Victoria.
Her empire ruled a quarter of the world's population.
But she was once a passionate, excitable young girl -
a girl who had to battle to become Queen.
While researching my book on Victoria,
a forgotten story emerged of her epic struggle to come to the throne.
It's a story of greed and power
played out in royal palaces and some of Britain's greatest buildings.
It's also a story of a bankrupt monarchy redeemed.
This is a film about the torturous early life
of the most powerful little girl in the world.
King George III was a popular monarch who came to the throne in 1760.
Farmer George fathered 15 children - nine sons and six daughters.
His court was famously bourgeois, family-centred and dull.
But by 1817, the King was insane and locked away at Windsor.
The future of the Crown was in doubt.
His sons had grown into selfish playboys who drank too much,
had scores of illegitimate children
and were running up enormous debts.
The King's eldest son, George, was appointed Prince Regent,
ruling over the country while his father was incapable.
Prinny was also the only son who had managed to father
a legitimate heir to the throne -
his daughter, Princess Charlotte.
Unlike her father, she was much loved by the people -
the great hope for the future of the monarchy.
She set up a happy home at Claremont House in Surrey, but here
events took a disastrous turn.
Aged just 21, Princess Charlotte died tragically in childbirth.
The death of Charlotte brought the country close to revolution.
But out of the tragedy of Charlotte's death
comes this incredible story of struggle and success,
of a young Princess who was passionate, vibrant
and determined to fight for the throne.
With the young heiress Charlotte dead,
George's brothers took centre stage.
Those next in line to the throne were the Duke of York...
the Duke of Clarence...
the Duke of Kent...
and the Duke of Cumberland. When Charlotte dies,
this is the starting pistol for the baby race,
because all the other brothers now have to make legitimate marriages.
So there was an absolute panic for everybody to acquire
a legitimate wife and acquire a legitimate child
who could be heir to the throne of England.
And people were joking about it even at the time.
There's one poem I really like. It's by Peter Pindar.
Do you know this one? It goes, "Hot and hard each royal pair
"Are at it hunting for the heir."
The fourth son of the King was Edward, the Duke of Kent.
Of all the dukes,
he was considered by many to be the best of a bad bunch,
although he, too, had a long-term mistress.
But now he set his sights on a young widow,
Princess Victoire, from the tiny German principality of Saxe-Coburg.
They were married in the summer of 1818.
He was 50. She was just 32.
Well, she was born a Coburg,
a very powerful family ruling an incredibly tiny principality.
Then she gets this flattering offer
from the Duke of Kent which brings her into the English Royal Family,
which is obviously a step up, but it's a risk,
because she's got independence,
she's got her life sorted out, really, and she takes the risk.
I feel kind of sorry for her,
because, although she's entering the English Royal Family,
they don't want her - she's German.
Barely two months after their wedding,
the Duke and Duchess of Kent left London to live in Germany.
The Duke was in severe financial difficulties,
and the move was a desperate attempt to save money.
They arrived here in the palace of Amorbach in central Germany,
then a cold, unmodernised ruin miles from civilisation.
The Duchess was happier in her beloved Germany,
and the Duke relished the chance to renovate a new property,
consequently getting himself deeper and deeper in debt.
The pair settled into a happy life here in the palace
and soon had one piece of excellent news -
the Duchess was pregnant.
To prove that the child really was legitimate,
it was imperative that the birth was witnessed
by key members of the British Establishment.
So with the Duchess eight months pregnant,
she and the Duke had to collect their belongings
and race back to London.
The Duke of Kent applied to his brother,
the Prince of Wales. He wanted money to come to England.
The Prince of Wales refused, so they set off in this sort of procession,
a rather scuzzy parade
of, you know, phaetons and landaus and in fact,
the Duke of Kent himself drove,
just to save money, 470 miles, something like that,
across potholed roads, with an inexperienced coachman
and a seven-month pregnant Duchess. It was a pretty nasty thing.
The party arrived in Calais on 18th April
and then drummed their heels waiting for the weather to improve.
The Duchess breathed deeply and held on.
Finally, six days later,
they embarked on the royal yacht for England.
After three hours of rough seas,
they arrived here in Dover and then set off for Kensington Palace.
On 24th May 1819, the Duchess of Kent gave birth
to a baby girl here in Kensington Palace.
The new baby was described as being "a pretty little princess,
"as plump as a partridge".
But when the Regent heard that his brother had now produced an heir
to the throne, he was furious.
He turned the christening into a farce,
vetoing all the family's regal-sounding chosen names.
The Archbishop of Canterbury stood with the child by the font,
waiting to be told what to call her.
The Regent was determined that the Kents' baby would never be queen,
so he refused to give her a royal name.
Finally, he declared, "Give her the mother's name,"
and so the little girl became
the first person in England ever to be called Victoria.
