Queen Victoria’s Dark Obsession d
[Music] Queen Victoria deeply loved her husband Prince Albert but when he was just 42 years old he tragically died leaving her heartbroken for years afterward Victoria had an utterly morbid way of keeping his memory alive Prince Albert was the consort of Queen Victoria and one of the most famous Royal husbands in history still people tend to see him as an obedient romantic figure next to his powerful desperately in love wife but nothing could be further from the truth though he was of noble birth Albert’s childhood was a horror story his father Ernest I the Duke of sax cobber and gotha and mother Princess Louise were both Reckless philanderers and in 18 26 after less than a decade of
marriage they split up the next years of Albert’s life were worthy of a Charles Dickens novel for one his mother Princess Louise got banished from court and never saw her sons again then Albert’s father remarried his own niece one of Albert’s cousins carrying all this enormous baggage Albert became determined to become twice the man his father father was and threw himself into his studies at the University of [Music] Bon Not only was he an upstanding student but he was also a frighteningly good Sportsman particularly when it came to fencing basically Albert was turning himself into a prince charming and his Cinderella was right around the [Music] corner by the time Albert was a
strapping 17-year-old his ambitious Uncle Leopold King of the belgians decided he had the perfect woman for Albert the young Princess Victoria in England who was poised to take the English throne in a matter of [Music] years Albert and Victoria were first cousins not exactly uncommon for the time but pretty gross nonetheless in fact the Royal Circle was so small the pair had shared the same Midwife at their births and when Albert was just 2 years old his grandmother was already planning a wedding for the infants with his uncle breathing down his neck Albert traveled to meet the 16-year-old Victoria and he quickly found a huge obstacle in his path as it happened the future Queen of England was very hot on the European marriage market and a Rogues gallery of eligible bachelors was already lining up
to woo her only Albert had a secret [Music] weapon one of Albert’s main Rivals for Victoria’s affections was Prince Alexander of orange another Royal Manly Man Who Loved horse riding and adventuring the one thing Alexander didn’t have though was Albert’s perfect face already a beautiful youth Victoria described Albert as extremely handsome praising in his very sweet mouth with fine teeth and the delightful expression in his eyes meanwhile she could only describe poor Alexander as very plain in truth Albert and Victoria were more like star crossed lovers at the beginning while the young Royals were certainly attracted to each other no proposal came during this visit and Albert went home still a bachelor then roughly a year after their
initial courtship Princess Victoria turned into Queen Victoria upon the death of her uncle King William IV and everything changed with Victoria finally on the throne everyone expected a ring on her finger in good time but Victoria’s response was surprising and very unromantic she refused to bow to pressure from her family instead she vowed to stay single until until she settled into her role as Monarch still despite her hesitancy Victoria was Head Over Heels soon enough she proved her love in a very unconventional way in October 1839 Queen Victoria and Albert made a strange kind of history that day Victoria was the one who proposed to him not only breaking the traditions of the time but also showing him that she was the one who was
going to wear the pants in their relationship in February 1840 the young couple married in the idyllic Chapel Royal at St James’s palace with Victoria famously wearing a white wedding dress turning the color Choice into an enormous fad mere weeks after the wedding Albert got shocking news Victoria was pregnant now this should have been happy Tidings but it was far from it as young as she was Victoria had hoped to have at least a handful of months to enjoy her new bridegroom plus the pair were barely in their 20s with no idea how to raise a [Music] family Victoria wasn’t just upset about her pregnancy she was beside herself once more her letters reveal the Dark Truth she wrote to her grandmother complaining that the idea of a baby was
spoiling her happiness Victoria and Albert burned for each other in the bedroom and their fighting style was equally fiery indeed the couple had allout brawls inside the palace it got so bad Victoria would often refuse to even speak to Albert forcing him to resort to Sliding contrite notes under her door to make up for whatever he said or did during this Twisted honeymoon period Albert real realized he had one deep dark fear about his marriage Victoria’s grandfather had been mad King George III and some of her rages around the palace closely mirrored her unhinged relatives Albert couldn’t help but wonder if she had inherited some of the royal Madness still for most couples a coming baby means settling down and working
