Empire: World History - 144. The Making of Queen Victoria (Ep 1)

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Born on the 24th May 1819, Alexandrina Victoria was fifth in line to the throne at a time in which the monarchy’s popularity was declining. Yet, over the course of her reign, which at the time was the longest of any British monarch, Victoria transformed the monarchy, Britain, and its place in the world. She endured a tortured childhood in which she was controlled and mollycoddled to the extent she could not even walk down the stairs without holding someone’s hand. But, before she was even 20, she was crowned to much jubilation - Britain had entered a new era. Listen as William and Anita discuss the formative years of Queen Victoria. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.m.com. Queen Victoria was born roaring at 4.15 a.m. in the hour before dawn on May the 24th, 1819. and in those few seconds, she was like any other newborn, naked, vulnerable, wandering, wriggling in her mother's arms, her spell of innocence would be brief. In moments, the most important men in the land, clergymen, chancellors, warriors and politicians would crowd into that room, pressing ruddy faces close to the baby girl who did not yet have a name. Within two decades, all of the men present at her birth, who were still alive, would be bowing to her as queen.

something few would have guessed when she was born. That is the start of actually, William, hello. It's Empire with me, Anita Arnon. Hello, it's William Tarumphal and four here too. In our Empress series, this is a biggie, this is Queen Victoria, who has overlapped our work, both of our work, so very much. But I've been reading so much about it because we've been doing our homework for this Queen Victoria mini series, which is coming to you right now.

And that's the start of a really brilliant book, may I commend to you, called Victoria the Queen by Julia Baird. Stacey Schiff, one of our old guests, has been raving about this book. It is quite extraordinary. But it is true. That is the start of a little baby. And I think, you know, we do this for all of our empresses. They start off flesh and blood and tiny. And yet, this is going to be a woman who, after her death, her son, her grandson, and two grandsons are going to be.

Emperors of India, another great grandson, Louis Mountbatten, is going to be the man who is there when the empire rolls up in 1947. She has nephews, nieces, who are going to be married into some of the great empires of Europe. She's the mother of empires, and she's a complicated character. Because on the one hand, you're going to hear lots of stories about her fascination, particularly with India, because that's a place that our research has taken us most in life. but also elsewhere in the world, an empire which she's fascinated by the people she loves, even some of the subjects who come to her and live with her and are part of the family. And yet a really chequered history when it comes to attitude towards dominion and conquest.

It's a very interesting duality that. And it's something I've been living with like you have over the last 20-odd years. I wrote a book called The Last Mogul 20 years ago, which is the story of the last mogul emperor, who is being eclipsed and whose volume is being turned down before it's finally turned off, all the way through Victoria's reign. And while I'm writing this stuff and reading about what we today were called massive war crimes in 1857 during the reign of Queen Victoria, on the telly at the same time, has been a whole success. of images, often very sympathetic images of Queen Victoria, in films, in costume dramas.

We have Emily Blunt as the young Queen Victoria finding love with Prince Albert. We have Judy Dench at the end of her life with the Munshi. And in both these portrayals, she's a very sympathetic figure. As a young woman, she's fighting against courtiers who are machinating against her and triumphing. And it's a triumph of womanhood against this patriarchal Victorian society. in the kind of Judy Dedge version, she is a voice of liberalism

supporting the poor Munchi in a world of racists. And we are used now to seeing her as this very, despite being, you know, outwardly, this sort of black cloud widow for much of her, the end of her life, we're used to her seeing her as this rather benign figure, which is again part of the way that we often look at the British Empire in Britain

as something ultimately benign. And when I read her life, I'm always trying to think of all those people who are having to appeal to her for survival in courts around the world whose worlds are being extinguished by this great, enormous juggernaut that is the British Empire at its peak,

the biggest empire of the world has ever seen. And she is the figurehead of it. And it's a complicated thing. The nearest I've ever come to someone else expressing this sort of complicated feeling I haven't is the wonderful Miles Taylor, who's Professor of History at York, who produced a really spectacular book a few years ago called Empress, Queen Victoria and India. And he writes this very nice little line that I think expresses that very well. He writes, much has been written about how colonial rule in India after mid-century was

Janus faced, in other words, two-faced. liberal and inclusive in theory, but authoritarian and racist in practice. Queen Victoria stood for this duality. Formerly, she constituted colonial authority in India, giving sovereignty and legitimacy to the state, sanctioning the policies carried out in her name. At the same time, as a female monarch, she represented justice and charity. She was a beacon of beneficence in ways in which the British bureaucracy in India could not, never be either before the Great Uprising of 1858 or after.