The royal world that Victoria was born into
was a rapidly changing one.
Under her grandfather,
King George III, the monarchy had enjoyed widespread popularity.
But under the despised Prince Regent with his profligate brothers,
the once popular royal family seemed a thing of the past.
People were very worried about the future of the monarchy,
the political future, there were growing claims for political reform,
the French Revolution was still in people's minds,
so all of these things were playing out
very much in a kind of public sphere of newspapers,
caricaturists were pillorying the elite, so it was anxious times
for Britain in those years.
A lot of the royal dukes -
what Victoria came to call later her disreputable or disgraceful uncles -
they were all in debt.
They gambled, borrowed money from their friends,
they took out loans, they were profligate,
and yet they were of the royal blood,
so they had expectations of how they should live,
so they got deeply in debt.
The Duke of Kent was massively in debt, just like his brothers.
In a bid to save money, he moved his new family to this house,
then a damp, cold cottage by the sea.
They arrived here on Christmas Day
with Princess Victoria just six months old.
The Duchess spent her time walking on the seafront
and practising her English.
But the Duke was less content. The debts were mounting and he decided
that come springtime, they should all move back to Germany.
But before the Duke could put his plan into action,
events in Sidmouth sent little Victoria's life
in an entirely different direction.
The Duke of Kent took long walks on the beach in the pouring rain,
often returning to the cottage soaked to the bone.
He soon caught a cold and did not recover.
By 12th January, Victoria's father was seriously ill.
Delirious, vomiting, and suffering from chest pains,
he had to be propped up even to breathe.
After the Duke of Kent took to his bed,
the local doctor was called in and recommended cupping,
which involved taking a heated cup, making a cut in the skin
and placing the heated cup over it.
As the cup cooled, it would create a vacuum that would draw increasing amounts of blood.
This was repeated time and time again,
taking out litres of blood over several days.
The Duke had a strong constitution,
but the cupping and the constant bleeding must have taken so much
blood out of his system
that ultimately it must have hastened his end.
The dying Duke summoned the strength to ask for his will to be drawn up.
In it, he appointed the Duchess sole guardian of Victoria.
On being told that his signature was legible,
he fell back against the pillows.
Next morning, the Duke died, holding his Duchess's hand.
Princess Victoria was now fourth in line to the throne.
She and her mother were brought back from Sidmouth
and into the royal fold in London.
Within days,
the infant Victoria would move even closer to the throne.
Her grandfather, King George III,
who'd been ill for so long, finally passed away.
At the death of George III, the entire nation went into mourning.
Thousands of people attended his funeral here in St George's Chapel.
He had lost America and sired a clutch of useless children,
but his plain speaking had charmed his people,
and his struggle with illness had won their sympathies.
They grieved for him and they dreaded the Regent becoming King.
Victoria was now third in line to the throne.
King George IV wanted the Duchess of Kent and her baby out of the way.
Deep in debt and frightened of the new King, the Duchess began to rely
on a handsome and persuasive young Irishman called John Conroy,
previously the Duke of Kent's equerry.
With the Duchess all alone, he seized his opportunity to influence
her and her daughter, Victoria.
Conroy, I think, wasn't good news.
Conroy was an unscrupulous Irish person that got into the household
and was on the make, wasn't he?
He seized his opportunity.
In 1820, the Duke of Kent died, the Princess's father,
and he kind of moved in on the Duchess of Kent, you know,
who wasn't exactly Einstein, for a start.
And he obviously saw a way to controlling the way things could go.
He was supposed to be a charming man.
He was quite a persuasive man - he was quite a talker.
He was actually quite a crude man, and he was very ambitious
and he turned out to be very manipulative.
He felt that he could... really end up
as the kind of Svengali figure behind the future Queen.
For the Duchess of Kent and John Conroy,
Victoria's succession was vital.
They knew the little princess
was now their ticket to unlimited riches and power.
Victoria herself was a real little terror,
wasn't she? I can see...
she must have been a real handful, because she had such a strong
and determined character.
But she had this really weird upbringing,
because she was so heavily controlled, looked after,
she was the focus of attention and her mother's meal ticket.
She spent most of her time with adults,
the only girls that she was allowed to play with were the daughters
of the evil Sir John Conroy,
so she was living in a sort of curious prison.
Victoria's earliest memory was of crawling on the yellow carpet
here in Kensington Palace. She was told that if she cried,
her Uncle Sussex, who lived next door, would come and punish her.
Typically, defiant little Victoria
responded by screaming loudly every time she saw him.
As the Duchess of Kent said, "The little mouse has a will of her own."
This single-mindedness was a vital part of Victoria's character.
She would come to rely on it in the years ahead in her battles
with her mother and John Conroy.
I think Victoria's childhood,
what she called her "melancholy childhood",
had several effects on her.
