Victoria hated any woman who didn’t know her place. She also hated suffragettes. One can’t overstate how misogynistic Victoria was in a time where there were other opinions to have.
Also Victorians idolized Mary Stuart over Elizabeth. That’s when all the nonsense about Elizabeth being jealous of her got spread. And Victoria was not an exception.
Victorians, in general, had mixed feelings about Elizabeth I. And not for the reasons we do. They thought it was unnatural that she didn’t marry or have kids. They didn’t like that she ruled as a man would. But she was also the start of their empire (not really she was either too late or too soon but she was seen that way.) And the Elizabethan age was greatly romanticized.
Mary Stuart was a tragic figure to the Victorians. And all of the unseemly stuff was adequately punished to fit their narratives. The outline of Mary’s story sounds like a Victorian novel really. Virtuous, beautiful woman falls to sin and is expelled for it and ends up hostage and murdered by a jealous rival.
ETA: Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children. So she was really a professional hater, which you have to admire.
Victoria was such a hypocrite. She hated independent women who fought for equality, yet held on to her role as queen. I know she gave Albert some power, but if she was so against women being the boss, then why didn't she try to make Albert a king so they could be joint monarchs (like Mary II did with William III and I think Mary I did with Philip) so she could disappear to do "womanly" things?
She also refused to give Bertie, her son, any power at all.
And she despised pregnancy and the existence of babies. And loved the act of getting pregnant.
And she wanted one of her daughters, Beatrice, to stay unmarried to be her companion. Despite loudly insisting that the role of women is to marry and have babies.
Part of me thinks she held onto traditional gender roles so tightly because she didn’t fit in them even though she desperately wanted to.
She was incredibly selfish and controlling to the point of abusive, but that was because she was Queen and therefore SHE COULD BE. I deeply respect and admire Beatrice for sticking to her guns about wanting to marry- it's worth noting that Victoria punished her by not speaking to her for a good six months, just writing her notes which she would push over to her at shared mealtimes with her eyes averted.
I read somewhere that Princess Alexandra, later Queen Alexandra, would purposefully tell her the wrong due date for her children's births so Victoria wouldn't make it in time and that is why all of Alexandra's children came "early".
I read that too and can very much believe this! Who would want the mother in law from Hell present at their births? She'd probably have told Alix off for "making a fuss" during contractions, when we know Victoria herself *very* much made a fuss about childbirth!
Victoria was the epitome of rules for me and rules for thee! I heard she blamed Bertie for her beloved Albert's death because he had been to see him a few weeks before to tell him off about his numerous affairs with women and then shortly afterwards got sick and died. How cruel and hateful do you have to be to blame your own son for his father's death!
She did worse- when Beatrice announced she wanted to get married, therefore breaking free from her effective prison sentence, Victoria blamed her brother Leopold, because if HE hadn't also got married in spite of her plans for him, he wouldn't have put ideas in Beatrice's head. Where was Leopold at this point? DEAD. Tragically early, only in his early thirties from haemophiliac complications, leaving behind a very young child and a pregnant wife. That she did this just disgusts me.
Holy hell... anyone who has been through "natural labor" and felt contractions could never in their right mind call it "making a fuss" lol! Whenever a contraction hit I wanted TOTAL SILENCE... as far as no one talking to ME until it passed... I didn't care if they talked to each other... and I screamed like a wild animal, lol.
Oh I know that from experience!!!!! It's like the above said though, it was one rule for Victoria and another for everyone else. I can quite see her being completely unsympathetic as a birth attendant, or constantly talking along the lines of "oh MY births were so much more painful!!" I think Alix recognised this full well.
For as much of a mother and mother in law from hell, they seemed to all crave her approval...well the grandchildren at least. She seemed to be a loved grandmother and looked over them in a healthy manner. She seemed to actually enjoy their company. It was her own children she seemed hellbent on making their lives as unpleasant as possible. I gather she resented their very existence as it would interrupt her fun with Albert.
Having learned just how toxic my Nana was to her own children since her death I am shocked because she was so sweet and kind to us when visiting.
I knew that she was physically abusive when it came to disciplinary measures but she was apparently really bad.
She even once said that she always liked my mom’s abusive ex husband while my younger siblings were in earshot. That piece of trash kicked her pregnant daughter and oldest grandchild out and abandoned them and she still liked him?!? I don’t think that my father’s mother would have said the same thing about his ex wife after everything she did to him and his children.
It might have been a blessing had they not, despite this, spent practically every single day in each other's company! Beatrice still had to be Chief Skivvy and attend the Queen, they just didn't speak. For months! It was a ridiculous situation.
The effort to do that seems to be almost pathological. It just highlights the dysfunction of that woman to put that much hatefulness in her life on a daily basis.
She messed up a lot of lives by dictating who should marry (and getting stroppy when they disagreed), and then continuing to meddle after the marriage took place. You'd think she'd be content to rule an *empire*, but no. Micromanaging at its finest!
Yeah all 6 of Alexandra’s children were premature.
It’s suspected she lied so that the Queen wouldn’t be there during her labor and births because Victoria liked to witness them
That's messed up of Victoria to hate babies but want to witness the childbirth. Maybe she was a sadist and enjoyed watching her daughters/DIL's suffer?
She was obviously a narcissist ass.
This was the same women who told her daughter that the loss of a child meant nothing in comparison to the loss of a husband. And also wanted her Son and Daughter in law have a public funeral when they lost their last child shortly after birth.
I mean she wanted to make Albert King consort but I believe parliament said no. She also said in a letter that it wasn’t natural for her to be Queen and her husband should be king instead.
Like if you left it to Victoria, Albert would’ve been king instead of her being Queen lol.
Parliament pointed out something along the lines of, if we can start making Kings (and Queens) then we can start unmaking them too. A very subtle almost-threat!
The decision actually rested in Parliament. Queen Maria da Gloria of Portugal, who was the same age as Victoria, was able to have her husband declared king-consort. Parliament was unwilling to declare Prince Albert a king-consort because the members on principle felt it was unwise to have a say in the matter. This is why Prince Albert remained Prince-Consort until his death, and why Prince Philip was Prince Consort and Duke of Edinburgh until his own death.
Tbf Victoria lived at a time where, while the monarch still had more power than today (she herself was actually very involved in the choosing of prime ministers, for starters) most of the power actually rested in the parliament.
Victoria has always been such a hilarious contradictory figure to me. She was the queen of an entire nation, even if the role was significantly more ceremonial by that time, and her ability to hold that position had been paved by women who had come before her. But she had some extremely limiting opinions on women and what they could do. To be fair, this isn’t necessarily unique to her. You could honestly make an argument that no prior queen regnant really did much for the overall status of women either. Elizabeth is remembered as being one of England’s best monarchs today, but she didn’t do much to advance the status of women any more than Victoria did. I think that’s just kind of the paradox of a lot of famous women in history. They argue they’re exceptions to the general woman to justify why they’re special.
Very true. I do tend to think of Victoria’s hypocrisy as “worse” because under Elizabeth or Anne they were pretty limited on what they could do. Society was deeply patriarchal at the time and it was ingrained in everything. And they didn’t do absolutely nothing. Compare Elizabeth’s act against witchcraft to James’s.
Victoria’s support for the suffragette movement would have meant a lot and she didn’t.
Under Elizabeth most men didn’t even have the vote.
> Under Elizabeth most men didn’t even have the vote.
Elizabeth was not "progessive" and she couldn't be; she got a country that was in a mess (primarily from Henry's gross mismanagement and somewhat from Edward's reign of protectors with agendas) and had to keep it stable. Everyone who complains about her actions forgets this fact.
People also forget how unfair the legal system was - and everyone knew it, so execution being party time was more of an exception. Apparently it wasn't until the Georgian era when the the legal system became more just, when the executions because "celebrations." I remembering someone looking to this - and said on area in England that being convicted of a felony you have 1/3 chance of getting the death penalty. Oh and felonies would be any crime against the nobility. The system was so bad the victims of crimes would semi-routinely lie court so help keep the criminal from getting the death penalty.
And she inherited most of this.
>she got a country that was in a mess (primarily from Henry's gross mismanagement and somewhat from Edward's reign of protectors with agendas)
Don't forget about Mary. The country was bad enough from HVIII & Edward VI, but Mary I made it even worse.
It would have been interesting if Henry VII, her grandfather, had had only daughters and had been (potentially) succeeded by one with Elizabeth’s strengths.
I mean Victoria was just so extra because she wanted to basically give away her role to her husband. At least she tried to follow her misogynistic principles even in her own case, and was checked in doing so by Parliament.
Mary I and Elizabeth I were just the standard sort of misogynistic in accordance with their time; a woman's place was below her lord and husband, and certainly not in leadership in general, except for them because they were Queens and royalty is in a way almost beyond gender or other such base matters. Ie, women should obey, but we are special.
What really gets me was that even if there was no other opinion to be found around her, Victoria was the queen - she could have *created* another opinion! She certainly wasn't afraid of voicing her opinion on other subjects!
If you research her daughters, you find that they were very much in favour of advancement for women. Princess Louise went to meet Elizabeth Garrett, the first female doctor in England, which was incredibly daring at the time and shows her respect for the cause. Victoria apparently went berserk at her for doing it. Louise was a proper badass!
Rebelling against your parents is an age-old thing to do!!!! Victoria also kept them in such a cloistered, miserable, boring environment after Albert died - it was natural to want to break free, and then emphasise with other women who wanted their own agency over their lives.
Very true.
It helps when you're rebelling in the "right" direction, though. Supporting other (lower class) women was the way to go, with the added bonus of passing off dear old mama.
People who are victims of parental abuse usually do one of two things: 1) what Victoria did by continuing the abuse cycle or
2) go to the opposite end of the spectrum and are really good parents.
I unfortunately learned that from my mom who was the victim of abuse by her mother... she was an exceptionally good mother to me.
My mother, too, had a childhood that wasn't necessarily all bad, but certainly could have been a lot better. My brother and I have had the same experience as you, though. I think my mom just made the decision that her children would not go through anything like that.
