28 Quotes About English-monarchy

Surely Victoria's mental health suffered because all the men around her expected it to.

Even at rock bottom, when her doctors had thought she would go mad with grief, Victoria had spoken of endurance. She was 'determined', she wrote, that as a widow 'no one person, may he be ever so good ... is to lead, or guide, or dictate to me'.

With Bertie's illness, Victoria's return to her best self, the self she had lost in Albert, had begun.

The daily contents even of her bin 'would be more interesting than a year's file of The Times'.

Historian Dorothy Thompson has pointed out the double standard at work here. A king's having a mistress was regrettable, but ultimately acceptable. The possibility, though, of a female ruler having a sexual relationship outside of marriage, causes dismay and prurient ridicule.

The next draft of a bill outlining the punishments for homosexuality must omit all mention of females; it was unnecessary for 'women don't do such things'.

Victoria's courtiers generally shared the views of her administrators and colonial staff in India, which were that Indians were decidedly inferior to Europeans. Victoria, however, perhaps having less cause to worry about her status being challenged, was less prone to this, 'There is no hatred to a brown skin - none,' she wrote, even in the wake of the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

This bonnet, worn with resolution, had caused some upset. Her government had asked its queen to appear more ... queenly. 'The symbol that unties this vast Empire is a Crown not a bonnet,' complained Lord Roseberry. But Victoria stoutly refused, and 'the bonnet triumphed'.

What interests me - and indeed many others today, now women's contributions to history are better recognised - is [Victoria's] eventual return to fiery form. "While the Prince Consort lived," she told a visitor in the early 1860s, "he thought for me, now I have to think for myself.