:13that this small bump was actually a boy and not a girl.
20:17The excitement in Buckingham Palace was reflected by the whole nation
20:22that the Queen was safely delivered of a son at 8.20 that evening.
20:26With Edward, Philip and Elizabeth had finally completed their family.
20:32And in another break with the Norm,
20:34this happy moment was captured in an extraordinary photo
20:37taken soon after Edward's birth.
20:40To see a queen sitting up in bed, whether she has or hasn't just given birth,
20:47is amazingly intimate and even quite shocking.
20:52Traditionally, we are used to seeing queens and kings in full state regalia,
20:56being extremely formal.
20:58Suddenly, we're in their bedroom,
21:01and they might be wearing pearls and makeup,
21:04but they're also wearing their actual nightie.
21:06It's an amazing view into ordinary royal domestic life.
21:12The images after the birth of Edward softens that image of royalty
21:17and we see the queen as wife and mother.
21:22Of course, that's one of the things that is so striking about the late queen's reign,
21:26that she grew up from being a young married woman
21:30right through to being a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother
21:33during her reign.
21:34And that's a really important means
21:36by which I think people are connected with her.
21:48Most royal weddings are times of happy celebration
21:51and a reminder to us all what it feels like to be young and in love.
21:55But in the late 18th century, there was one princely groom
21:59who was very definitely not looking forward to getting hitched.
22:03The most chaotic and scandalous royal wedding in history
22:07has got to be that of George, Prince of Wales,
22:10future George IV and his cousin, Caroline of Brunswick.
22:15It was an arranged marriage and it looked great on paper,
22:19but it was the most disastrous blind date in history.
22:24In 1795, the whole country is waiting for a royal wedding.
22:29George has got to get married. He's the heir.
22:32George has been given a long list of possible Protestant princesses to marry.
22:38And he rather said, well, any might do.
22:42Caroline was said to be pleasant, attractive, reasonably well-educated
22:47and could speak a little bit of English, so perfect.
22:51Caroline comes over from her German principality,
22:55a very tiring trip on rough seas,
22:57and they meet for the first time in the palace.
23:01Caroline cuts his and George receives her.
23:07And then he raises her up.
23:09A look of total horror spreads over his face.
23:15He immediately dashes away out of the room,
23:18looking for brandy and saying he must go to mother.
23:22Princess Caroline, left in the room, says,
23:26By God, is he always so fat?
23:29He looks nothing like his portrait.
23:31Well, George was a bit large.
23:34From this inauspicious beginning, things just get worse.
23:41Three days later, they are wed at the chapel royal in St. James's Palace.
23:47It was going to be the great grand royal wedding of the future king.
23:52The great and the good, the aristocrats are there,
23:55and yet the wedding is nothing short of a catastrophe.
24:00George staggered up the aisle, totally drunk.
24:05When he gets to the altar, he actually starts crying.
24:09He has a look of torment on his face.
24:12George was overwhelmed with misery,
24:15and that's because he was already married.
24:26Coming up, the forbidden wedding of England's bigamous king.
24:30Poor old Mrs. Fitzherbert.
24:32Her marriage was deemed illegal,
24:34and she had to watch her husband marry someone else.
24:37And the astonishing final journey of a beloved queen.
24:41It was so impressive,
24:42because it was 11 miles of battleships and cruisers,
24:47top to toe, lined across the Solon.
24:49And as the queen's coffin went past,
24:52they were firing their minute guns.
24:54On the 22nd of January, 1901, Queen Victoria's death was announced to a shocked world.
25:09It was a seismic event, not only for the country, but for the empire.
25:13It was announced in the theatres, and all the performance of plays, of musical concerts, all stopped.
25:19And the audiences poured out onto the streets.
25:22After a reign that had lasted over 63 years, it was a moment the nation would never forget.
25:29It was the end of an era, and nobody knew what life was like without Queen Victoria sitting on the throne.
25:37In 2022, when another of Britain's longest reigning monarchs, Elizabeth II, passed away,
25:45the preparations for her funeral had been worked out in detail years beforehand.
25:50But for Queen Victoria, it couldn't have been more different.
25:54Nobody knows exactly what to do.
25:57They are not prepared.
25:59They are not prepared in Windsor.
26:01The government is not prepared.