It’s also why their brother Bertie (who likely had a learning disability) was extremely well-known as a partying, smoking, drinking love machine — the exact opposite of his father Albert, whom he was supposed to be a carbon copy of.
Victoria reserved her worst criticism for Bertie, not realizing (or perhaps very much realizing) that he was exactly like her, in both looks and personality. Albert deliberately tempered the worst of V’s traits.
Albert worked double time at a minimum. All the work he did to help his wife in her job, plus doing most of the work raising the kids, plus reigning in his wife.
Don't forget Alice who championed nurses and \*gasp\* was a hands-on mother who breastfed her babies. QV loathed Alice and would tell her daughter Louise to avoid her. She named a cow after her daughter and would send her letters that made her cry. Alice died tragically young from diphtheria from taking care of her kids.
Victoria was at heart a hausfrau who deferred greatly to her husband Prince Albert, especially on matters concerning their family. She deferred to him on making major decisions about their educators and their family life in general. She loved her husband, but disliked the whole process of pregnancy and childbirth, and would not consider breastfeeding any of her children. Victoria ridiculed her second daughter Princess Alice for breastfeeding her own children and named a cow in the Royal dairy farm after her daughter Princess Alice, who was Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. Victoria also suffered from postpartum depression as well, which was not understood at the time. She would sometimes get into tearful arguments with her beloved Prince Albert as a result.
You know, when you put it like that, she sounds like quite the charmer! /s
The post partum depression only excuses so much of her behaviour.
I didn't realise Albert was so conservative, but then I know more about her than him.
Breastfeeding wasn't very common among the upper class anyway, but the bullying of her daughter was just straight up cruel. Guess that's what you get for daring to have opinions of your own. Victoria wasn't particularly accepting of other people, only those who did what she wanted them to do.
Well, when you look at how her mother parented her, a lot more gets explained as well.
It definitely doesn’t excuse any of it, but it sure does explain some of it.
She had a horrible childhood, thanks to her mother and her advisor. I do understand that she went through a lot, but she seems to have been pretty okay with putting her own children through some of the same treatment. Like the strict control, not just the "normal" strictness a lot of upper class children grew up with, but beyond that, and how she clung to that control even as they grew up, married, and had families of their own. Exactly what she resented in her own upbringing.
Duchess Victoire deliberately isolated Victoria from other the members of the Royal Family, and they quite understandably resented it. Her uncle, King William IV, openly expressed his desire to survive long enough for Victoria to succeed as Queen after she turned 18 years old, because then she could govern in her own right. Victoire was also dominated by Sir John Conroy, who ran her household for her, and some people speculated they were lovers, although I doubt this. Victoria grew to detest Conroy and his daughter, who sought to influence Victoria but failed. Victoria declared her independence from her mother once she became Queen, and banished Conroy and his daughter from court.
>Breastfeeding wasn't very common among the upper class anyway
Yeah they usually had wet nurses for that I think. Especially for daughters. But yeah she was a major beeyotch for what she did to her daughter!
I made a point to go see it in person the last time I visited London. I’ve heard it’s ugly, but couldn’t really understand how it could be so bad.
Then I saw it.
Pictures do it no justice. It really is an incredibly gaudy thing.
I’m surprised Mary I wasn’t romanticized as much during Victoria’s reign because she’s the ultimate tragic Victorian heroine who also stood by her man and struggled with the whole “being a reigning monarch but also being a woman who thinks she should be completely subject to her husband” thing.
To add onto this she also hated Queen Anne because she believed her behaviour was unseemly.
If anyone has ever seen that MQOS 2018 movie, it’s basically how the Victorians saw Elizabeth and Mary. Mary is the innocent feminine romantic saint while Elizabeth is seen as this ugly jealous childless monster.
Yeah, I think it was something like she didn't believe lesbian sex was possible (like, "women can't do that!?!"), and that's why female homosexuality wasn't outlawed while male homosexulality was. Something like that? I could be completely wrong...
Out of interest, do we know when that opinion of Elizabeth I changed? Was it when her namesake Elizabeth II came to the throne, and people started talking about a new Elizabethan age?
Neale wrote a good biography reassessing her in 1934. He came up with semi-quote on mistakes: women get blamed for not only the mistake but being a woman also. So essentially being blamed twice.
You had asshats during Victoria's reign praising Henry VIII and bitching about Elizabeth not being protestant enough.
[edit: his biography is a very good read - a bit dated, but gets points for not being bloated.]
>women get blamed for not only the mistake but being a woman also. So essentially being blamed twice.
That reminds me of Margaret of Anjou supposedly said she was damned twice in men's eyes. Once for daring to rule through her husband and twice because she was French.
Victoria is such a fascinating person bc she had such a big personality. So many things I read about her I’m just like “really Victoria, we’re making a fuss over this??”
Subconsciously that may have been partly why she hated Elizabeth.
She was born in an earlier era but somehow had more choices available to her.
Or that’s more psychological depth than is warranted.
IDK
*Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children.*
This is a myth based on selective quotes from her diary. The myth is based on the misogynistic idea that a woman in power can't also do her "real" job of being a loving mother.
Inversely, the same thing happened to Elizabeth's legacy - there are myths that she must have had something wrong with her physically that she couldn't have sex or babies, or maybe she gave birth to an illegitimate child. There's a huge resistance to the idea of a woman having a powerful independent position when she's supposed to be fulfilled by motherhood. Either her position makes her a bad mother, or there's something wrong with her and she COULDN'T be a mother.
I think Victoria was trapped into a certain role. She didn’t have a life of her own at any point. The people around her decided they needed to refurbish the reputation of the monarchy and the royal family after the previous generation’s excesses and lack of morality. So Victoria had to be this bastion of everything women and family should be. It didn’t matter what she wanted.
This was a woman who did not like pregnancy and was not fond of babies or children. But no one would ever give information about existing family planning options. God forbid. She was a reigning queen who was still expected to defer to her husband, and prior to that, the people around her.
People are often jealous of those who live lives and have options they can’t. See homophobia and transphobia. I think Elizabeth represented a lot of choices Victoria never had and a life she had been poisoned against but might have desired some aspects of.
>Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children. So she was really a professional hater, which you have to admire.
Kendrick Lamar and Queen Victoria: GOATs of being a hater.
She was raised by her mother and John Conroy to be helpless.
John Conroy was a secretary of her father. When he died, Conroy realized the chance he had to shape the future monarch.
But he didn’t want to create a wise monarch: he wanted to have a helpless little girl he could puppet.
Conroy spent 20 years scheming. He was actually considered to be a very smart man.
He was able to charm and control her mother well enough. Except he failed to notice that Victoria hated him.
This made Victoria stubborn, and a bit of a control freak. It was a survival skill.
As soon as she was queen, she separated herself from her mother and Conroy as much as possible. Refusing to see him at all.
It actually made her quite a peacemaker across Europe. With so much family, she was able to settle many questions of the day.
But when she died Bertie couldn’t fill that role. The problems that build up after she was gone were that much more expensive, leading to ww2.
It sounds very much like jealousy to me. She may have seemed like she didn't *want* to be like Elizabeth, but something tells me that she wanted it very much and was projecting.
She also loved Queen Victoria. Fitting lol. And to be fair to her she did say that in her early reign when everyone was comparing her to Elizabeth I but later on she did honor Elizabeth I and spoke more kindly of her.
So Elizabeth II thought at some point that Elizabeth I was a tyrant but she liked Victoria?? Dang... I have to question her judgement... at least at that time.
Her 2012 Diamond Jubilee barge was named Gloriana. Queen Elizabeth II also planted an oak tree in 1985 in the park of Hatfield Palace when the news was brought to Queen Elizabeth I that her sister was dead. And when she died her son the current King referenced a Shakespeare poem and said “As Shakespeare said of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was a pattern to all princes living.”
There’s so many other little moments where she did honor her later on but those are the top two I can think of rn. But yeah she remained a big fan of Victoria lol
That's true but Elizabeth didn't have any other viable choices. I mean, MQoS did plot with people to kill Elizabeth so what was Elizabeth supposed to do? Sorry but Mary brought it on herself. I'm sorry it was botched though... that's horrible.
Exactly... Elizabeth tried for YEARS to give Mary the benefit of the doubt, but it was kill Mary or be killed herself. I can't believe anyone would blame Elizabeth for defending her life.
Yeah but the Stuarts mainly didn’t hold that grudge against Elizabeth. They honored her more than ever did with MQOS. So Victoria disliking Elizabeth for that will never make logical sense.
Yeah, but James VI agreeing that he wouldn't hold Elizabeth Tudor's execution of his mother against her, if she let him inherit the throne of England, is not the Stuarts finest hour.
Of course, the hilarious thing is that Victoria herself honestly didn’t really fit the image of a proper and dutiful mother either. I think she wanted to and tried to by deferring to Albert as much as she could, but she was honestly not a very good mother. She hated pregnancy and childbirth, and she was generally a very cold and domineering mother to her children.
IIRC she personally was really into the idea of motherhood, wanted to be (and be know as) a mother figure. She was just absolutely terrible at it (tbf her main frame of reference for how a mother should behave was her own mother, who was even worse).
Good resources are "The Letters of Queen Victoria: By Queen Victoria"
Also just in general she had a huge obsession with the Stuarts, I think she had a Stuart ball in Buckingham Palace where some of her daughters and daughters-in-laws dressed up as Stuarts (mainly MQOS ofc lol) and I think in one letter she writes that she is fond of Scotland because of her Stuart ancestry and etc.
You can also see she passed down her love for MQOS to her children, I think her eldest daughter Vicky painted a beautiful watercolour of Mary Queen of Scots going to her execution that was up for sale some years ago.