I think it forged her as a character of steel.
I think the iron entered her soul during her childhood
and I think it showed her as the resolute monarch she was going to be
throughout her very long reign.
The Duchess and Conroy were determined to control Victoria,
so they created a regime
for her that became known as the Kensington System.
At the heart of the system
was 24-hour surveillance on the little girl.
At the same time, she was forced to sleep in her mother's bedroom
and she was never allowed to be alone.
The Duchess appointed a governess for the young Victoria -
Baroness Lehzen. The Baroness became Victoria's closest ally.
The two were inseparable and Lehzen guarded the young girl obsessively.
Even so, there were still fears for the safety of young Victoria.
The Duke of Cumberland posed a particular threat,
for following the death of the Duke of York, he was now third in the line of succession.
The only person locking his route to the throne
was little Princess Victoria.
I think the Duke of Cumberland was seen as the vilest,
in the eyes of the public, really.
There were all sorts of terrible rumours about what he got up to,
and what his reputation was like.
He was supposed to have murdered his valet
and have been involved in an incestuous relationship
with one of his sisters, and it's reported
that the Times noted when he died
that they could find nothing good to say about him,
he was so disliked by the British nation.
The Duchess and Conroy were convinced
that the Duke of Cumberland wished to kidnap
and kill the young Victoria.
As a consequence, she was watched at all times,
her food was tasted before every meal,
and she was forbidden to walk downstairs
without someone else holding her hand.
But the royal family was becoming increasingly concerned
about Conroy's influence and greed for power.
Various members of the family
tried to warn the Duchess of Kent about him, but to no avail.
The warnings given to the Duchess of Kent,
particularly by Princess Adelaide,
the wife of the Duke of Clarence,
really reinforced her feeling that she must keep close to Conroy
and that Conroy must continue to be her adviser.
So this was evidence, she thought,
that all of those relations were out to get her
and trying to part her from her only source of support.
In June 1830, King George IV died
and the childless Duke of Clarence became King William IV.
Victoria was now heir to the throne. Just 11 years old,
the unlikely princess now seemed certain to be the next queen.
It was at this point
that Conroy and the Duchess of Kent made their bid for power.
Almost the day after George IV died and his brother,
the Duke of Clarence, ascended the throne as William IV,
the Duchess wrote to the Duke of Wellington,
who was the Tory Prime Minister,
immediately laying out her claim,
asking for...wanting to become the dowager Princess of Wales,
asking for an increased allowance -
basically positioning herself as the mother of William IV's heir.
She says, "I'd like to have my debts paid, please,
"and I'd like to be the official Regent to my daughter."
So she's saying at that point,
"I see Victoria as the heir to the throne.
"I don't think William IV is going to have any children."
She's really staking her claim.
But this was the moment
that they really saw the prize within their grasp
and their actions from then on were absolutely to position themselves
for her to be Regent and for Victoria to ascend the throne.
The Duchess was obsessed with becoming Regent
and getting her hands on the money that would come with the position.
She embarked on an ambitious project to increase her own popularity
by taking the young Victoria on a series of journeys
all over the country.
After months of planning and poring over maps,
Victoria's first grand tour set out from Kensington Palace.
The carriages rumbled off for the Midlands and the towns of Stratford,
Warwick and Birmingham. The tour was a great success.
There were brass bands and cheering crowds all the way.
But Victoria was miserable.
She missed her beloved pets, she was surrounded by Conroy and his family,
and the Duchess kept pushing her aside to grasp the attention.
And it wasn't just Victoria who resented the Duchess
stealing the limelight.
And if the Duchess of Kent
and her daughter are staying in some of the great family houses
of these elite families with their own political influence,
if she's visiting some of the great mercantile cities
and getting loyal addresses
and entertainment and receptions and so on,
it all detracts from the central role of the actual monarch.
It does mean that William becomes quite a stickler
for insisting that the Duchess of Kent should stay
within the boundaries that have been provided.
The conflict between King William and the Duchess was growing.
In September 1831, William IV was crowned King at Westminster Abbey.
He called it "a useless and ill-timed expense".
But he imposed one very strict condition,
and this made the Duchess of Kent so angry
that she took drastic action,
boycotting the ceremony and fleeing London.
The King commanded that Princess Victoria must follow
behind his brothers as he walked up the aisle.
Furious at what she saw as an attack on her daughter's position
as heir to the throne, the Duchess declared
that she and the Princess would not attend the coronation.
Instead, she whisked the young Victoria here,
to Norris Castle on the Isle of Wight.
London reeled at the shocking news
that the Duchess had snatched the young Victoria away,
snubbing the coronation.
The Times reported that the Duchess had refused to attend
and made it clear who should be blamed.
"We should be glad to know who are the advisers
"of this misguided lady."