Abstract and remote, the fictive power of the Queen both buttressed and softened the rule of colonial difference. So without being sort of, you know, woke and tiresome and irritating and sort of just being angry about all this in a way that perhaps is unnecessary, I do feel we've got to bear both those sides of the scales in our mind when we talk about it. Sure. But I'll see your woke and I'll raise you effeminate. Nancy. Because you've also, you know, I mean, complicated things, it is Olusuga's razor, okay,

complicated things can be true at the same time. And for every single empress we've done in this series, we have talked about their childhood, their formation, their origin story. You know, it's a Marvel origin story. How do they become who they are and what they are? So what we promise you in this mini series on Victoria is not going to be, as William likes to throw up like a firework, the Emily Blunt version. I love Emily Blunt, by the way. I love Emily Blunt too. No, no, no, but don't get me wrong. I love all the stuff. Love her. But it is not the Emily Blunt version, and neither is it the achingly slamming. Because, you know, this is a complicated life of a woman who is growing up in a man's world where people tried to control her. She is complicated. You know, on the one hand, some unspeakable things happen during her reign, including, you know, not just India. You know, we'll look further afield, the potato famine. And yet, she is a chief funder. for charities trying to help people, victims of the potato fam. And so there is all this complexity and nutty, gnarliness, which you know what you get when

you sign up to an Empire podcast. The other thing I'm very interested to talk over with you, Anita, because you've been diving very deep into this. And I think Cream Victoria herself has been much more central to your work than it has been to mine. I've been looking at, you know, her effects in the sense in what's going on in India. But you've been dealing directly with her with your books like Sapphire and also your section in our joint Coenour book. But what I'm interested, and I don't understand,

and I hope that you'll help me understand it better, is this question of what her attitudes to all this were, how on one hand, she is the British Empire. She is the Crown, which is ruling it all, and she represents everything that the Empire is. Does she see it entirely as something benign and good that is to be rolled out for the good of humanity across the world, because she's also aware of times when terrible things happen in her name. And I want you to help me understand how she sees it, because it's such a gap between that period and ours. Well, you know what?

I could only try. But I'll tell you one thing. I mean, in my work, and you're quite right. I mean, I've sort of immersed myself in this period of history because the people that I'm interested in were most active. during her reign. And I've always looked at it as an effect rather than the cause. You know, you sort of have the reverberations of the depth charge. And I've spent preparing for this podcast, reading about the woman herself. And I completely had her as a two-dimensional character,

whose just mere presence had such an enormous effect on other people's enormous lives. But looking at her in minutiae, she's fascinating. And she is complicated. And there is no reason. why anybody, you're not, I'm not, nobody listening to this podcast is a two-dimensional character. We are made up by the sum of our parts and that's why I think it's really important that we look at the sum of these parts. So shall we start? I mean, look, I don't promise you answers, but we'll have a jolly good conversation on the way through this. No, this is something where I'm very, very keen to understand. Because she is such a figure. In our lives, I mean, it's extraordinary how many movies there are in the last 10 years

about this person who died, you know, a hundred and whatever, 120 years ago. Do the maths. Do the maths live in the podcast. I kid my math. Look at the slight panic. 120 is not bad, is it? He starts a sentence and panics two seconds into it going,

shit, there's a maths thing in here. And I did not mean to go there. We should inform listeners who don't know that Anita is married to a mathematician and takes, for some reason, around a critical view of my... There's a particle business. In numerality. He can add up numbers, that is true.

Well, look, let's go back to the beginning, shall we? Because we do this for every one of our characters. So, Queen Victoria was born at Kensington Palace. As I mentioned before from that lovely opening of a book from Julia Bird on the 24th of May 1819. And her name was Alexandrina Victoria. Wasn't Victoria, was not her first name. It was Alexandrina. Did people that Gia call her Alexandrina as a kid?

Yeah, yeah. And she was named after Alexander I was a. Russia. Who we've met before on this series. Alexander was the guy in the raft at Tilsit with the British agent underneath the raft freezing his bollocks off while trying to overhear what Napoleon and Alexander was saying. Yeah, that one. Anyway, and Prince Edward was the youngest son of the king. He had three elder brothers, none of whom had children who would survive. So, you know, Victoria really wasn't even figuring in the succession line. No one had her in their mind when she was born. like Isabella Castile last week?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the woman who no one knew would be queen. There's a very funny story about how her father, Edward, just when his young daughter is about to be born, drags his mother, her mother, across from, he just doesn't want her to be born in Germany. Because, you know, look, even if there is the remotest possibility that she'll have any standing or any line, any part to play in the line of succession, it will be good for her if she is born on British sort. So there is this sort of madcap, breakneck speed journey with his wife heavily in labour, sort of jiggling around in the back seat of coach, try to get her to England so that she can be born on British soil and he manages it.

She never gets to know him, though, because he dies when she is still in infancy. And it's left then to her mother, Mary Louise Victoria, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg Seafield, who is a really problematic figure in her life. And you know, in the sort of the Emily Blunt representation, she's just a woman. the boo-hiss baddie, pantow baddy, right? I'm using your term. Emily Blund, I love Emily, if you listen to this, I love you. But she's also a panto villain. But actually, you know, at the beginning of her life, her mother seems to be quite a tender figure towards her. And there's sort of letters and diary entries that exist where she sort of slightly scandalises

the court because she won't have a wet nurse for Victoria. She's going to breastfeed her herself. Is that very unusual at the period? Incredibly. Even up to So, you know, 1876 when Sapphire Dilip Singh is born, it's as a person I've written a book about, you did not feed your own babies because, you know, you and Callum will not know this. Breastfeeding is hard. It's really hard. It can be messy. Someone's quite uncomfortable.

