A new three-year digitisation project
will see some 23,500 items from the Royal Collection, Royal
Archives and Royal Commission be published online. The project
directors hope it will shed new light on the role and influence of
Prince Albert, Prince Consort, on life and society during the reign
of his wife, Queen Victoria. The first lot of items will be
published in the summer of 2019 to mark the…
Queen Victoria is inextricably linked
with Windsor Castle, but these associations, whilst deep-rooted,
are in fact not always visible. A statue of her is within the first
section of the State Apartments at Windsor Castle and her throne
and footstool – presented to her in…
We know of course, that Queen Victoria’s
relationship with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, whilst difficult
in the early years of her childhood and adolescence, gradually
improved with her marriage to Prince Albert, becoming one of
genuine closeness and affection. The death of the Duchess of Kent
in 1861 – nine months as history would show, prior to the death of
Prince Albert – provoked an…
“Oh! This was the happiest day of my
life!” With these words, Queen Victoria described her wedding day
in her diary – 10 February 1840, writing up the event for the day’s
entry from Windsor Castle. It marked the beginning of her marriage
to her cousin, Prince Albert…
On 1 August 1832, the thirteen-year-old
Princess Victoria of Kent made her first entry into her diary; it
was a diary, as she described it on its title page, which had been
given to her by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, at Kensington
Palace the day before. Bound in…
On 16 March 1861, the Duchess of Kent,
born Princess Marie Louise Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and by
her first marriage, Princess of Leinigen, died at her residence of
Frogmore House, in Windsor Great Park. Though she had been mother
to Queen Victoria, the Duchess of Kent had never herself been
Princess of Wales, because her second husband, Edward, Duke of Kent
had been George III’s fourth…
Animals given to royalty could, of
course, become pets – but they could often be presented in the form
of political gifts, adding therefore to the monarch’s personal
sense of majestas. An example of this is the bay horse and three
brood mares, sent to Henry VIII by…
Out of her nine children, Queen Victoria
favoured her youngest, Beatrice. Known by the affectionate name,
Baby, the Queen both doted and depended on her daughter. Beatrice
was just four-years-old when her father, Prince Albert died
suddenly. At age fourteen, the Queen gifted…
The upcoming film Victoria and Abdul will
shine a light on the controversial friendship between Queen
Victoria and her servant, Abdul Karim, focusing on the colonialism
and Islamophobia of the time. Abdul Karim became a servant to the
Queen in 1887, alongside another Indian servant, and eventually
rising in the ranks until he became her Indian Secretary. In an
interview with New Hampshire Public…