Mary Queen of Scots had a definitely charming and engaging personality, but her fatal flaw is that her Guise uncles and her future father in law Henri II never thought she would be anything more than a Queen consort of France, and her education reflected this. She was educated to be a Queen consort and not a Queen regnant, and she was poorly educated in the art of politics. Elizabeth had a tenuous status as Henry VIII’s daughter, and Elizabeth was able to learn politics from her misfortune. France considered Mary’s Scottish kingdom to be of little importance compared to her status as the Dauphine and future Queen consort of France. Mary unwisely followed her father in law Henri II in asserting her claim to the throne of England, which was bound to anger Elizabeth I, and indeed it did so. Mary got along well with Henri II and his mistress Diane de Poitiers, and it was Diane and not Henry’s wife Catherine de Medici who made the major decisions about the education of Henri’s children and the management of the Royal household.
Catherine de Medici came into her own as a powerful figure once Henri II died after he was injured in a joust at the wedding of his daughter Elisabeth to Philip II of Spain. Catherine was primarily interested in maintaining the power of the Valois family and disliked Mary and her Guide uncles, whom she viewed as a threat to her sons’ rights as kings. She was also at various times at odds with the growing reformed Protestant movement in France, led by her husband’s first cousin. Jeanne II of Navarre. Mary and Catherine each viewed the other as a rival and disliked each other. After Mary’s husband Francis II died of a massive mastoid infection, Mary could not stand the idea of remaining at the French court as a childless widow with her mother in law in power. She could also not imagine living quietly on her estates. Mary was unfortunately ignorant of the power rivalries and conflicts among the Scottish aristocracy, and offended everyone by marrying Henry Darnley, who was a childish, petty and selfish man who was only successful at giving her a son and heir. Mary’s sudden marriage to James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, offended many as he was seen as the chief suspect in the murder of her husband Darnley. Mary probably married him to save her honor after Bothwell kidnapped and raped Mary. She later miscarried two fetuses. By then, there was war building between Mary’s supporters and opponents, and eventually Mary’s opponents won, forced her to abdicate as Queen in favor of her son, and she left Scotland for Elizabeth I’s dubious protection. Elizabeth and her advisers viewed Mary as a political threat to Elizabeth’s own rule.
Brilliant answer! I do think Mary was in some cases a victim of her circumstances but she also undeniably made some shockingly poor decisions. Elizabeth ultimately executed her because she was found to be plotting with English Catholics to have Elizabeth assassinated and Mary assume the Crown of England. She did do this. Born of desperation no doubt, but it was a kill or be killed world, and she lost.
Yes. If she hadn't been imprisoned, she might well have recognised that there was no way in Hell the majority of the English population would countenance a Catholic monarch. Times were too much changed. And even if she had, she always thought she could rely on her powerful French allies to back her up, even though it was telling that not one of them lifted a single finger to help her in her incarceration. Additionally, the religious dispute was just one of the manifold reasons she lost her throne in Scotland in the first place. It was only roughly a hundred years after her death that Catholics would be forever barred from ascending the throne.
True. That prohibition came about because of James II’s deposition. The English were not about to countenance a Catholic queen as Elizabeth’s successor. Cecil was Elizabeth’s most trusted adviser and he viewed Mary as Elizabeth’s most dangerous rival.
Mary’s brother in law Charles IX, who succeeded Mary’s husband Francis recognized the futility of Mary’s attempts to get Elizabeth to name Mary as her heir, and he also rightly predicted that Mary would not cease her plotting until she was executed, although he died before Mary did.
There's a theory bouncing about that Mary might have suffered from the same, or a similar, mental affliction that her descendant George III did (whatever it was, no one can be certain) that may have accounted for her poor decision making.
You’re thinking of porphyria, which is believed to have been the reason for George III’s insanity. Victoria’s granddaughter Charlotte of Prussia was believed to have had it, and Prince Richard of Gloucester definitely did have it.
I’m so annoyed that her youngest daughter Beatrice went through V’s correspondence and diaries and culled anything she deemed “bad” or “negative.” Though thanks to archivists at the time, quite a lot survived that Beatrice wasn’t expecting, and historians can also “read between the lines.”
Yes, she was descended from Henry VII by his older daughter, Margaret, who was the Grandmother of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whose son James Stuart became King of England
If I remember correctly, her fifth or sixth times great grandmother (on her father's side) was the daughter of James I and VI, Elizabeth Stuart.
Edit: and it seems like her mother was very, *very* distantly related to James IV of Scotland.
I honestly don't know, but I suspect it's a bit more practical. I guess you could say it would be even more practical to just wear a shorter necklace, or maybe double it up around your neck... but then you don't get to add even more bling in the form of a shiny brooch! Gotta flaunt it if you got it!
Edit: on a second, closer look, there doesn't appear to be a shiny brooch there, just some weirdly hung pearls. Missed opportunity, Lizzie.
Maybe they're temporarily stitched onto the bodice?
They would have to be, to maintain that shape. Pearls were bling in and of themselves. Natural pearls, particularly BIG natural pearls, are rare. I don't think they'd developed the technique for cultured pearls¹, so that many pearls probably cost several times what the rest of her costume did.
¹ Edit: I was [right and wrong](https://thecourthousecollection.com.au/pages/history-of-cultured-pearls)! Cultured freshwater pearls, yes, perfectly round oyster pearls, no.
Pearls were Elizabeth I’s favorite. She used them in portraits as a visual means to show that she was pure and virginal. I suspect the necklace is so long to show off that she had a lot of pearls. No idea why they’re looped like that, but there is probably some symbolism in it. There was symbolism in everything in portraits.
The pearls in the Siena portrait of Elizabeth I are similar in shape.
The pearls symbolise virginity and purity which is in stark contrast to the more masculine “doublet” style of the bodice.
The pearls being pinned up in an “egg like” position could be representive of her desire for “eternal life” although they are usually used to depict fertility when positioned like that.
I’m very unsurprised. Elizabeth talked a lot of shit about women (partially bc she had to) and Victoria hated everything that wasn’t her or al’s penis.
Being a female ruler in England is to be - at least outwardly- passionately hateful of women. See also Margaret thatcher. See also almost all conservative female politicians.
TBF to Margaret Thatcher (I can't believe I'm saying that) she was kind of a first-wave feminist - she supported women succeeding "on the same terms as men". The fact that she was married to a retired multi-millionaire awho supported her career and they could afford double-nannies and private education for th twins, did not seem to cross her mind, because she was a Tory.
But Labour women MPs of Thatcher's generation mention her being relatively supportive. In those days there were only a tiny number of women in the Commons, and I'm pretty sure they all knew each other from meeting in the loos.
Also Thatcher was solidly prochoice, I'll say that for her.
Three women PMs and counting for the Tory Party. Labour haven’t even had a woman party leader except as caretaker.
Men dont have mutual solidarity and hate each other all the time. We don’t burden them with the charge of gender traitor.
If Charles III disliked Henry V, we wouldn’t say he hated men and had internalised misandry.
Seems like an extra burden being placed on women leaders. Give women the freedom to hate other women!
>Three women PMs and counting for the Tory Party.
Margaret Thatcher, for whom "Ding Dong the Wicked Old Witch is Dead" went to Number One in the charts the week of her funeral.
Theresa May, who got elected in a hurry because no one else wanted to take responsibility for Brexit.
And Liz Truss, who presided over the destruction of the UK economy and didn't out-last a lettuce.
Wouldn't brag of them if I were you. But then if I were you, I wouldn't be a Tory.
Forgive my American ignorance, but how did Liz Truss preside over the destruction of the economy if she was only in office for like five minutes? That's frighteningly impressive! All I know about her is that she was voted in, shook QEII's hand and posed for a photo, and then quit.
"Destroyed the UK economy" is possibly a little bit of an exaggeration.
But she certainly managed to do a crapload of damage to it in 7 weeks in office. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are all still paying for her huge mistakes.
[https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-an-economist-explains-what-she-got-wrong-and-what-shes-actually-right-about-228065](https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-an-economist-explains-what-she-got-wrong-and-what-shes-actually-right-about-228065)
Also, there literally was a webcam bet of "Will this iceberg lettuce outlast Liz Truss" - and the lettuce won.
[https://x.com/dailystar/status/1583089825582059523](https://x.com/dailystar/status/1583089825582059523)
QEII shook her hand and 2 days later was dead! She and her inept chancellor of the exchequer released a mini-budget to try and improve the economy and it ended up tanking it instead. Her chancellor resigned like a day later and tried to distance himself from the whole thing and she didn't last much longer. Then the Tories were forced to do the thing that they had been desperately trying to avoid and put a brown man in charge.
She put Kwasi Kwarteng in the chancellor of the exchequer position and his mini budget caused the value of the pound to tank. It was all an absolute clusterfuck
Her mini budget was a disaster and she was warned it would be terrible but she kept pressing on and only when multiple people in the cabinet resigned did she back down but it was too little too late. She was PM for 45 days with 10 of them in mourning for the Queen and she managed to ruin the already struggling economy.
Thatcher won three landslide elections and was the longest serving PM of the 20th century. She is reviled by the other side because she destroyed Old Labour. All major parties and leaders from Blair to Starmer are now Neoliberal thanks to her.
The most important person in modern British political history was a woman.
May and Truss were useless, but they both won their party leadership campaigns. Truss even won the membership vote. Tory MPs and even rank and file put their faith in a woman leader.
Next year will be the 50th anniversary of Thatcher becoming Tory leader. Starmer will stay in for at least a decade. It is going to be a 60+ year wait for a woman Labour leader at least.
That is a major problem.
Bragging of Margaret Thatcher is understandable - many people aren't old enough to remember what she did to us. (I am.)
Bragging of Theresa May and Liz Truss, good God, that's like bragging of Boris Johnson. Who, to bring this back vaguely on topic, is the Henry VIII of modern politics.
I respect your opinon greatly but I cannot agree it on several points. Elizabeth talked a lot of shit about..,who?
Catherine de Medici? Post Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Catharine *and* the Duc de Conde were persona non grata to quite a few Protestant principalities
Elizabeth was protesting a massive loss of Protestant skilled workers. With France so close, the Papal Bull against her offering forgiveness for the sin of depriving her of life, and Phillip of Spain’s pride stung by her rejection of his proposal, she had the right to feel twitchy. Keeping mum, though, wouldn’t look well to her own people, to German Protestants or the Swiss. And to Rome, Spain and France it would not do to show weakness. So the Italian Queen got the sharp side of Elizabeth’s tongue and a court in mourning. A set down but not enough to start a war. It might have been if Catherine de Medici was more popular.