And today we have this concept of too posh to push. But in those days, it was sort of seeming something that the common people did. In the mogul court at the same time, when my hero Zuffer was born as the contemporary monarch in India, you have a system of posh wet nurses. Oh, yes. And this is a very important part of mogul history because remember with Akbar, Maham Anga, and the kids of the wetness get elevated to become part of the family. And so Akbar nearly gets overthrown by his sort of co-we, we don't have a word for it in English.

Co-suckler, if you like, Adam Khan, whose tomb is just... Teet twin, how's that for you? Teet twin is very good. Okay, that's all right. Okay. There is a vocal word for it, which I've forgotten. But Adam Khan's tomb, Tete twin. off the top of a building.

Yeah, we did that in a recent episode. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But in this case, you know, look, her father, who's not going to play much of a part in her life, there is a lovely quote about what he says when he says. Oh, it's gorgeous. Do you want to read it? Why don't you read it?

I love it. It's lovely, go on. This is the father's description of his new daughter, and he says, plump as a partridge, more a pocket Hercules than a pocket Venus. Yeah, and, you know, look, He's supposedly been told by a gypsy in Malta that this unborn child will one day be a great queen. And it has been said that he's a superstitious cove and he might have believed it.

Although nobody else would have because frankly this is just a little plump Bonnie baby who is fifth in line and really no one need worry about her. We should talk about the time that she's born into because this is a time of great imperial growth for Britain. William, just tell me what's going on in the world in 1819, the issue was born. So this is immediately after the Congress of Vienna. And if you want a really intimate image of what this was like, when a British Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister together rearranged map of Europe, you have to go to an amazing country house just outside Belfast called Mount Stewart, which is the House of Lord Castle Ray.

and he has around his dining room the chairs of the Congress of Vienna, each of which has the arms of the European Royal House or leading house of the people around the table at the Congress. And you get the clear impression there, as you see around the dining room table with all the different characters, that this character, this point in history, at a moment probably there was never ever happen again. It is just the British Foreign Secretary who is deciding how Europe will be rearranged. After the Battle of Waterloo, they have complete power to get rid of this noble house, welcome this one, elevate this. But there's a reason for that. Four years before she's born, you know, Britain has defeated Napoleon. You know, Battle of Waterloo takes place in 1815. So she is born into a world where Britain has humbled the most powerful man in the world, Napoleon.

He's on St. Helena. And you've got the start of something that's known as the Pax Britannica. It's a 99-year piece that will last until World War I, where international powers are not dragged into world war as they were. I mean, arguably when Napoleon is at his height of power. And you've got an empire that is expanding. You've got British interests in Asia, in Africa, in North and South America. The Caribbean.

Australia. You know, when you've got them, look at the map of the world, you've got these sort of red patches. And you can see them. You know, they start with them, as William was brilliantly outlined before, with these corporations, the East India Company and the Royal African Company. But they are growing at a pace. So she's born into this world, which is developing basically an increasing bruise,

if you like, of red dominance in the world. And we think of Waterloo as, again, in the movies, you know, it's Napoleon defeated, goes off to St. Allen. What we don't see is the way that the British, therefore, after getting rid of Napoleon, have access to the whole of what had been the French Empire and can just pocket all these French colonies as they wish and take whichever ones they wanted and certainly have no longer to worry about French rivalry because the French are knocked out for the rest of the 19th century, certainly until the 1870s. And so you've got this extraordinary

moment. This never happens again. I mean, Britain will win other conflicts, but it'll do so with the group of allies who also want their share of the cake. In this point, the whole cake is for the British to either keep or distribute to their friends as they wish. Okay, and also, I mean, that's what's going on internationally. But look at what's going on at home. Queen Victoria, as she will be, or this tiny little baby, is born into a world that is becoming more and more industrialized. Britain, you know, is the powerhouse of the industrial revolution. And this is going to be the very bedrock of the immense wealth that Victorian Britain is going to be based upon already. And this is the period when it's really getting into fifth gear, isn't it? It's starting in the

1770s, it's sort of going forward 20, 30 years. And by the time that Victoria is leaving her nursery and heading towards the throne, Britain is the number one economy in the world for the first time. Well, she's only six years old when, you know, the Stockton to Darlington Railway starts running. She's just a bubby, you know, the first passenger train, which is, you know, the railways are going to transform everything for what will be her empire. But she doesn't know it. She's just a tiny little baby. And she's having actually quite a difficult childhood. You know, as we say, her father has died. Her mother is in charge. Her mother has got some very odd ideas about how this willful little girl is going to be brought up because very early on

in her life, she proves that she has a voice and a very loud voice of her own. There are some lovely things from her own sort of diary. She has an official diary, William, and she has a nanny who she absolutely worships, but who is strict as the day as long. She reminds me of my favourite teacher growing up, a nun called Sister Francesca, who was incredibly strict,

but I incredibly adored him. When did you go to a convent school, this is a new detail? It was kind of faux-convent, faux-convent school with nuns in it in Essex. It wasn't a convent school, but we had nuns. In Essex, yes, in Essex, none. They have the toughest kind. Toughest kind.