26:02It's like the queen would live forever, was just what everyone felt.
26:06The last royal funeral for a monarch had taken place in 1837,
26:10when William IV, Queen Victoria's uncle, died.
26:14Up to that time, royal funerals were private affairs.
26:18They took place at night, in the confines of Windsor Castle, and they were lit by candlelight.
26:25There were no public there, no great ceremony, or anything like that.
26:29But Victoria had other ideas.
26:32The queen left a detailed note of what she wanted to happen.
26:37She didn't want to be embalmed.
26:39There was to be no lying in state.
26:41She didn't want black, and she didn't want a hearse.
26:45And far from being the private funeral of her predecessor,
26:49Victoria wanted the whole nation involved.
26:52She wanted a full military state funeral.
26:56And she wants it to be a white funeral.
26:59There'd never been a full military state funeral for a monarch.
27:03The last military funeral, state funeral,
27:06was for the Duke of Wellington nearly 50 years earlier.
27:10Again, there was nobody around who helped organise that.
27:13They were all dead.
27:15And they were suddenly faced with this fact that this is what the queen wants.
27:20But with no preparations in place,
27:22and only ten days to organise a grand state funeral with an unprecedented colour scheme,
27:28time was tight.
27:30I think it took everybody by surprise.
27:32It was just utter chaos.
27:34And one of the most pressing tasks was preparing the white funeral pall needed to lie over Victoria's coffin.
27:42But with no advance warning, it proved almost impossible to find anyone who they felt could produce it in time.
27:49But Queen Victoria's daughter, Helena, was absolutely convinced that there was a group of women who would be more than able to rise to the challenge.
27:56The ladies of the Royal School of Needlework, of which she was patron.
28:02The story goes that there was no company that would be able to do the funeral pall in the timeframe that there was.
28:09Princess Helena said no, her school could produce it for them.
28:13To make the task quicker, the team chose particular techniques to produce a stunning pall in record time.
28:20The design on the funeral pall had coats of arms in each of the four corners,
28:25and then on the top of the funeral pall was a cross.
28:28So with a tight deadline, we look at a technique known as a plique,
28:32which is applying fabric to fabric, and then the details are put in with embroidery.
28:37Records tell us that they had about 48 hours, so they had a team of approximately 45 women who were brought in,
28:45and they worked a continuous 21 hours in order to complete in the time.
28:50The finished effect would have been absolutely stunning.
28:54It would have just caught any sunlight, and it would have just looked beautiful.
28:58With the funeral pall complete, the next challenge was getting the Queen's coffin from Osborne House on the Isle of Wight
29:06to London for her funeral.
29:09The Queen's coffin was taken down on a carriage to a very small yacht called the Alberta,
29:15a tiny little thing, and it began a procession across the Solent.
29:19As this great monarch's coffin sailed the short distance to the mainland,
29:24Victoria's body was accompanied by a magnificent array of 40 battleships.
29:30It was so impressive because it was 11 miles of battleships and cruisers,
29:36and they were top to toe lined across the Solent.
29:41And as the little Alberta went past, they were firing their minute guns.
29:45So it was very moving.
29:47An orchestra was playing Chopin's Funeral March as the Queen slowly made her way to Portsmouth.
29:57The strains of the music could be heard from the South Downs,
30:01where onlookers gathered to watch this incredible spectacle.
30:05There are lots of descriptions about this, about how moving it was.
30:09And they remark how tiny her coffin looked on the Alberta,
30:13and the boat was tiny, with these huge, great battleships,
30:18with all the sailors standing to attention as it went past.
30:22For two hours, the might of the largest navy in the world
30:26stood in solemn respect for their commander-in-chief.
30:30It's all very quiet, with the sun setting.
30:33The rest of the royals are all there, and they all kneel down.
30:36And there are people on the shore watching.
30:38That is very impressive, and very sad sight.
30:41Everyone is moved by this farewell that, you know,
30:45of the Queen's coffin being carried from this little island that she loved,
30:50back to the mainland.
30:52As the day of the funeral dawned,
30:55London was alive with visitors from across the country,
30:58who'd all flocked to witness their great Queen's final journey.
31:03Anybody who had houses or shops on the route,
31:07they began to sell space on their balconies.