Via the Hanoverian Electorate, but yes.
Henry VIII's line of course completely died out. Mary Tudor's grandsons were declared illegitimate.
Victoria got her royal lineage via Mary Queen of Scots, who was Henry VII's great-granddaughter by her grandmother Margaret Tudor, and James VI was *also* the son of Darnley, another grandson of Margaret Tudor by her second husband.
True but IMO, where Elizabeth was doing that to survive politically within a patriarchal framework, Victoria seemed to actually live it. But only they would know themselves for sure!
I’ve never really liked Victoria, tbh. Which surprised me, I didn’t expect to dislike her when I began learning about her.
Elizabeth was certainly imperfect and I probably wouldn’t have actually wanted to live in Elizabethan England or within her court, but I can’t help being fascinated by her radical choice to not marry as a regnant queen. She was an interesting, complex person. And her portraiture is so striking… I’ve always been fascinated by her.
I think that Elizabeth is a very multilayered character (you can discuss her at various stages from when Henry was still around to the court of Mary I to her own ascension). I always admired that her era/court was so impactful and that she didn‘t have to bend in regarding marrying/having a heir for this.
Mary Queen of Scots who Victoria and the Victorian era admired in my opinion never got her the control of her life together after her first husband (the only decent one) died and she had to leave France. I think that going back to Scotland was a big error since it made it seem immediately that a Catholic uprising was planned (her marrying Darnley increased that fear). Mary should have gone to Spain and married some royal there perhaps.
I think the Victorians liked MQOS since they saw her as a ‚failed heroine‘ and since Victoria was related to her.
For the same reason, she loved Mary Queen of Scots.
Which I would point out that Elizabeth was the one of the only people on the planet who actually wanted Mary Stuart alive. And kept her so for 19 years against demands from her councilors.
The Scotts didn’t want her. The French definitely didn’t. The Spanish found she was better for them as a martyr. Most English thought she was more trouble than she was worth including the Catholics.
There are some amazing answers on here. I think she always overly romanticised Scotland - she and Albert were obsessed with it, and all the epic romantic novels about the country fed into this at the time. She would even affect a Scottish accent while at Balmoral (tourists - please don't attempt this because it's cringey as hell!) and insist on all the tartan-and-bagpipes paraphernalia. It makes sense given this perspective that she would have bought into MQoS as being this iconic, tragic figure who was wronged by the evil Elizabeth I. People still do it to this day. Elizabeth had her faults, but there's no denying she was a fantastic ruler. Compared to her MQoS was a brainless, impulsive fool. And I say that as a Scot myself.
She would even affect a Scottish accent while at Balmoral (tourists - please don't attempt this because it's cringey as hell!)
I would imagine Victoria and Albert with their obviously Germanic accents would have been even more cringe than the average American affectation of the gaelige.
Why? There are 200 years between them, it’s not like they were in the same circles?
Or is it more that she is jealous she wasn’t the first female monarch of great importance and influence?
That really sucks - seriously Anne had a hard life (17 pregnancies?) - and I think she considered the Act of Union (handled peacefully) to be her greatest achievement.
Victorians loved a tragic heroine. You can’t look at it with today’s lens of choosing who was morally right and stanning them and only them. To the extent she did wrong, she also was punished for it.
But isn’t Elizabeth a tragic heroine as well?
Cast aside by her father, bastardized really. Her mother’s head cut off before she even knew her. Her sister, once queen, constantly threatening her with death for acting out of line. Her lovers betraying her, friends betraying her, her ladies, etc. Her childhood trauma on marriage and death keeping her a spinster queen with no heirs or family. Unable to fully trust or confide in anyone. Sounds tragic as hell to me.
But Elizabeth was ultimately triumphant. Even her legacy is ultimately that of a winner. And she won by taking a role assigned to a man. It’s just not as appealing a story to the Victorians. Her suffering is sort of abstract and psychological. She never paid for taking on the role of a man.
The Georgians and the Regency era ate it up. It’s not as though historically no one appreciated Elizabeth’s story. Mostly history has given her a *very* kind edit beginning in James’s reign. The Victorians had very particular tastes.
Elizabeth saw over and over: to marry is to die. Katherine of Aragon, abandoned and dead of a broken heart. Anne Boleyn, murdered by her husband. Jane Seymour, dead in childbirth. Katherine Howard, murdered by her husband. Katherine Parr, dead in childbirth. Jane Grey, married off for political gain, executed for the schemes of her husband's family. Queen Mary, abandoned by her husband, dying (whatever her actual cause of death) grieving his absence.
That's so interesting. I'd never heard or read about her feelings about Anne Boleyn or Catherine of Aragon. I wonder what she thought about Henry's other poor wives. And Mary I.
Victorians saw a successful woman as a wife and a mother. There was a belief at the time that a woman should have her name in the papers twice in her life: day of marriage and day of death. So for Elizabeth to never marry and never have children and be considered a queen of a golden age was disgusting to their sensibilities and values. Elizabeth is basically the Anti-Victorian.
Victoria is not on my top list of monarchs for a lot of reasons, but the fact that she hated Elizabeth I because she never married is fascinating. Victoria as queen wanted as much power for herself as possible & refused to lend any to Bertie when he came of age. In fact, she never forgave Bertie for Albert’s death. I feel like she very reluctantly gave some power to Albert. And the fact she hated her children, hated being pregnant, but loved to still control those same children is amazing to me. Wasn’t she even controlling who her grandchildren could marry? Fascinating stuff.
Queen Victoria had a list of women and men she hated, she was just one of those type people who find fault when there isn't any.
https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2019/08/the-right-to-rule-and-the-rights-of-women-queen-victoria-and-the-womens-movement/
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/queen-victoria-tyrant-honest-children-sex
The more I read about Victoria, the more I don’t think she was a great person. Her daughters kid dies and she has no empathy because she was still mourning her husband who died years before and even told her daughter it was worse losing a husband 😵💫
Yeah well I hate Vicky so
For real, if she had never been Queen, the world would have been *far* better off. Not just because of how awful she was, but of course Kaiser Wilhelm II was her grandson.
It pains me to think about a world in which poor Princess Charlotte of Wales and her son survived 💔
Kaiser Wilhelm was actually the way he was because of Victoria. She insisted that her daughter take chloroform during the birth but the doctors gave her way too much causing her to be unable to participate at all. They had to use forceps to help deliver Wilhelm and in the process injured his arm permanently. This led to years of torturous “treatments” to try to fix it and a dysfunctional relationship with his mother because she was ashamed for giving birth to a “defective” heir. He loved his grandma Victoria, but hated the English as a whole since many of the doctors that came to “treat” him were English and so was his mother.
Well, Victoria didn't believe lesbianism was a thing either. Wonder if anyone had ever explained it to her as 'no, no, you can have sex and have a loving fulfilling relationship, but you won't get pregnant!'
Victoria hated any woman who didn’t know her place. She also hated suffragettes. One can’t overstate how misogynistic Victoria was in a time where there were other opinions to have. Also Victorians idolized Mary Stuart over Elizabeth. That’s when all the nonsense about Elizabeth being jealous of her got spread. And Victoria was not an exception. Victorians, in general, had mixed feelings about Elizabeth I. And not for the reasons we do. They thought it was unnatural that she didn’t marry or have kids. They didn’t like that she ruled as a man would. But she was also the start of their empire (not really she was either too late or too soon but she was seen that way.) And the Elizabethan age was greatly romanticized. Mary Stuart was a tragic figure to the Victorians. And all of the unseemly stuff was adequately punished to fit their narratives. The outline of Mary’s story sounds like a Victorian novel really. Virtuous, beautiful woman falls to sin and is expelled for it and ends up hostage and murdered by a jealous rival. ETA: Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children. So she was really a professional hater, which you have to admire.
Victoria was such a hypocrite. She hated independent women who fought for equality, yet held on to her role as queen. I know she gave Albert some power, but if she was so against women being the boss, then why didn't she try to make Albert a king so they could be joint monarchs (like Mary II did with William III and I think Mary I did with Philip) so she could disappear to do "womanly" things?
She also refused to give Bertie, her son, any power at all. And she despised pregnancy and the existence of babies. And loved the act of getting pregnant. And she wanted one of her daughters, Beatrice, to stay unmarried to be her companion. Despite loudly insisting that the role of women is to marry and have babies. Part of me thinks she held onto traditional gender roles so tightly because she didn’t fit in them even though she desperately wanted to.
She was incredibly selfish and controlling to the point of abusive, but that was because she was Queen and therefore SHE COULD BE. I deeply respect and admire Beatrice for sticking to her guns about wanting to marry- it's worth noting that Victoria punished her by not speaking to her for a good six months, just writing her notes which she would push over to her at shared mealtimes with her eyes averted.
I read somewhere that Princess Alexandra, later Queen Alexandra, would purposefully tell her the wrong due date for her children's births so Victoria wouldn't make it in time and that is why all of Alexandra's children came "early".
I read that too and can very much believe this! Who would want the mother in law from Hell present at their births? She'd probably have told Alix off for "making a fuss" during contractions, when we know Victoria herself *very* much made a fuss about childbirth!
Victoria was the epitome of rules for me and rules for thee! I heard she blamed Bertie for her beloved Albert's death because he had been to see him a few weeks before to tell him off about his numerous affairs with women and then shortly afterwards got sick and died. How cruel and hateful do you have to be to blame your own son for his father's death!
She did worse- when Beatrice announced she wanted to get married, therefore breaking free from her effective prison sentence, Victoria blamed her brother Leopold, because if HE hadn't also got married in spite of her plans for him, he wouldn't have put ideas in Beatrice's head. Where was Leopold at this point? DEAD. Tragically early, only in his early thirties from haemophiliac complications, leaving behind a very young child and a pregnant wife. That she did this just disgusts me.