I think I learn about my co-presenter every day. But what is extraordinary. So Walter Scott said about her growing up that, you know, she's watched so closely that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, you are air of England. And I suspect if we could dissect the little heart, we would find some pigeon or other bird of air had carried the matter to her. Because even though she didn't know what she was destined for, there was something imperious about this little girl in the nursery. So, you know, the nanny is trying to make her behave. and she has this sort of official diary, but she also has the behaviour diary, a conduct book.

I love her conduct book. She writes herself. She writes herself in her little childish scrawl, she will say, very ill-behaved and impertinent to Lysen, who's her nanny. And then she would write, you know, a few days later, oh, it's very, very, very, very terribly naughty, and the verries are underlined three times, and the naughty is underlined four times.

And then, you know, she writes on another. I'm very, very, very, very horribly naughty in capital. So is this just a sort of self-criticism book? It's rather sort of Maoist thing. She's told to denounce herself, but she's really very happy to do it. And everybody who sees her. We thought the Red Revolution was the first people to introduce that. It's alive and well at Kensington Palace in 1810.

She needs to be kept in line, is the thought from her mother. And her mother, unfortunately, does this by really sort of isolating her and trying to recreate her. When she does become heir to the throne, and we'll come to that formality, she's 11 years old. The king dies in 1820s, replaced by his childless son,

George IV, who also dies in 1830. William comes to the throne, William IV, and his heir is proclaimed Victoria, because all of these sort of royal succession, they don't manage to produce babies who last. Either they die in childbirth, or they die very young. I grew up in Edinburgh, and all these names are just the kind of bridges of Georgia Forth Bridge

is where I used to cross over to go to Thin's bookshop as a child. These are all sort of just names on a map for me. Right. Okay, so these names on a map are falling like dominoes. You know, there's a real problem with succession. So she's 11 years old when she's told that she is going to be queen. You know, around about the time that she's writing, I'm naughty, very, very, very naughty today.

You sort of get the impression that she's quite proud to be naughty. Actually. Does she ever have passage in saying, I was really good today? Well, she, in her diary. She doesn't write anything about the naughtiness. She said, I had a very pleasant day with Laysen. It was just in her private notebook. It's like having an official birthday and a non-official birthday.

Yeah, I had a nice time riding a horse and doing some embroidery, but, you know, she's a wild one. But she's told, this is really, I think, fascinating, is she's told when she becomes out of the throne that she should change her name. Because, you know why? Why do you think you shouldn't be a Victoria anymore? Well, I read somewhere that Victoria was regarded as French. Is that right? Yes.

Foreign. We think of it as the quintessential English name now. Yeah, but no. It was too foreign and too fancy. So she was, you know, told by her mother and others that, look, you know, now you are heir to the throne, you have got to change your name. And she, in this very, very naughty, no, I'm not doing that. And she absolutely kicks off a howler saying, I am not. I am Victoria.

and I am going to remain Victoria, which sort of gives you an idea in these origin stories, I think these things are... This is age 11? Very pertinent. Yeah, age 11 when she's told. And it's even more extraordinary

that she has this strength because her mother tries to break her of it and in a really cruel way, actually. She's kind of like, she's, you know, like the Walter Scott thing. You know, she's kept away from everybody. She has one playmate because her mother is in the thrall

of a really horrible man called John Conroy. Have you come across John Conroy? John Conroy is in the movies, isn't he? He's definitely... I haven't watched the movies. You've really watched a lot of movies. I've watched all the stuff, exactly. I read books because I'm so...

Emily Blum. But yeah, no, John Conroy. So tell us about the movie adaptation of John Conroy, because actually from reading about him, he is a shit. Yeah, no, he's in the movie too. He's this sort of controlling figure who's got a sort of weird influence over the mother and who Victoria hates.

Yeah, because, I mean, you know, there is lots of goss around that her mother's having an affair with John Conroy, which, you know, she denies, but there is no doubt, and who knows what goes on in a bedroom, but there is no doubt that he has got control of this tiny little life. And he institutes this mad thing called the Kensington system, which is to control Victoria, you know, the naughty, naughty, naughty underlined little girl, which shuts her off from everybody. You had a quote about her deprivation, some playmate of hers. The only child that she is able to play with, somebody called Ferdora.

Literally, is that controlling. The only one who's allowed to play that controlling. And this is what Fedora writes about Victoria's Charter, to have been deprived of all intercourse and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of hours, because Fedora's going through it as well, because this is John Conroy's big idea, was really very hard. My only happy time was going or driving out with you in Laysen, who's the nanny, and then I could speak and I could look as I liked.

I escaped some years of imprisonment, which you, my poor darling sister, had to endure after I was married. because Victoria was only nine when Fidor is sort of like married off and moves away. So she hasn't not even got her little playmate anymore. This is Kensington Palace. This is sitting in the middle of London, but as if isolated on the moors of Balmoral or something. Or on an island in the Pacific when nobody comes to visit. So this poor, lonely little girl is growing up like this.

I'm beginning to feel a bit more sympathetic already. Well, I'm glad because these people are complicated. Why are they the way that they are? So, look, she's only 11 when she's declared air. The Regency Act, which suggests that Victoria's mother would be regent if the king died before Victoria's 18th birthday. The king says something hilarious. He cannot stand Conroy either, because I guess Victoria's complaining about him. How does he get his job?