31:10But they were selling them for ridiculous amounts of money.
31:13A seat in the corner of a balcony cost the equivalent today
31:17of about £3,000.
31:19But perhaps the view was worth the money,
31:22as this was one of the most incredible sights London had ever witnessed.
31:27Despite the bitterly cold weather,
31:30it's estimated that a million people lined the streets to watch.
31:33Military bands played,
31:35and over 40 members of royalty were present from all over Europe.
31:40It was a magnificent royal spectacle,
31:43and a tribute to a monarch who throughout her lifetime
31:46had held a fragile Europe and world together.
31:51Her funeral was described as the epitome of empire.
31:54The 40 kings, dukes, princes walking behind her.
31:58You know, Franz Ferdinand of Austria,
32:01who within a few years, he's going to be assassinated.
32:04It's going to lead to the First World War.
32:06He is there in that procession.
32:08Edward VII, the king and heir, he's there.
32:11Kaiser is there.
32:12And within a few years, all going to be at war.
32:15It is incredible when you think of what she held together,
32:19and how quickly it's all going to fall apart.
32:23The Kaiser, Victoria's grandson who'd held her so gently as she died,
32:28would, in just over a decade,
32:30be leading Germany against the nation she'd ruled.
32:34The soldiers so proudly pulling their empress's coffin
32:37would be facing death themselves
32:39at the hands of German troops in the trenches of World War I.
32:44It's the height of empire, and also, as I see it,
32:47the beginning of the end of empire.
32:49Because it's going to break apart,
32:51empires are going to fall,
32:53boundaries are going to be changed.
32:54The whole world is going to change.
32:56And this woman who, at age 81,
32:59was holding things together, her death means it's the end.
33:03Not every royal marriage is destined for a happy ever after.
33:17But usually the wedding, at least, has the air of a fairy tale.
33:22But in 1795, the nuptials of the Prince of Wales,
33:25later George IV, to Caroline of Brunswick,
33:28were nothing short of a catastrophe.
33:31On the happiest day of his life,
33:33the Prince was drunk, overwhelmed,
33:36trying,
33:37Why am I marrying this woman?
33:39And that's because he was already married.
33:43So now, he was getting married again.
33:46Which, strictly speaking, is bigamy.
33:50Why did this disastrous marriage go ahead?
33:54A decade before the wedding,
33:56George had been in love with Maria Fitzherbert.
33:59She was a Catholic widow, and she was very virtuous.
34:02And she refused to marry him.
34:04So he tried everything to persuade her she wouldn't have it.
34:08In the end, George said he was on his deathbed,
34:11and it was his dying wish that she married him.
34:14And there was a clergyman waiting around just in case.
34:16And when poor Mrs. Fitzherbert said,
34:18Of course, it's your dying wish, of course we will marry.
34:21George married her, and then said he felt an awful lot better.
34:25Mrs. Fitzherbert was shocked, but she did love George very sincerely.
34:30But there was just one problem.
34:32It was a totally illegal marriage.
34:35As the heir to the throne, George could not marry a Catholic.
34:38But also, there was the Royal Marriages Act of 1772.
34:42And this said that royal marriages had to be approved by the sovereign.
34:46And there's no way that his father, the king, would have approved it.
34:49So George had broken the law in these two respects.
34:53And yet, George treated her as a wife.
34:57I mean, the royal family knew they were married, but turned a blind eye.
35:00And George adored her.
35:02Yet, as he grew older, he needed a legitimate heir to carry on the monarchy.
35:08And he had gigantic debts.
35:10And the king and the government said to him,
35:13If you want those paid off, you have to get married.
35:16There's a wonderful cartoon by James Gilray called Lover's Dream.
35:20And George, he's lying in bed, imagining Princess Caroline.
35:24And behind him is everything he's leaving.
35:27Gambling, the women.
35:29And he is dreaming of his future.
35:31It's all very romantic.
35:32But really, his dream is of bags of gold.
35:35So George was marrying Princess Caroline for money.
35:40Poor old Mrs. Fitzherbert.
35:42Her marriage was deemed illegal.
35:43And she had to watch her husband marry someone else.
35:47Well, perhaps it was some consolation that he cried all the way through the ceremony.
35:53George died in 1830, 35 years after his disastrous marriage.