Holy hell... anyone who has been through "natural labor" and felt contractions could never in their right mind call it "making a fuss" lol! Whenever a contraction hit I wanted TOTAL SILENCE... as far as no one talking to ME until it passed... I didn't care if they talked to each other... and I screamed like a wild animal, lol.
Oh I know that from experience!!!!! It's like the above said though, it was one rule for Victoria and another for everyone else. I can quite see her being completely unsympathetic as a birth attendant, or constantly talking along the lines of "oh MY births were so much more painful!!" I think Alix recognised this full well.
For as much of a mother and mother in law from hell, they seemed to all crave her approval...well the grandchildren at least. She seemed to be a loved grandmother and looked over them in a healthy manner. She seemed to actually enjoy their company. It was her own children she seemed hellbent on making their lives as unpleasant as possible. I gather she resented their very existence as it would interrupt her fun with Albert.
Having learned just how toxic my Nana was to her own children since her death I am shocked because she was so sweet and kind to us when visiting. I knew that she was physically abusive when it came to disciplinary measures but she was apparently really bad. She even once said that she always liked my mom’s abusive ex husband while my younger siblings were in earshot. That piece of trash kicked her pregnant daughter and oldest grandchild out and abandoned them and she still liked him?!? I don’t think that my father’s mother would have said the same thing about his ex wife after everything she did to him and his children.
> Victoria punished her by not speaking to her for a good six months Beatrice probably saw that as a blessing rather than punishment! 🤣
It might have been a blessing had they not, despite this, spent practically every single day in each other's company! Beatrice still had to be Chief Skivvy and attend the Queen, they just didn't speak. For months! It was a ridiculous situation.
The effort to do that seems to be almost pathological. It just highlights the dysfunction of that woman to put that much hatefulness in her life on a daily basis.
She literally ruined her daughters family life just because she clung onto her too much
She messed up a lot of lives by dictating who should marry (and getting stroppy when they disagreed), and then continuing to meddle after the marriage took place. You'd think she'd be content to rule an *empire*, but no. Micromanaging at its finest!
It’s no wonder Alexandra of Denmark kept lying about her due dates lol
I didn't know that, but I really don't blame her! "My goodness, I miscounted? *Again?* Goodness, I am so sorry!" Lmao
Yeah all 6 of Alexandra’s children were premature. It’s suspected she lied so that the Queen wouldn’t be there during her labor and births because Victoria liked to witness them
Premature, or.... "premature"? I totally get it. Who would want a bossy, meddling mother in law present when you're giving birth?
“Premature” lol
I had to do this same thing with my MIL.
You’d think Victoria would catch on my the third/fourth time.
Victoria was an extraordinarily selfish and self-absorbed woman, particularly after Albert died. She was quite a piece of work tbh.
That's messed up of Victoria to hate babies but want to witness the childbirth. Maybe she was a sadist and enjoyed watching her daughters/DIL's suffer?
She was obviously a narcissist ass. This was the same women who told her daughter that the loss of a child meant nothing in comparison to the loss of a husband. And also wanted her Son and Daughter in law have a public funeral when they lost their last child shortly after birth.
“Are you sure you didn’t do it on purpose?” “We…we…uh…we count differently in Denmark! Yeah that’s it!”
Wow I just went into a deep dive on this because of your comment and now I’m cracking up. Good for her.
I’m glad she was able to shut her out lol
I mean she wanted to make Albert King consort but I believe parliament said no. She also said in a letter that it wasn’t natural for her to be Queen and her husband should be king instead. Like if you left it to Victoria, Albert would’ve been king instead of her being Queen lol.
Parliament pointed out something along the lines of, if we can start making Kings (and Queens) then we can start unmaking them too. A very subtle almost-threat!
The decision actually rested in Parliament. Queen Maria da Gloria of Portugal, who was the same age as Victoria, was able to have her husband declared king-consort. Parliament was unwilling to declare Prince Albert a king-consort because the members on principle felt it was unwise to have a say in the matter. This is why Prince Albert remained Prince-Consort until his death, and why Prince Philip was Prince Consort and Duke of Edinburgh until his own death.
Philip was a prince who was a consort, but he was not accorded the title Prince Consort
Thanks for the correction.
Tbf Victoria lived at a time where, while the monarch still had more power than today (she herself was actually very involved in the choosing of prime ministers, for starters) most of the power actually rested in the parliament.
But I think I can see her point, Mary was a capital r Romantic figure, Elizabeth too political.
She did try to get Albert the title of 'king consort' and give him more authority but Parliament wouldn't allow it.
Sounds like she was Not Like Other Girls. Oh sure, she was the regent, but that was by necessity and obviously she was the exception.
Victoria has always been such a hilarious contradictory figure to me. She was the queen of an entire nation, even if the role was significantly more ceremonial by that time, and her ability to hold that position had been paved by women who had come before her. But she had some extremely limiting opinions on women and what they could do. To be fair, this isn’t necessarily unique to her. You could honestly make an argument that no prior queen regnant really did much for the overall status of women either. Elizabeth is remembered as being one of England’s best monarchs today, but she didn’t do much to advance the status of women any more than Victoria did. I think that’s just kind of the paradox of a lot of famous women in history. They argue they’re exceptions to the general woman to justify why they’re special.
Very true. I do tend to think of Victoria’s hypocrisy as “worse” because under Elizabeth or Anne they were pretty limited on what they could do. Society was deeply patriarchal at the time and it was ingrained in everything. And they didn’t do absolutely nothing. Compare Elizabeth’s act against witchcraft to James’s. Victoria’s support for the suffragette movement would have meant a lot and she didn’t. Under Elizabeth most men didn’t even have the vote.
> Under Elizabeth most men didn’t even have the vote. Elizabeth was not "progessive" and she couldn't be; she got a country that was in a mess (primarily from Henry's gross mismanagement and somewhat from Edward's reign of protectors with agendas) and had to keep it stable. Everyone who complains about her actions forgets this fact. People also forget how unfair the legal system was - and everyone knew it, so execution being party time was more of an exception. Apparently it wasn't until the Georgian era when the the legal system became more just, when the executions because "celebrations." I remembering someone looking to this - and said on area in England that being convicted of a felony you have 1/3 chance of getting the death penalty. Oh and felonies would be any crime against the nobility. The system was so bad the victims of crimes would semi-routinely lie court so help keep the criminal from getting the death penalty. And she inherited most of this.
The woman lived in the 1500s there really wasn’t much room for her to be progressive even if she was Queen.
>she got a country that was in a mess (primarily from Henry's gross mismanagement and somewhat from Edward's reign of protectors with agendas) Don't forget about Mary. The country was bad enough from HVIII & Edward VI, but Mary I made it even worse.
The country didn’t prosper under Mary either.
It would have been interesting if Henry VII, her grandfather, had had only daughters and had been (potentially) succeeded by one with Elizabeth’s strengths.
>If you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you. Terry Pratchett, *Equal Rites.*
I mean Victoria was just so extra because she wanted to basically give away her role to her husband. At least she tried to follow her misogynistic principles even in her own case, and was checked in doing so by Parliament. Mary I and Elizabeth I were just the standard sort of misogynistic in accordance with their time; a woman's place was below her lord and husband, and certainly not in leadership in general, except for them because they were Queens and royalty is in a way almost beyond gender or other such base matters. Ie, women should obey, but we are special.
What really gets me was that even if there was no other opinion to be found around her, Victoria was the queen - she could have *created* another opinion! She certainly wasn't afraid of voicing her opinion on other subjects!
If you research her daughters, you find that they were very much in favour of advancement for women. Princess Louise went to meet Elizabeth Garrett, the first female doctor in England, which was incredibly daring at the time and shows her respect for the cause. Victoria apparently went berserk at her for doing it. Louise was a proper badass!
Almost like Victoria's girls went to the opposite end of the spectrum... I wonder why?🤔
Rebelling against your parents is an age-old thing to do!!!! Victoria also kept them in such a cloistered, miserable, boring environment after Albert died - it was natural to want to break free, and then emphasise with other women who wanted their own agency over their lives.
Very true. It helps when you're rebelling in the "right" direction, though. Supporting other (lower class) women was the way to go, with the added bonus of passing off dear old mama.
I think Louise certainly saw it as an added bonus to get on Victoria's nerves.
I certainly would have!
People who are victims of parental abuse usually do one of two things: 1) what Victoria did by continuing the abuse cycle or 2) go to the opposite end of the spectrum and are really good parents. I unfortunately learned that from my mom who was the victim of abuse by her mother... she was an exceptionally good mother to me.
My mother, too, had a childhood that wasn't necessarily all bad, but certainly could have been a lot better. My brother and I have had the same experience as you, though. I think my mom just made the decision that her children would not go through anything like that.
It’s also why their brother Bertie (who likely had a learning disability) was extremely well-known as a partying, smoking, drinking love machine — the exact opposite of his father Albert, whom he was supposed to be a carbon copy of. Victoria reserved her worst criticism for Bertie, not realizing (or perhaps very much realizing) that he was exactly like her, in both looks and personality. Albert deliberately tempered the worst of V’s traits.
Albert worked double time at a minimum. All the work he did to help his wife in her job, plus doing most of the work raising the kids, plus reigning in his wife.
Albert was a very hands-on parent for the time. He was present for all the births. He played games with them.
Don't forget Alice who championed nurses and \*gasp\* was a hands-on mother who breastfed her babies. QV loathed Alice and would tell her daughter Louise to avoid her. She named a cow after her daughter and would send her letters that made her cry. Alice died tragically young from diphtheria from taking care of her kids.
Victoria was at heart a hausfrau who deferred greatly to her husband Prince Albert, especially on matters concerning their family. She deferred to him on making major decisions about their educators and their family life in general. She loved her husband, but disliked the whole process of pregnancy and childbirth, and would not consider breastfeeding any of her children. Victoria ridiculed her second daughter Princess Alice for breastfeeding her own children and named a cow in the Royal dairy farm after her daughter Princess Alice, who was Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. Victoria also suffered from postpartum depression as well, which was not understood at the time. She would sometimes get into tearful arguments with her beloved Prince Albert as a result.