through their differences hereditary illnesses and all Albert’s new wife hated rearing children Not only was she miserable about her pregnancies not a whole lot after that pleased her she thought newborn infants were ugly and had a deep aversion to breastfeeding yet at the center of all this there was something truly disturbing today historians believe that Victoria suffered from postpartum depression once calling pregnancy the heaviest trial she had ever had to endure endure during these low periods Albert’s worst fears came true at her most brutal ners Victoria would even experience hallucinations further linking her to Mad King George III Albert’s response to all of this was brutal when it came to Victoria’s fears about child birth Albert wasn’t
empathetic he was annoyed at best and cruel at worst in his letters to Victoria around her pregnancies he complains about her moods and her lack of self-control sneering at her crying over a miserable trifle incredibly though it wasn’t just mental dangers that Albert and Victoria had to face they were also in grave physical danger in the first few months of their marriage Albert and a very pregnant Victoria were riding in a carriage to visit her mother suddenly a vicious twist of fate confronted them out of nowhere a mentally ill teenager named Edward Oxford shot at the royal couple although they were both unharmed Albert was shaken down to his foundations and his life wasn’t going to get any easier in the end Victoria was in for a huge disappointment with her eldest
child it was a girl a princess she called Vicki and almost no one treat treated it as a cause for celebration when the attending doctor apparently said mournfully oh Madam it’s a girl Victoria shot back never mind next time it will be a prince but Victoria and Albert would learn to be careful what they wished for True to her word the second child Victoria had with Albert was indeed a boy Prince Albert nicknamed berti yet this was just the beginning of a lifelong and tragic struggle although Victoria and Albert went on to have a whopping seven more children it was their eldest son berti who received all the pressure Albert in particular was determined to mold berti into the perfect man until it all backfired spectacularly unlike many Victorian
fathers Albert took a keen interest in bringing up his children even attending all their birs and developing a rigorous educational curriculum for them perhaps trying to atone for his own father’s raish sins Albert overcorrected and became a hugely overbearing father despite his best efforts his eldest son and Heir berti proved to be the most difficult of his children to tame the boy preferred rough housing to Albert’s schoolroom teachings and Albert grew more disappointed appointed by the year eventually the consort took to personally caning the Prince of Wales if he failed his classes or misbehaved as if intense corporal punishment would fix things as the royal couple raised their children and Victoria got more confident as Queen an unfixable Rift developed
between them namely jealousy Albert chaed at the idea of Victoria dominating him as Monarch while V Toria was staunchly determined to keep every ounce of Regal power for herself often refusing to let Albert take over her duties even when she was pregnant within a couple of years Albert was going stir crazy and if Victoria thought it would get better with time she was mistaken one of the main sore spots for Albert was the fact that Victoria’s old childhood Governor baroness Len was now running his household and Albert just so happened to despise her unable to deal with the baronesses matly hold over his grown wife Albert dubbed her the house dragon and refused to have any dealings with her Albert finally made a stand in these power games with a vengeful show of his
strength he outright attempted a coup accusing the baroness of mismanaging his home and putting his children in danger Furious he demanded that Queen Victoria boot the woman out and waited with baited breath for the answer Victoria realized her insecure husband needed her to be a submissive wife at that moment and not a dominant Queen and she eventually agreed to send Len off packing starting in 1859 when Albert was still a healthy and relatively young man the consort experienced debilitating stomach cramps no matter what he did or what royal doctor he saw no one could quite figure out what the matter was and his condition only got worse the more he took cures and treatments it was enough to make anyone frustrated but it hit Albert in a particularly cruel fashion within a few months of falling