35:59He had a miniature of Mrs. Fitzherbert around his neck.
36:04The only woman he ever truly loved.
36:07Coming up, the intimate photo capturing a queen after death.
36:17The Victorians had a completely different relationship with death than we do.
36:21And death photography was a hugely popular tradition at the time.
36:25As Victoria's body made its way to St. George's Chapel at Windsor, what mourners weren't aware of was that within her coffin were precious objects she'd left precise instructions to be buried with.
36:45Objects that she was determined to keep secret, even from her own children.
36:52If this coffin had fallen, heaven forbid, and the contents spilled out, there would have been so much shock and horror in her family and the court because nobody had any idea what Victoria was smuggling in with her.
37:06It was her secret.
37:13In the week before her funeral, an astonishing photo of the dead queen was taken, showing her lying in her open coffin.
37:22The Victorians had a completely different relationship with death than we do, and death photography was a hugely popular tradition at the time.
37:31This is an image that is not necessarily meant to be distributed publicly.
37:36The person who supposedly took this was an artist who often worked from photography to then transpose that to paint.
37:43So this is almost a preparatory sketch in a way.
37:47But of course what it gives us now is a remarkable record of that moment.
37:52And the photo gives a fascinating insight into how Victoria wanted to be dressed for burial.
37:58Rather than wearing the sombre mourning clothes she'd favoured since the death of her beloved husband Albert,
38:04her choice of coffin attire was quite a surprise.
38:08This queen, who had worn black, you know, for half her life, wanted now to be in white with her wedding veil on her face.
38:18She says that she is now going to meet Albert in heaven, so she is going as a bride to him.
38:24And so they put on a white gown for her, and her wedding veil covers her face.
38:30But it wasn't just what Victoria wanted to wear that gives us such an intimate glimpse into the woman behind the crown.
38:37But the objects she'd asked to be buried with.
38:41After her death, she had given her personal instructions to Mrs. Tuck, who was her dresser.
38:46And these were about what was going to be with her in her coffin.
38:50And there's a long list.
38:52As well as trinkets from her daughters and family photos,
38:56she also requested that a rather curious physical reminder of the man she'd spent the past 40 years mourning accompany her to her grave.
39:06She had numerous objects relating to Albert, but most significant was a plaster cast of his hand.
39:11This was not a new item. She'd had it made during his lifetime and had reportedly taken it to bed with her every evening.
39:18This was a way for the Queen to stay close to her husband. She missed his touch.
39:23And it would slip under her pillow at night and she would sleep alongside it.
39:28And here it was, entering the coffin with her, even following her to the grave.
39:32This evocation of the man who'd been missing from her life for so many decades.
39:36As far as the world knew, Queen Victoria's entire life had been defined by her love of Prince Albert
39:43and her intense grief after his premature death aged only 42.
39:49But in fact, as well as the request she left with her dresser, Mrs. Tuck,
39:54Victoria also left secret instructions her family knew absolutely nothing about,
40:00which reveal a rather different love story.
40:03Victoria leaves a secret will and it goes to James Reid, who's her physician.
40:07And he is the person who then receives these instructions.
40:10And it makes total sense that she would select Reid for this.
40:13He's someone who's very close to the royal body in the run-up to the death
40:17and in the immediate days afterwards.
40:19He has access to the coffin and he can enact these last requirements of hers.
40:24And the highly confidential items Victoria asked Reid to place with her for all eternity
40:30had to be included in strictest confidence because of who they once belonged to.
40:36There are other items in there that you might not expect
40:39and a lot of these relate to John Brown.
40:42John Brown had been Queen Victoria's devoted servant
40:46who looked after her horses at Balmoral for over 30 years before his death in 1883.
40:52John Brown was a ghillie and became the Queen's constant companion
40:58and he was elevated to a status that no one quite understood
41:03and eased her out of her mourning for Prince Albert.
41:07In the wake of Albert's death, Victoria had withdrawn from the world
41:12to the Scottish Highlands to mourn.
41:14And it was there at Balmoral that Brown lifted her out of her sadness.
41:20In the decades in which Victoria withdrew from society,
41:23she became incredibly close to Brown.
41:26There were rumours that their relationship transcended
41:29the usual servant-mistress relationship
41:31and her children in particular found this incredibly difficult.