It's just through the Queen. For the Queen. The Queen Mother. The Queen Mother. Or future Queen. The Princess Victoria's mother. And he says, I am damned if I'm going to die before her 18th birthday because that man cannot be in charge. He can't stand Conroy either.

And Conright is this kind of sort of strutting peacock of a man who thinks that he's much more in control than he eventually will be. His whole way of bringing her up is this Kensington system of loneliness and control. And she hates him. She's not allowed to walk down the stairs without anyone holding her hand. She's not allowed to sleep on her own. She has to sleep in a mother's chamber. All of this is supposedly, you know, to keep her safe. But actually, it's because she has spies on her all the time so she can't develop.

as a person as a child, you know, sort of do the things that we all do as children. She later says about this. I mean, do you want to read the quote? There's a, you know, her own idea of what her childhood was. She later writes of this, obviously, very difficult period in her life, that she had led a very unhappy life as a child and did not know what a happy domestic life was. has you got her little King Charles Spaniel, Dash, which was the main source, which have a whole Empire Pod episode on Imperial Dogs called Dash. Oh, really? Are there lots?

Because Oral Stein, the archaeologist, has eight dashes in succession. And they're known by Roman numerals, dash 1, dash 2, dash V, dash 1x. That's weird. But, you know, she hasn't got a dad anymore. Her dad has died. She hasn't got any real contacts with family. but there is one person who stays in her life, who is a man called Leopold,

Uncle Leopold of Belgium. Is this the same Uncle Leopold who cuts people's hands off in the Belgian Congo? He's the father of that one. Right. So that one comes later. But this is his father. I'm very impressed by your grasp of European royalty, Anita.

I'd take you for a European monochist. Well, I mean, you know, if you're going to do an episode of Victoria, better read up, hey, William. At great lengths. But what is funny about Leopold? is that he's actually, he's very warm to her, and she's only very happy when she goes to visit, and she cries every time she has to come back. He's got a house called Claremont in England, and she's only free when she's with him, you know, she's not being watched. So she adores him.

What I love about great Uncle Leopold is that he's patently bonkers, because he gets really weird as he gets older. He often sported three-inch heels and a feather boa, and he wore a wig to prevent catching cold. What? And he popped. Yes. And he popped his mouth open. with wedges of gold as he slept for reasons nobody could quite fathom. It says it.

Isn't that marvelous? So no wonder is she like great-uncle Leopold because he was the antithesis of everything that John Conroy and her mother? So what did he do with the Feather Boer? I am pretty certain that Leopold does it because he can. As one does. Why the hell is king of Belgium? There is an awful moment where she's sort of told by her mother,

when she's just very young and she's just become, you know, this Regency Act is kind of being thrust upon her. And Conroy wants power as well officially documented, you know, because, and her mother never takes her side in these things. So, you know, this is the making of a woman who has her own mind, and this will explain a bit about when she has courtiers later on in life, she basically has a pretty much FU attitude to men in authority. Because she's there in her sick bed. She's very, very ill. It is actually, it turns out to be suspected typhus, or some say it might be tonsillitis, infected tonsils. But she's running a very high temperature. And her mother won't believe that she's ill, and she can't get out of bed. And she's still just a little girl, you know. The mother thinks she's making it up, does she? She's saying she's making it up.

But it's all this sort of tussle about the Regency Act. And what she says, her mother, is that you better give him a peerage, Conroy, and give him a place on the Privy Council. Give him an official role. He should be your advisor. And you know what? Even though she is sick, sick, sick, she just turns around and says to both of them, she's being bullied for years by this man, no.

And she won't be moved. Absolutely no. And the thing is, you know, There's a huge kerfuffle. Conroy leaves looking like a storm cloud, but they can't move her. And I think that at a very young age tells you a little bit about what this woman is going to be made of. I was very much attracted to that. Anita, tell me about her education, because I've read that she was completely fluent in German. Used to argue with Prince Albert in German and used to give him a scolding in German.

So what languages does she learn? What sort of education is she going? She's on her own, presumably just for the children. She's on her own lonely girl. Lonely girl. I mean, the only people who come and visit are these tutors who often aren't a barrel of laughs. But she has a good mind. People talk about this great common sense that she has. And she is. She gets private tutors who teach her French, German, Latin, Italian. You know, this is not uncommon in royal ladies. It is uncommon in ladies in general because education just seems to muddle their brains. You know, because lady brains can't take education these days. But if you're a royal, you are educated. So yes, you're quite right. And it's a funny thing later on in life, there is this note taken about it that every time she gets over-passionate or angry, she'll be so in German, which I think might be sort of indicative of her love of Albert and that she wants him to hear. It's a good language you get angry in. If you're going to get angry, it's much better to be angry in German than in sort of French or Spanish. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is sort of taking us up now

from her birth, childhood, and, you know, we've gone through the Regency, but we ought to have a look. what's going on elsewhere in the world in the 1820s and 1830s. And William, why don't you tell us about a little bit about the empire that she will have? So, let's do India first, because that is now consolidating. The East India Company has since the 1750s been rolling over the map. Those of you that heard some of our first episodes, we'll remember we described that how the Battle of Placie, Clive defeats the governor of Bengal, then seven years later they defeat the next governor of Bengal, plus the

