Blackwell Reference Online

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Queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901), and Empress of India (1876–1901). Both as the longest reigning British monarch to date and as the mother of nine children, she became a significant factor in the dynastic history of European monarchism as it developed from the nineteenth century into its twentieth-century epoch of decline. She was the only child of Edward Duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, and came to the British throne on the death of her uncle, William IV. At that point she was, as a woman, debarred by Salic Law from succeeding him as ruler of hanover too. Though the personal dynastic union between the two realms now lapsed, Victoria's German descent contributed to her early unfamiliarity with British constitutional practices. At the start of her reign she drew on the advice of her prime minister Lord Melbourne, but did so while also relying heavily on King Leopold I of Belgium whose views on monarchical authority did not sit easily with British traditions. Nor did those of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the cousin whom Victoria married in 1840. He frequently locked horns with the government of the day, and especially with palmerston who, as foreign secretary in the period 1846–51, showed sympathy towards piedmont-sardinia in its attempts to free northern Italy from rule by the habsburg empire . It was perhaps fortunate for the constitutional ... log in or subscribe to read full text