41:35They found him to be uncouth and to behave in a way that really overstepped
41:39the boundaries of the place that he held in society.
41:42But Victoria didn't see it like that.
41:44She had great affection for him.
41:46After Victoria's death,
41:48had her children known of their mother's secret instructions to read
41:51relating to the man they so disliked,
41:54they would have been horrified.
41:56They loathed John Brown and the Prince of Wales in particular
42:00went round and destroyed anything connected with John Brown
42:04after the Queen died.
42:05He would have nothing to do with John Brown.
42:07In fact, there was a statue, I think it was in Osborne,
42:10which he had smashed down.
42:12One of the first acts he did.
42:15Little did the Prince know that as he was trying to obliterate
42:18all traces of one of his mother's closest confidants,
42:22John Reed was discreetly placing some of Brown's most treasured possessions
42:26in Victoria's coffin itself,
42:30on her secret instruction.
42:32She wanted a photograph of John Brown placed in her left hand
42:37and she wanted a lock of John Brown's hair
42:40and she would like to have his handkerchief in the coffin.
42:44She requested that her wedding engagement ring from Albert
42:48be moved from her left hand to her right
42:50and instead on her wedding finger, her ring finger,
42:53she had John Brown's mother's wedding ring placed there.
42:56He always wore his mother's wedding ring.
42:59It was the dearest thing he possessed.
43:01All of these items in the coffin were kept secret
43:04by a blanket of flowers that were placed on top,
43:06so anyone coming to see the body, including her children, of course,
43:09would not have seen this secret arrangement of memorabilia
43:13that Victoria had so desperately wanted in there.
43:15So the royal family had no idea of what she was carrying with her when she died,
43:21so that is Victoria's little secret.
43:24Read had faithfully carried out the instructions his queen had left him,
43:28and it was only with the publication of his diaries in 1986,
43:3285 years after Victoria's death,
43:35that what he and Mrs. Tuck had done for her finally came to light.
43:40She had a realistic view about how difficult her family were
43:43and her children and their bickering and their arguing,
43:46and I think she trusted them.
43:49I think she trusted them completely,
43:51more than she trusted her family.
43:53Victoria's final wishes and death
43:55shed a whole new light on the royal love story
43:58that appeared to define her life.
44:00It's remarkable, because we have this narrative
44:04of Victoria and Albert, this golden couple.
44:07They're the ultimate Victorian love story,
44:09and they were the aspiration for so many other couples in this period.
44:13And yet we have this whole other version of Victoria,
44:16years after Albert's died,
44:18finding love again, potentially,
44:20and making a life for herself,
44:22a life of which those around her did not approve.
44:26Clearly she held John Brown in enormous affection,
44:30and to even take the risk of asking for these intimate items
44:36to be buried with her, without her children's knowledge,
44:40shows how much affection she had for John Brown.
44:44The worst Queen Victoria is remembered
44:46as one of Britain's most powerful and influential monarchs,
44:50who presided over the empire at its height.
44:53Her coffin reveals what to her had mattered most.
44:57Throughout history there's always that difficult tension
45:01between the monarch and the person,
45:03who they are in public and who they are in private.
45:06But in Victoria's case, the list of items
45:09and the fact that they make their way into the coffin
45:11is an autobiography of her own making.
45:14Royal births, marriages and deaths
45:20remind us that behind the pomp and ceremony
45:23lies a family just like any other,
45:25with tensions, secret passions and simple human love.
45:29From Victoria's final wishes to be buried
45:31with memories of those she cared for
45:33to George IV's disastrous public marriage,
45:36under the immutable golden crown
45:39there always lies a fallible human heart.
45:42Births, marriages and deaths are so important
45:45because the royals are our soap opera.
45:48We want to see love, we want to see funerals,
45:51all the finery with a little bit of passion and scandal thrown in.
45:55And Secrets of the Royals continues next Saturday at 5 past 8.
46:04If Royal Walls could talk, what would they say?
46:07Discover Secrets of the Royal Palaces, stream now on 5.
46:11Coming up, their bond was about more than just passing down the baton.
46:15Catherine and Queen Elizabeth, a special relationship, is next.
46:18Live address is next.
46:20accolades
46:22music
46:24war
46:26audio
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