Mughal Emperor Shah Alam and the governor of Uvad. So by the 1800s, the British had defeated not only all the extended moguls and their governors, but also the Marathas, who are these incredibly brave guerrilla fighters who control great chunks of India as the Mughal Empire is breaking up, Tipu Sultan, and there's still big patchy, where there's no British control. There's still massive areas, but half of India is under princely rule, as the British call it,

which means the original rulers. But by 1820, for the first time, the East India Company, having defeated the Marathas, is the paramount power. And the only major modern army that they haven't defeated are the Sikhs in the Punjab,

but they're on good relations with the Sikh. So there's no danger of an invasion. So, in other words, this is the first time that British rule in India is secure. And this is now the period of maximum growing of opium, exporting it to China, selling it around the world. India at this point is more profitable for the British than it will ever be again. And this is the period when so many country houses in Britain are being built with these massive profits. But it's, as you say, it's not just India. the new colonies in Australia are flourishing. And Australia, in relation to India, is now a place that

the poorer colonials who can't afford a nice big house at their retirement in Tumbridge Wells, or Cheltenham or wherever they want to retire, will retire instead now to Sydney. And what had started off as a convict colony is now developing into a very profitable and developed colony on its own right. You've got the British spreading, after Napoleon, strongly influential in Egypt, eyeing the rest of the Ottoman Empire. They've rearranged all the chairs of Europe, as we said, after Waterloo. They control a lot of the former French colonies plus their own in the Caribbean. And although this is the sort of period now that slavery is being abolished, there's still a great deal of indentured labour, and huge amounts

of cotton are arriving back in Britain. So the only place where British rule is in reverse and the beginning in a sense of decolonization, if you like, in the world is North America, of course, where after the American Revolution the British had been kicked out. But the British are still in Canada are not at all good terms with the Americas. And this is a bit of history that I think we never do in Britain, but it's well known in the US. In August 1814, British forces invade the young capital. of America, Washington, D.C., they capture the city and proceed to set far to the majority of the buildings, including the U.S. Capitol and the White House. Gosh. Yeah, and you know, sort of you talked about big houses being built on the proceeds of this enormous trade and conquest that's going on at this time. But also, let's talk about the biggest House of All, shall we, the House of Commons. The Great Reform Act of 1832 has increased the franchise, so more people are able to vote. I mean, it's still not many. It's one in six Englishmen and are allowed.

out of vote. Slavery has been abolished just before Victoria comes to the throne. But she comes in when, you know, the monarchy is not popular in Britain. The Hanoverians, the dynasty that ruled for the previous hundred years, have led to mass discontent with the monarchy. George the fourth cemented this with, you know, vanity, womanising. If you want to know what people thought about it, then just look at what people portray him as now. Prince George in Blackadder, you know, this sort of imbecile who goes around sort of womanising his way. we owe him Brighton Pavilion and many other things. It was very horrible to his wife. But, you know, they are unpopular. So it is often said that, you know, the arrival of Victoria, she comes at a time when there is desperately needed a makeover for the British monarchy. So there we are. We have the dawn of a new era. Let's find out what happens after the break. Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about this world that Queen Victoria was going to be monarch in. And, you know, her, you know, William, King William, he keeps his promise. He doesn't die until Victoria is of age. So she doesn't have to bother with all the regency stuff. She comes in in her own right. And that's going to be massively important. But, you know, almost immediately, this is on the horizon. You've got people, and people that she loves are in her ear saying, you know what, you've got to get married. You have got to get married. You definitely do. You remember a great uncle Leopold? I do. The one with the feather boa.

The one with the feather boa. He has. King of the Belgians has a significant political voice as well as one, you know, that is paternal. She says of him, you know, he's like my own father as I have none. She loves him and she listens to him. And he says, do you know what, lady, if you're going to be queen very shortly, William is going to die, then you are going to have to be married. And he suggests a name that might be familiar to some of the people who, as you do, watch everything, every screen adaptation about Victoria's life.

Who does he suggest? So, of course, as every Emily Blunt fan knows, they arrange Albert, the beautiful Albert, who will grow to be a very handsome man who will seize her heart, but not significant enough, the first time. No, what happens the first time? It's not the best first date, is it? He's got terrible diarrhea. How did that happen?

Do we know how? Well, I don't know. Why know how it happened? It happened. Have you read her diary? Does she have a theory about it? Well, I don't think she's any kind of epidemiologist. She's a lot of things.

I'm not sure. She's taking a stall sample at this point. But it is her 17th birthday. And she's sort of like thrown together because, you know, her Uncle Leopold really favours Albert as a match. Other people are pushing other candidates. Prince Alexander of the Netherlands. He's up there on blind date on one of the stalls.

But she actually really does not like this. The whole theory of this. She's just got her freedom. She has just got out of sort of Conroy's grasp and her mother's grasp. Why on earth would she want to dive headfirst into some bloke's grasp? And when he hasn't got diarrhea, he keeps falling asleep on her. He nods off. My brother does that occasionally at dinner parties.