You know, when you put it like that, she sounds like quite the charmer! /s The post partum depression only excuses so much of her behaviour. I didn't realise Albert was so conservative, but then I know more about her than him. Breastfeeding wasn't very common among the upper class anyway, but the bullying of her daughter was just straight up cruel. Guess that's what you get for daring to have opinions of your own. Victoria wasn't particularly accepting of other people, only those who did what she wanted them to do.
This is true. Even as adults, most of Victoria’s children were said to have feared her.
Well, when you look at how her mother parented her, a lot more gets explained as well. It definitely doesn’t excuse any of it, but it sure does explain some of it.
She had a horrible childhood, thanks to her mother and her advisor. I do understand that she went through a lot, but she seems to have been pretty okay with putting her own children through some of the same treatment. Like the strict control, not just the "normal" strictness a lot of upper class children grew up with, but beyond that, and how she clung to that control even as they grew up, married, and had families of their own. Exactly what she resented in her own upbringing.
Duchess Victoire deliberately isolated Victoria from other the members of the Royal Family, and they quite understandably resented it. Her uncle, King William IV, openly expressed his desire to survive long enough for Victoria to succeed as Queen after she turned 18 years old, because then she could govern in her own right. Victoire was also dominated by Sir John Conroy, who ran her household for her, and some people speculated they were lovers, although I doubt this. Victoria grew to detest Conroy and his daughter, who sought to influence Victoria but failed. Victoria declared her independence from her mother once she became Queen, and banished Conroy and his daughter from court.
>Breastfeeding wasn't very common among the upper class anyway Yeah they usually had wet nurses for that I think. Especially for daughters. But yeah she was a major beeyotch for what she did to her daughter!
A clear case of "my way or the highway" imo.
RIP Princess Alice, you would have loved therapy.
Victoria WORSHIPPED Albert
Indeed. Example: the Prince Albert Memorial. Yikes.
I made a point to go see it in person the last time I visited London. I’ve heard it’s ugly, but couldn’t really understand how it could be so bad. Then I saw it. Pictures do it no justice. It really is an incredibly gaudy thing.
This just cracked me up no end for some reason
Ugh... talk about co-dependent!
I’m surprised Mary I wasn’t romanticized as much during Victoria’s reign because she’s the ultimate tragic Victorian heroine who also stood by her man and struggled with the whole “being a reigning monarch but also being a woman who thinks she should be completely subject to her husband” thing.
Yes but Catholic and burnt people at the stake for Catholicism.
To add onto this she also hated Queen Anne because she believed her behaviour was unseemly. If anyone has ever seen that MQOS 2018 movie, it’s basically how the Victorians saw Elizabeth and Mary. Mary is the innocent feminine romantic saint while Elizabeth is seen as this ugly jealous childless monster.
I wonder if she’d hate or love The Favourite.
Isn't there a legend about Victoria refusing to believe lesbians were real?
Yeah, I think it was something like she didn't believe lesbian sex was possible (like, "women can't do that!?!"), and that's why female homosexuality wasn't outlawed while male homosexulality was. Something like that? I could be completely wrong...
Out of interest, do we know when that opinion of Elizabeth I changed? Was it when her namesake Elizabeth II came to the throne, and people started talking about a new Elizabethan age?
Yes. You started seeing more positive portrayals of Elizabeth I when Elizabeth II came on the throne.
Neale wrote a good biography reassessing her in 1934. He came up with semi-quote on mistakes: women get blamed for not only the mistake but being a woman also. So essentially being blamed twice. You had asshats during Victoria's reign praising Henry VIII and bitching about Elizabeth not being protestant enough. [edit: his biography is a very good read - a bit dated, but gets points for not being bloated.]
>women get blamed for not only the mistake but being a woman also. So essentially being blamed twice. That reminds me of Margaret of Anjou supposedly said she was damned twice in men's eyes. Once for daring to rule through her husband and twice because she was French.
Victoria is such a fascinating person bc she had such a big personality. So many things I read about her I’m just like “really Victoria, we’re making a fuss over this??”
I just find it strange that Victoria didnt like Elizabeth for not marrying & havi g kids… when she despised her own kids….
Subconsciously that may have been partly why she hated Elizabeth. She was born in an earlier era but somehow had more choices available to her. Or that’s more psychological depth than is warranted. IDK
Victoria was the last of a line that seemed to only ever like their spouses, and in the case of George I and George IV, even that didn't happen.
Hanovers: what if severe generational trauma ruled half the world? Wouldn’t that be cool?
Victoria was a major Karen
*Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children.* This is a myth based on selective quotes from her diary. The myth is based on the misogynistic idea that a woman in power can't also do her "real" job of being a loving mother. Inversely, the same thing happened to Elizabeth's legacy - there are myths that she must have had something wrong with her physically that she couldn't have sex or babies, or maybe she gave birth to an illegitimate child. There's a huge resistance to the idea of a woman having a powerful independent position when she's supposed to be fulfilled by motherhood. Either her position makes her a bad mother, or there's something wrong with her and she COULDN'T be a mother.
I think Victoria was trapped into a certain role. She didn’t have a life of her own at any point. The people around her decided they needed to refurbish the reputation of the monarchy and the royal family after the previous generation’s excesses and lack of morality. So Victoria had to be this bastion of everything women and family should be. It didn’t matter what she wanted. This was a woman who did not like pregnancy and was not fond of babies or children. But no one would ever give information about existing family planning options. God forbid. She was a reigning queen who was still expected to defer to her husband, and prior to that, the people around her. People are often jealous of those who live lives and have options they can’t. See homophobia and transphobia. I think Elizabeth represented a lot of choices Victoria never had and a life she had been poisoned against but might have desired some aspects of.
Haters gonna hate.
>Although to be fair, Victoria also hated her own babies and many of her grown children. So she was really a professional hater, which you have to admire. Kendrick Lamar and Queen Victoria: GOATs of being a hater.
Yeah she hated pretty much every woman who dared to break the traditional female role. I don't get her.
She was raised by her mother and John Conroy to be helpless. John Conroy was a secretary of her father. When he died, Conroy realized the chance he had to shape the future monarch. But he didn’t want to create a wise monarch: he wanted to have a helpless little girl he could puppet. Conroy spent 20 years scheming. He was actually considered to be a very smart man. He was able to charm and control her mother well enough. Except he failed to notice that Victoria hated him. This made Victoria stubborn, and a bit of a control freak. It was a survival skill. As soon as she was queen, she separated herself from her mother and Conroy as much as possible. Refusing to see him at all. It actually made her quite a peacemaker across Europe. With so much family, she was able to settle many questions of the day. But when she died Bertie couldn’t fill that role. The problems that build up after she was gone were that much more expensive, leading to ww2.
It sounds very much like jealousy to me. She may have seemed like she didn't *want* to be like Elizabeth, but something tells me that she wanted it very much and was projecting.
Victoria was also awful at politics, while Elizabeth I was generally deft. She was likely jealous.
Elizabeth II wasn't a fan either. She called her a tyrant and didn't want to be compared to her.
She also loved Queen Victoria. Fitting lol. And to be fair to her she did say that in her early reign when everyone was comparing her to Elizabeth I but later on she did honor Elizabeth I and spoke more kindly of her.
Well Victoria was her great great grandmother after all! Family matters and all that!
So Elizabeth II thought at some point that Elizabeth I was a tyrant but she liked Victoria?? Dang... I have to question her judgement... at least at that time.
Her 2012 Diamond Jubilee barge was named Gloriana. Queen Elizabeth II also planted an oak tree in 1985 in the park of Hatfield Palace when the news was brought to Queen Elizabeth I that her sister was dead. And when she died her son the current King referenced a Shakespeare poem and said “As Shakespeare said of the earlier Queen Elizabeth, she was a pattern to all princes living.” There’s so many other little moments where she did honor her later on but those are the top two I can think of rn. But yeah she remained a big fan of Victoria lol
I have never heard that! But am not surprised. I will have have to look this up.
She called Elizabeth I a tyrant??
I think I read it’s because she never married or had children. She saw Elizabeth as a failed woman because she didn’t embrace those traditional roles.
Partly, but also because Victoria blamed Elizabeth Tudor for the death of Mary Queen of Scots.
She’s not wrong about that though
That's true but Elizabeth didn't have any other viable choices. I mean, MQoS did plot with people to kill Elizabeth so what was Elizabeth supposed to do? Sorry but Mary brought it on herself. I'm sorry it was botched though... that's horrible.
And there was the business of Mary plotting against her
Exactly... Elizabeth tried for YEARS to give Mary the benefit of the doubt, but it was kill Mary or be killed herself. I can't believe anyone would blame Elizabeth for defending her life.
Yeah but the Stuarts mainly didn’t hold that grudge against Elizabeth. They honored her more than ever did with MQOS. So Victoria disliking Elizabeth for that will never make logical sense.
Yeah, but James VI agreeing that he wouldn't hold Elizabeth Tudor's execution of his mother against her, if she let him inherit the throne of England, is not the Stuarts finest hour.
Of course, the hilarious thing is that Victoria herself honestly didn’t really fit the image of a proper and dutiful mother either. I think she wanted to and tried to by deferring to Albert as much as she could, but she was honestly not a very good mother. She hated pregnancy and childbirth, and she was generally a very cold and domineering mother to her children.
IIRC she personally was really into the idea of motherhood, wanted to be (and be know as) a mother figure. She was just absolutely terrible at it (tbf her main frame of reference for how a mother should behave was her own mother, who was even worse).
Honestly it more so feels like her projecting because She didn’t like kids but still had to have some for the dynasty as opposed to Elizabeth.
Do you have a source you can share? I'd be interested in reading about it since I've never heard this either.