ill an eerie and ominous change came over him even Albert’s own biographer admitted that it was around this time that he lost the will to live suddenly Albert’s once active mentally acute lifestyle turned inward on itself and led to listlessness and depression around this time an ugly truth became clear to Albert his son berti wasn’t just uninterested in his studies he was going to make a horrible king after all berti wasn’t the sharpest tool in the [Music] shed as he grew up he became very interested in women much to his father’s horror he started taking up with the Brash Irish actress Nelly Clifton a woman who was certainly not going to help the still teenage Prince with his homework but whatever Albert initially thought was going on between Nelly and
his son the truth was 10 times worse while berti was away from his strict father during a trip to Ireland with the Army he had yet another Rendevous with Nelly according to reports he and Nelly wasted no time on their solo Adventures as berty’s fellow Cadets allowed her to hide out in their Barracks for 3 days while she and berti had their fun so The Story Goes Albert’s precious son lost his virginity to Clifton during those three days and when Albert found out he was Furious Albert had not only sacrificed much of his manhood to be a good husband to Queen Victoria his own philandering father had shown him the Havoc that could come from womanizing accordingly he was so angry and Disturbed over his son’s lack of morality he wrote berti a scathing letter calling him out for being a
fallen man after Albert sent the letter he still worried not only for his son’s soul but for his family’s reputation he and Victoria feared that berty’s activ ities would get out in the press or worst of all that Nelly Clifton would get pregnant to keep the rumor Millet Bay Albert decided to take matters into his own hands he personally traveled to se berti in late November 1860 to give his boy a tongue lashing for acting out and floating his Royal duties it couldn’t have gone more horribly not only did Albert’s Stern words fall on deaf ear they had decided to hash out their differences during a long cold walk in the November Rain this was not good for Albert’s failing Health once he finished chastising berti Albert returned back
home and began to experience horrific symptoms in addition to his chronic stomach cramps he now had shooting pains running up and down his back and legs by early December Albert state had weakened even more significantly and the palace called in one of their best doctors to take a look at him after looking the Royal consort up and down the doctor’s diagnosis was Grim according to him Prince Albert was suffering from tiid fever the end came Swift and brutal on December 14th 1860 fewer than 3 weeks after he traveled to confront his son Albert died just before midnight in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle one of Queen Victoria’s favorite residencies like Albert Queen Victoria had never been particularly fond of
young berti after all she too thought he was a screw-up when Prince Albert passed her dislike transformed into a profound sense of hatred she blamed him and his affair with Nelly almost entirely for Albert’s death she wrote to her eldest daughter that I never can or shall look at him without a shudder and denied him any political power or position until the day she died still even with all of this grief Victoria went from heartbroken to very disturbed to say Queen Victoria took Albert’s death badly is an statement aside from blaming and all but disowning her son berti she sunk into a deep depression and most infamously wore black for the rest of her
life this last habit earned her the mournful nickname the Widow of Windsor except that’s just the most well-known of Victoria’s mour Customs overcome with grief Victoria retreated from public life and her private habits were nothing short of bizarre in the long years after Albert’s passing Victoria insisted that her servants keep his rooms continually prepared as if he was just going to walk through the doors one [Music] day aids always placed a bowl of hot water for shaving on a side table and laid out a new change of clothes on his bed Victoria’s lifelong mourning of Albert is notorious but most people don’t know that it extended to her own funeral in contrast to her permanent
black Victoria requested that she wear a white dress and her wedding veil once her attendance buried her she had waited decades to reunite with her beloved Albert and she wanted to meet him as a renewed bride at the time of his passing the doctor still believed that Albert’s cause of death was typhoid fever but modern historians have a much more disturbing suggestion given Albert’s chronic stomach issues they believe he could have been suffering from a long-term fatal illness like kidney failure or Crohn’s disease making his death not just random bad luck but an excruciating drawn out process one of Albert’s greatest achievements was the great exhibition of 1851 and the impact of his hard work led to what is now called albertopolis This is the London area of South Kensington which famously contains many institutions that come from the surplus
of the great exhibition including the Royal College of Art and Royal Albert [Music] Hall if you enjoyed this video please give it a like And subscribe for more videos