He'll be sitting next somebody and he actually just fall asleep sitting up talking to someone. Is it, well, you're telling one of your very long stories. No. It's not at all. He doesn't do that. No. Okay, but, but, but, blah, blah, you know, look, the first meeting is not great. He's young, she's young.

She thinks he's a bit fat. He probably thinks she's a bit fat. I mean, she does have a hang up about her weight all through her life. It's very, very funny. She writes to Leopold, this uncle who's trying to push them together, saying, oh, do come a visit, do come a visit. You'll be so, so impressed with how little I'm eating at the moment. What abstinence? I know, felt ghastly, because people used to sort of comment on, you know, how she was sort of big framed and round.

and, you know, rounded. I'm just checking in the Bodlian for the more of... The dysentery. You are dysentery. Yes. Okay, what caused it then? Diarrhea. And apparently the whole German contingent had it.

It wasn't just Albert queuing for the... It wasn't nervous. They were sick. They were sick as dogs. Why he fell asleep too, do you think? It sounds disaster. What? Dehydration.

Yeah, probably. Anyway, so look, she meets him on the 17th. Doesn't think much of him. She will meet him again. She will have very different opinions when she meets him again. But wait for that. But as we'll meet him. said, you know, sort of the king holds true to his promise. He doesn't let Conroy or her mother

anywhere near. He lives till her 18th birthday. He sort of hangs on just to annoy her mother. Yeah. Oh, look, do the journal entry because she gets woken up on the 20th of June 1837 by her mother with the news. So what does she write? And this is a rather different tone of the journal from I was very, very, very, very naughty. This is her now, what's 18th birthday. She's 18 and she writes. I was awoke at six o'clock by Mama, who told me the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Cunningham were here and wished to see me. I went into my sitting room only in my dressing gown, alone, and saw them. Lord Cunningham then acquainted me that my poor uncle the king was no more,

and had expired at 12 minutes past two this morning, and consequently that I was queen. There's a foie d'o d'ur about the entry, isn't there, that I, you know, and consequently that I was queen. Everyone thought that she might have an absolute hysterical teenage breakdown at the news, you know, because it's a big deal. What I love is the detail that somebody had come with smelling salts. Yes, it's Laysen, her beloved governess is there sort of at the ready with a pot of smelling salts in case she swoons. Why don't we have swelling salts? There are often occasions on this pod that I can do with some smelling salts. I don't know what to get you for Christmas.

That's easy. Do you exist? Just writing it down. What was it in the smelling salt? I'll make some in my kitchen. God. You don't have to worry. I've got things.

Your birriani duck will do it. I'll do it well. I'll do it. According to the Bodlian, smelling salts are ammonia inhalers. That wasn't at all what I had in mind. I thought there'd be sort of lavender or some nice sort of Victorian smell for a mother. I have bleach at the ready for you. Don't worry.

I was like, it's going to go through my cupboard. I have a big whiff of bleach. It'll be fine. Domestos. Domestos harpic. And if you're good, a squeeze of lemon. You know, only if you're good. No wonder it'll wake you up.

Anyway, look, so, you know, she doesn't need them. She doesn't swoon. She's there. It's just, you know, a few hours later she has to face a 97 strong all-male privy council. So, you know, you're just getting used to the news. And she's just, can we paint a picture of this? Because you've got a tiny, tiny little woman. You know, her little majesty is what people used to refer to as her.

Four foot 11. Teeny. And she had to be seated on a raised platform so they could, see her properly. And she says these solemn words, this little majesty, I shall do my upmows to fulfill my duty towards my country. I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced. But I am sure that very few have made more real goodwill and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have. I mean, it's good, we don't know it as well as I have the body of a woman, the soul of a man, you know, Elizabeth I first promise. But it is, it's out there,

isn't it? You know, you may think I'm little and tiny. A real desire to do what is fit and right. It's like some tragic for an 18-year-old. Yeah. Anyway, so you look, after this, after she makes her promise to the nation in the Privy Council, 1837, she becomes just simply Queen Victoria. She drops Alexandrina. She moves from Kensington Palace to Buckhouse, with its 785 rooms, my lord. I think I'm right in saying that she was the first to use Buckingham Palace. And from my only one brief entry into that place. I don't think they've changed the carpets or any of the hanging since. He says, it's absolutely pure Victorian. Like a critical interior designer. They have not kept up with the look at all. But look, what's hilarious about Buckingham Palace is it has 785 rooms and she gives

her mother the room that is furthest away from her in this enormous place with all the roads. I think sort of, you know, just to make it clear that you do not control me and what is, is even more hilarious, William. Even more hilarious is that they now communicate through letters. They both live in Buckingham Palace, but they are so far away from each other physically. All those corridors, all those long corridors we know from the Crown. Would you tell my daughter that breakfast is ready?

Love mum, that kind of thing. Anyway, look, at the same time that Queen Victoria is being anointed, Queen of England. It's the same year, absolutely. Baháhtar Zahar. Yeah, so now tell us about his inauguration, because he's also being made a king at that time in India. It is the same year that my last mogul, Bahadashah Zhahaha, is coming to the throne in Delhi.