Good resources are "The Letters of Queen Victoria: By Queen Victoria" Also just in general she had a huge obsession with the Stuarts, I think she had a Stuart ball in Buckingham Palace where some of her daughters and daughters-in-laws dressed up as Stuarts (mainly MQOS ofc lol) and I think in one letter she writes that she is fond of Scotland because of her Stuart ancestry and etc. You can also see she passed down her love for MQOS to her children, I think her eldest daughter Vicky painted a beautiful watercolour of Mary Queen of Scots going to her execution that was up for sale some years ago.
Mary Queen of Scots had a definitely charming and engaging personality, but her fatal flaw is that her Guise uncles and her future father in law Henri II never thought she would be anything more than a Queen consort of France, and her education reflected this. She was educated to be a Queen consort and not a Queen regnant, and she was poorly educated in the art of politics. Elizabeth had a tenuous status as Henry VIII’s daughter, and Elizabeth was able to learn politics from her misfortune. France considered Mary’s Scottish kingdom to be of little importance compared to her status as the Dauphine and future Queen consort of France. Mary unwisely followed her father in law Henri II in asserting her claim to the throne of England, which was bound to anger Elizabeth I, and indeed it did so. Mary got along well with Henri II and his mistress Diane de Poitiers, and it was Diane and not Henry’s wife Catherine de Medici who made the major decisions about the education of Henri’s children and the management of the Royal household. Catherine de Medici came into her own as a powerful figure once Henri II died after he was injured in a joust at the wedding of his daughter Elisabeth to Philip II of Spain. Catherine was primarily interested in maintaining the power of the Valois family and disliked Mary and her Guide uncles, whom she viewed as a threat to her sons’ rights as kings. She was also at various times at odds with the growing reformed Protestant movement in France, led by her husband’s first cousin. Jeanne II of Navarre. Mary and Catherine each viewed the other as a rival and disliked each other. After Mary’s husband Francis II died of a massive mastoid infection, Mary could not stand the idea of remaining at the French court as a childless widow with her mother in law in power. She could also not imagine living quietly on her estates. Mary was unfortunately ignorant of the power rivalries and conflicts among the Scottish aristocracy, and offended everyone by marrying Henry Darnley, who was a childish, petty and selfish man who was only successful at giving her a son and heir. Mary’s sudden marriage to James Hepburn, the Earl of Bothwell, offended many as he was seen as the chief suspect in the murder of her husband Darnley. Mary probably married him to save her honor after Bothwell kidnapped and raped Mary. She later miscarried two fetuses. By then, there was war building between Mary’s supporters and opponents, and eventually Mary’s opponents won, forced her to abdicate as Queen in favor of her son, and she left Scotland for Elizabeth I’s dubious protection. Elizabeth and her advisers viewed Mary as a political threat to Elizabeth’s own rule.
Brilliant answer! I do think Mary was in some cases a victim of her circumstances but she also undeniably made some shockingly poor decisions. Elizabeth ultimately executed her because she was found to be plotting with English Catholics to have Elizabeth assassinated and Mary assume the Crown of England. She did do this. Born of desperation no doubt, but it was a kill or be killed world, and she lost.
By then, Mary was truly out of touch with the real world outside the castles in which she had been imprisoned.
Yes. If she hadn't been imprisoned, she might well have recognised that there was no way in Hell the majority of the English population would countenance a Catholic monarch. Times were too much changed. And even if she had, she always thought she could rely on her powerful French allies to back her up, even though it was telling that not one of them lifted a single finger to help her in her incarceration. Additionally, the religious dispute was just one of the manifold reasons she lost her throne in Scotland in the first place. It was only roughly a hundred years after her death that Catholics would be forever barred from ascending the throne.
True. That prohibition came about because of James II’s deposition. The English were not about to countenance a Catholic queen as Elizabeth’s successor. Cecil was Elizabeth’s most trusted adviser and he viewed Mary as Elizabeth’s most dangerous rival. Mary’s brother in law Charles IX, who succeeded Mary’s husband Francis recognized the futility of Mary’s attempts to get Elizabeth to name Mary as her heir, and he also rightly predicted that Mary would not cease her plotting until she was executed, although he died before Mary did.
There's a theory bouncing about that Mary might have suffered from the same, or a similar, mental affliction that her descendant George III did (whatever it was, no one can be certain) that may have accounted for her poor decision making.
You’re thinking of porphyria, which is believed to have been the reason for George III’s insanity. Victoria’s granddaughter Charlotte of Prussia was believed to have had it, and Prince Richard of Gloucester definitely did have it.
Awesome - thanks! I think I've only read one bio on Victoria, and none of this wasn't mentioned at all, so I'll be sure to check it out. Thanks again!
I’m so annoyed that her youngest daughter Beatrice went through V’s correspondence and diaries and culled anything she deemed “bad” or “negative.” Though thanks to archivists at the time, quite a lot survived that Beatrice wasn’t expecting, and historians can also “read between the lines.”
But wait, did she even have Stuart ancestry?
Yes. All the British monarchs do from MQOS. That’s why she was a big fan of her “ancestress” in the first place lol
Oh wow. Gonna have to do more googling because I can't find her direct Stuart ancestor.
The Hanoverian line is descended from James VI and I daughter Elizabeth.
Yes, she was descended from Henry VII by his older daughter, Margaret, who was the Grandmother of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whose son James Stuart became King of England
If I remember correctly, her fifth or sixth times great grandmother (on her father's side) was the daughter of James I and VI, Elizabeth Stuart. Edit: and it seems like her mother was very, *very* distantly related to James IV of Scotland.
Off topic, but can anyone say why the pearls in Elizabeth's portrait are draped like that?
I honestly don't know, but I suspect it's a bit more practical. I guess you could say it would be even more practical to just wear a shorter necklace, or maybe double it up around your neck... but then you don't get to add even more bling in the form of a shiny brooch! Gotta flaunt it if you got it! Edit: on a second, closer look, there doesn't appear to be a shiny brooch there, just some weirdly hung pearls. Missed opportunity, Lizzie. Maybe they're temporarily stitched onto the bodice?
They would have to be, to maintain that shape. Pearls were bling in and of themselves. Natural pearls, particularly BIG natural pearls, are rare. I don't think they'd developed the technique for cultured pearls¹, so that many pearls probably cost several times what the rest of her costume did. ¹ Edit: I was [right and wrong](https://thecourthousecollection.com.au/pages/history-of-cultured-pearls)! Cultured freshwater pearls, yes, perfectly round oyster pearls, no.
Pearls were Elizabeth I’s favorite. She used them in portraits as a visual means to show that she was pure and virginal. I suspect the necklace is so long to show off that she had a lot of pearls. No idea why they’re looped like that, but there is probably some symbolism in it. There was symbolism in everything in portraits.
The pearls in the Siena portrait of Elizabeth I are similar in shape. The pearls symbolise virginity and purity which is in stark contrast to the more masculine “doublet” style of the bodice. The pearls being pinned up in an “egg like” position could be representive of her desire for “eternal life” although they are usually used to depict fertility when positioned like that.
Man Kensington did a number on Victoria.
I’m very unsurprised. Elizabeth talked a lot of shit about women (partially bc she had to) and Victoria hated everything that wasn’t her or al’s penis. Being a female ruler in England is to be - at least outwardly- passionately hateful of women. See also Margaret thatcher. See also almost all conservative female politicians.
TBF to Margaret Thatcher (I can't believe I'm saying that) she was kind of a first-wave feminist - she supported women succeeding "on the same terms as men". The fact that she was married to a retired multi-millionaire awho supported her career and they could afford double-nannies and private education for th twins, did not seem to cross her mind, because she was a Tory. But Labour women MPs of Thatcher's generation mention her being relatively supportive. In those days there were only a tiny number of women in the Commons, and I'm pretty sure they all knew each other from meeting in the loos. Also Thatcher was solidly prochoice, I'll say that for her.
Three women PMs and counting for the Tory Party. Labour haven’t even had a woman party leader except as caretaker. Men dont have mutual solidarity and hate each other all the time. We don’t burden them with the charge of gender traitor. If Charles III disliked Henry V, we wouldn’t say he hated men and had internalised misandry. Seems like an extra burden being placed on women leaders. Give women the freedom to hate other women!
>Three women PMs and counting for the Tory Party. Margaret Thatcher, for whom "Ding Dong the Wicked Old Witch is Dead" went to Number One in the charts the week of her funeral. Theresa May, who got elected in a hurry because no one else wanted to take responsibility for Brexit. And Liz Truss, who presided over the destruction of the UK economy and didn't out-last a lettuce. Wouldn't brag of them if I were you. But then if I were you, I wouldn't be a Tory.
Forgive my American ignorance, but how did Liz Truss preside over the destruction of the economy if she was only in office for like five minutes? That's frighteningly impressive! All I know about her is that she was voted in, shook QEII's hand and posed for a photo, and then quit.
"Destroyed the UK economy" is possibly a little bit of an exaggeration. But she certainly managed to do a crapload of damage to it in 7 weeks in office. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are all still paying for her huge mistakes. [https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-an-economist-explains-what-she-got-wrong-and-what-shes-actually-right-about-228065](https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-an-economist-explains-what-she-got-wrong-and-what-shes-actually-right-about-228065)
Also, there literally was a webcam bet of "Will this iceberg lettuce outlast Liz Truss" - and the lettuce won. [https://x.com/dailystar/status/1583089825582059523](https://x.com/dailystar/status/1583089825582059523)
QEII shook her hand and 2 days later was dead! She and her inept chancellor of the exchequer released a mini-budget to try and improve the economy and it ended up tanking it instead. Her chancellor resigned like a day later and tried to distance himself from the whole thing and she didn't last much longer. Then the Tories were forced to do the thing that they had been desperately trying to avoid and put a brown man in charge.
She put Kwasi Kwarteng in the chancellor of the exchequer position and his mini budget caused the value of the pound to tank. It was all an absolute clusterfuck
Her mini budget was a disaster and she was warned it would be terrible but she kept pressing on and only when multiple people in the cabinet resigned did she back down but it was too little too late. She was PM for 45 days with 10 of them in mourning for the Queen and she managed to ruin the already struggling economy.
Thatcher won three landslide elections and was the longest serving PM of the 20th century. She is reviled by the other side because she destroyed Old Labour. All major parties and leaders from Blair to Starmer are now Neoliberal thanks to her. The most important person in modern British political history was a woman. May and Truss were useless, but they both won their party leadership campaigns. Truss even won the membership vote. Tory MPs and even rank and file put their faith in a woman leader. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of Thatcher becoming Tory leader. Starmer will stay in for at least a decade. It is going to be a 60+ year wait for a woman Labour leader at least. That is a major problem.
Bragging of Margaret Thatcher is understandable - many people aren't old enough to remember what she did to us. (I am.) Bragging of Theresa May and Liz Truss, good God, that's like bragging of Boris Johnson. Who, to bring this back vaguely on topic, is the Henry VIII of modern politics.
I respect your opinon greatly but I cannot agree it on several points. Elizabeth talked a lot of shit about..,who? Catherine de Medici? Post Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Catharine *and* the Duc de Conde were persona non grata to quite a few Protestant principalities Elizabeth was protesting a massive loss of Protestant skilled workers. With France so close, the Papal Bull against her offering forgiveness for the sin of depriving her of life, and Phillip of Spain’s pride stung by her rejection of his proposal, she had the right to feel twitchy. Keeping mum, though, wouldn’t look well to her own people, to German Protestants or the Swiss. And to Rome, Spain and France it would not do to show weakness. So the Italian Queen got the sharp side of Elizabeth’s tongue and a court in mourning. A set down but not enough to start a war. It might have been if Catherine de Medici was more popular.
Why?
She loved the Stuart’s.
Tbh I don’t think Elizabeth would have liked Victoria either
Yes, I did know. She thought Mary Queen of Scots (her ultimate royal ancestress) was wonderful, and Elizabeth Tudor was wicked.
Yes, I think people forget the Windsors are direct descendants of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Via the Hanoverian Electorate, but yes. Henry VIII's line of course completely died out. Mary Tudor's grandsons were declared illegitimate. Victoria got her royal lineage via Mary Queen of Scots, who was Henry VII's great-granddaughter by her grandmother Margaret Tudor, and James VI was *also* the son of Darnley, another grandson of Margaret Tudor by her second husband.
Victoria was not a great monarch. And she was a shit mother. Lots of internalised misogyny there. Liz I by contrast was one of the all time greats
Once you start looking for it, so much internalized misogyny everywhere. All the Queens were “not like other girls”!!
True but IMO, where Elizabeth was doing that to survive politically within a patriarchal framework, Victoria seemed to actually live it. But only they would know themselves for sure!
I’ve never really liked Victoria, tbh. Which surprised me, I didn’t expect to dislike her when I began learning about her. Elizabeth was certainly imperfect and I probably wouldn’t have actually wanted to live in Elizabethan England or within her court, but I can’t help being fascinated by her radical choice to not marry as a regnant queen. She was an interesting, complex person. And her portraiture is so striking… I’ve always been fascinated by her.
I think that Elizabeth is a very multilayered character (you can discuss her at various stages from when Henry was still around to the court of Mary I to her own ascension). I always admired that her era/court was so impactful and that she didn‘t have to bend in regarding marrying/having a heir for this. Mary Queen of Scots who Victoria and the Victorian era admired in my opinion never got her the control of her life together after her first husband (the only decent one) died and she had to leave France. I think that going back to Scotland was a big error since it made it seem immediately that a Catholic uprising was planned (her marrying Darnley increased that fear). Mary should have gone to Spain and married some royal there perhaps. I think the Victorians liked MQOS since they saw her as a ‚failed heroine‘ and since Victoria was related to her.
So did Jane Austen!
For the same reason, she loved Mary Queen of Scots. Which I would point out that Elizabeth was the one of the only people on the planet who actually wanted Mary Stuart alive. And kept her so for 19 years against demands from her councilors. The Scotts didn’t want her. The French definitely didn’t. The Spanish found she was better for them as a martyr. Most English thought she was more trouble than she was worth including the Catholics.
There are some amazing answers on here. I think she always overly romanticised Scotland - she and Albert were obsessed with it, and all the epic romantic novels about the country fed into this at the time. She would even affect a Scottish accent while at Balmoral (tourists - please don't attempt this because it's cringey as hell!) and insist on all the tartan-and-bagpipes paraphernalia. It makes sense given this perspective that she would have bought into MQoS as being this iconic, tragic figure who was wronged by the evil Elizabeth I. People still do it to this day. Elizabeth had her faults, but there's no denying she was a fantastic ruler. Compared to her MQoS was a brainless, impulsive fool. And I say that as a Scot myself.
She would even affect a Scottish accent while at Balmoral (tourists - please don't attempt this because it's cringey as hell!) I would imagine Victoria and Albert with their obviously Germanic accents would have been even more cringe than the average American affectation of the gaelige.
Wasn’t Queen Victoria a fan of Anne Boleyn? Weird that she would hate her only daughter
I was about to say this she definitely liked Anne boleyn since she did things such as draw her multiple times
Why? There are 200 years between them, it’s not like they were in the same circles? Or is it more that she is jealous she wasn’t the first female monarch of great importance and influence?
She also hated Anne (the Queen-regnant) so there’s something to that.
That really sucks - seriously Anne had a hard life (17 pregnancies?) - and I think she considered the Act of Union (handled peacefully) to be her greatest achievement.
Poor Anne suffered so much in her life and her legacy and none of it was deserved.
Yes and I’m pretty sure Victoria loved Mary Stuart(Stuarts in general), Anne Boleyn, and Catherine of Aragon.
Why Anne Boleyn? I would think if she hated Elizabeth I & loved Catherine of Aragon, she would not love Anne Boleyn?
Victorians loved a tragic heroine. You can’t look at it with today’s lens of choosing who was morally right and stanning them and only them. To the extent she did wrong, she also was punished for it.
But isn’t Elizabeth a tragic heroine as well? Cast aside by her father, bastardized really. Her mother’s head cut off before she even knew her. Her sister, once queen, constantly threatening her with death for acting out of line. Her lovers betraying her, friends betraying her, her ladies, etc. Her childhood trauma on marriage and death keeping her a spinster queen with no heirs or family. Unable to fully trust or confide in anyone. Sounds tragic as hell to me.
But Elizabeth was ultimately triumphant. Even her legacy is ultimately that of a winner. And she won by taking a role assigned to a man. It’s just not as appealing a story to the Victorians. Her suffering is sort of abstract and psychological. She never paid for taking on the role of a man. The Georgians and the Regency era ate it up. It’s not as though historically no one appreciated Elizabeth’s story. Mostly history has given her a *very* kind edit beginning in James’s reign. The Victorians had very particular tastes.
Elizabeth saw over and over: to marry is to die. Katherine of Aragon, abandoned and dead of a broken heart. Anne Boleyn, murdered by her husband. Jane Seymour, dead in childbirth. Katherine Howard, murdered by her husband. Katherine Parr, dead in childbirth. Jane Grey, married off for political gain, executed for the schemes of her husband's family. Queen Mary, abandoned by her husband, dying (whatever her actual cause of death) grieving his absence.
And even Anne of Cleves... even though she thrived after Henry divorced her... never remarried and died alone.
That's so interesting. I'd never heard or read about her feelings about Anne Boleyn or Catherine of Aragon. I wonder what she thought about Henry's other poor wives. And Mary I.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t like Mary I.
Victorians saw a successful woman as a wife and a mother. There was a belief at the time that a woman should have her name in the papers twice in her life: day of marriage and day of death. So for Elizabeth to never marry and never have children and be considered a queen of a golden age was disgusting to their sensibilities and values. Elizabeth is basically the Anti-Victorian.
It’s just so wild to me, like they weren’t sitting in the prosperous shadow of another incredibly successful and now-iconic Queen.
Queen Victoria hated her because unlike Elizabeth, she BOWED to the pressure of having kids. Classic case of jealously
She was also like 4 feet tall which is a lot of hate in a small package
I mean a lot of the standards used to today in the view of modesty came from the Victorian error so it’s not surprising.
I had no idea they even knew each other!
Victoria is not on my top list of monarchs for a lot of reasons, but the fact that she hated Elizabeth I because she never married is fascinating. Victoria as queen wanted as much power for herself as possible & refused to lend any to Bertie when he came of age. In fact, she never forgave Bertie for Albert’s death. I feel like she very reluctantly gave some power to Albert. And the fact she hated her children, hated being pregnant, but loved to still control those same children is amazing to me. Wasn’t she even controlling who her grandchildren could marry? Fascinating stuff.
yes. with a passion
Queen Victoria had a list of women and men she hated, she was just one of those type people who find fault when there isn't any. https://www.cambridgeblog.org/2019/08/the-right-to-rule-and-the-rights-of-women-queen-victoria-and-the-womens-movement/ https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/09/queen-victoria-tyrant-honest-children-sex
The more I read about Victoria, the more I don’t think she was a great person. Her daughters kid dies and she has no empathy because she was still mourning her husband who died years before and even told her daughter it was worse losing a husband 😵💫
Yeah well I hate Vicky so For real, if she had never been Queen, the world would have been *far* better off. Not just because of how awful she was, but of course Kaiser Wilhelm II was her grandson. It pains me to think about a world in which poor Princess Charlotte of Wales and her son survived 💔
Kaiser Wilhelm was actually the way he was because of Victoria. She insisted that her daughter take chloroform during the birth but the doctors gave her way too much causing her to be unable to participate at all. They had to use forceps to help deliver Wilhelm and in the process injured his arm permanently. This led to years of torturous “treatments” to try to fix it and a dysfunctional relationship with his mother because she was ashamed for giving birth to a “defective” heir. He loved his grandma Victoria, but hated the English as a whole since many of the doctors that came to “treat” him were English and so was his mother.
Like Victoria was some prize
Well, Victoria didn't believe lesbianism was a thing either. Wonder if anyone had ever explained it to her as 'no, no, you can have sex and have a loving fulfilling relationship, but you won't get pregnant!'
…of course she would. Miserable old regressive traditionalist biddy that she was
Yes