And just as Queen Victoria is aware that she is ruling an empire that is strong and growing and reaching its peak, Zuffer is horribly aware that his empire is a shadow of what it had been. And one of his first acts is to write to Victoria. How old is he? Is he also a little majesty, or is he an older man? No, he comes to the throne middle age because his father lives much longer than had been expected. And so I think he's in his 40s by the time he actually gets his hands on the mogul throne. And this is the letter he writes, Queen Victoria.

From unfortunate circumstances, the flower of my kingdom has faded. And the dominion of this house is placed in. your hands to diminish or enhance its dignity. I have no ambition left for grandeur. I will devote my days entirely to religion, but I feel anxious that the name and dignity of my predecessors should be maintained, and that they may descend to my children unimpaired, according to the engagements made by the British government. And you also have, at the same time, in the same city, the great mogul poet Garlip is looking for a patron. And he's the greatest mogul poet in any previous generation, he would have been weighed against gold at the mogul court.

But now he's well aware the tax revenues have been diverted to the British, that Zuffer is effectively penniless, and so he's forced to write to Victoria in distant London for patronage. And he's heard there's this new queen, and this is the letter he writes. He praises her for being as splendid as the stars. And he says how her governor-general, Lord Canning, is as magnificent as Alexander, as splendid as fairy dune, in other words, the heroes of the Shahnamar, but have left Queen Victoria a little bit muddled. And he realizes that the great Begham of London may not be familiar with a delicate etiquette in these matters.

So he makes himself a little bit more explicit. And he says, the truly great rulers of history, he tells the young Queen Victoria, rewarded their poets and well-wishes by filling their mouths with pearls, weighing them in gold and granting them villages' recompense. In the same way it was the duty, he writes, of the exalted new queen to bestow upon Garlib the petitioner, the title

Mir Kwan, and to present him with a robe of honour and a few crumbs from her bounteous table. That is, in plain English, a pension. Right. So we have all these people halfway across the world, waiting for this young woman's pleasure. Yeah.

But also, you know, the East India Company is not really going to have anything of this. I mean, they, you know, new monarch, same old business. So, you know, these India company directors are very quick to send her an address of congratulations. Like, well done, New Queen. But in their July meeting, the leading lights of the company, this is from Miles Taylor's excellent book that you've loved and I have loved? The leading lights of the company, they're really, I mean, they're over the top in their admiration

of the New Queen, but they are sort of hinting all of these lovely things with, she needs to stay in her box. And they just let them get on with things their own way. And they prayed, and this is a quote that Miles Taylor has found from the East India companies, as they prayed that the welfare of the millions of subjects in your Majesty's Indian Territories entrusted to Parliament by our charge may be preserved and advanced under your Majesty's mild and beneficent sway. Basically butt out, Vic. Another hilarious detail is that, you know, the Raja of Awar, who wants to send a nuzer of gold directly to Victoria. How much is a naza?

A nuzzah just means a sort of, feudal gift. I see. Okay. But what is hilarious is that he wants to send it directly to her, but then he sent this rather test letter saying, well, if you want to send gold, send it to the Governor General, because he is the representative of the British monarchy. You deal with us. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And this, you see, is the complexity of victorious situation vis-à-vis the colonies, because while she has influence in England, she is a constitutional monarch. And yet, She is presented increasingly in India as the ruler, as the government. And so you have endless displaced princes in India sending missions to Queen Victoria trying to get access and finding themselves

blocked at every stage by the East India Company, which either just don't deliver the letters or stop the envoys ever getting anywhere near Buckingham Palace. So one of these people falling at her feet and others trying to sort of barricade themselves in the corridors of power and keep her out of it. But her coronation takes place on the 28th of June 1838. It's Westminster Abbey. It is, you know, the newspaper is saying, The Rose of England, the Queen of Hearts.

We've heard that before. Loved as soon as seen, writes one newspaper. We've had this before, but is this the first time it happens? Do you have big public coronations that everyone joins in with before this? I don't know. Well, I think it's, I think it is unprecedented in scale, because also you have newspapers, which are spreading the word, which are making people cognizant of the day.

day, the time and where to be. It wasn't rehearsed, you know, these days, and I've covered these things in my other job. You think hours and hours of rehearsal, but this was completely unrehearsed. It took five hours. Archbishop of Canterbury put a ring, first of all, on her wrong finger, which is not great. And it took hours to get it off. It suggests that she wasn't entirely clear which finger had put it on herself, was she? Well, I mean, you know, she didn't know where the toilet was. It was all a bit tricky, to be honest. Nevertheless, she records this in her journal. I shall ever remember this day is the proudest of my life. And it is estimated some 400,000 people lined the streets of London to watch Young Victoria and make her way to and from Westminster Abbey.

It all seems like such a glorious start. But you know what? Things are never that smooth. There are problems ahead. If you want to know what they are, join us for the next episode of Empire. But if you want to hear it right now, all you need to do is join the Empire Club. You'll be able to hear all the episodes. It's terrific value. Victoria. Is it, William? Is it? I believe you.

But you can join right now and you'll hear everything right now. All you need to do is go to EmpirePodukuk.com and sign up there. Anyway, look, goodbye. Until the next time from me, Anita Arnan. And from me, William Durember.