Victoria was angry and frustrated at missing her uncle's coronation,
but even as a lonely and isolated child, she found solace
in the beautiful surroundings. Victoria loved Norris Castle.
Really, the Duchess was bribing her for not attending the coronation.
The Princess adored the freedom of being away from Kensington,
able to see the sea. As she wrote later,
"Kensington looks so gloomy and the trees are quite bare.
"What a sad, sad change from dear Norris."
Now that Victoria was in her teens and showing signs of rebellion,
the Duchess was growing ever more intent on absolute power,
and to this end she introduced a new daily task.
Eager to control her daughter, the Duchess bought her a diary,
and told her to write in it every day.
She wanted to read Victoria's innermost thoughts.
But although she resented the invasion of privacy,
Victoria embraced the diary, writing pages and pages every night.
It now forms a unique insight into the mind of the teenage Princess.
Victoria began her diary with a description of her first grand tour.
It's clear that, at the tender age of 13,
she was shocked by what she saw.
"The men, women, children, country and houses are all black.
"The country is very desolate -
"engines flaming, everywhere smoking and burning coal heaps,
"intermingled with wretched huts and little ragged children."
The grand tour exposed Victoria to the general public
and it began to open her eyes to the country she would one day rule.
But it also infuriated the King.
What I think in general affronts William
is their presumption and their grandeur in acting so independently.
This is not a tour which has court approval.
We have to remember that under the Regency Act,
the Duchess has been appointed Regent in the event of William not surviving
until Victoria's 18th birthday in 1837.
So a royal progress modelled very explicitly
on those of the lioness herself, Elizabeth I,
introducing Victoria as the heir to the throne,
really does create an impression
of vultures circling above William.
So at a time when he's struggling to improve the popular image
of the House of Hanover,
it would have been deeply grating to receive reports
of the loyal addresses, the cheering crowds,
on occasion even the regal salutes, which greet her.
As Victoria grew older,
her relationship with the King grew stronger.
He became even more opposed to the influence
of her mother and John Conroy.
They now hatched a plan to totally discredit the young princess.
Victoria was almost 15
and King William IV was gloating in his good health,
determined to eke out his life
until his young successor turned 18.
The Duchess and Conroy saw power slipping away from them.
So they decided to present Victoria
as too childish to govern herself, let alone the country,
and so she would need the Duchess to be her regent
past the age of 18, perhaps up until 21.
In July 1835, at Victoria's confirmation ceremony, the King
publicly humiliated John Conroy, expelling him from the service.
The incident brought mother and daughter
into direct conflict yet again.
Just an hour after the ceremony, the Duchess wrote to Victoria,
telling her of all her great sacrifices for her.
She commanded her to dismiss Baroness Lehzen,
but Victoria refused.
She knew she had great struggles ahead,
and Lehzen would be her only support.
"I felt that my confirmation was one of the most solemn
"and important events in my life.
"I went with the firm determination to become a true Christian,
"to try and comfort my dear mama in all her griefs, trials and anxieties,
"also to be obedient to dear Lehzen, who has done so much for me."
It's interesting that when Victoria writes "dear Lehzen",
the word "dear" is italicised - she's emphasising her affection.
But when she writes "dear" referring to her mother,
she doesn't bother to italicise it.
This may seem like a minor detail,
but it's a clear sign of what was developing into a struggle
for the throne itself.
In the autumn of 1835, Victoria, the Duchess and the Conroys
took one of their customary holidays to Ramsgate
and stayed here in Albion House.
Soon after their arrival, Victoria fell seriously ill.
Initially, the Duchess told her she was malingering, but then,
when Victoria became delirious and seemed close to death,
her mother desperately called for the doctors from London.
Victoria was heir to the throne.
But if she were to die now,
the Duchess and Conroy would lose everything.
The Duke of Cumberland would inherit.
Victoria's illness in Ramsgate would be her greatest crisis so far.
The Princess was still desperately ill
when her mother paid a visit and commanded her to sign a paper
appointing John Conroy as her private secretary
in charge of her household.
Victoria refused, but the Duchess loomed over her,
demanding that she obey.
Then she sent in Conroy to threaten.
Over and over, as Victoria wept with fever,
he thrust the paper under her nose and commanded her to sign.
But Victoria still refused.
She emerged from her ordeal determined to rely on herself.
When Conroy and her mother told her
that they were only trying to help her, she knew that they were lying.
It was at Ramsgate that the battle lines were really drawn.
We don't know why Princess Victoria hated Conroy so much.
There's been a lot of speculation.
In the wilder shores of speculation, it was that he made advances to her.
I think that's very unlikely.
It is possible he had a relationship
with her mother that she judged to be inappropriate -
that she was supposed to have found her mother in his arms
at one time. We'll never know that. As for my part, I think that
actually his behaviour to her, a young girl in her formative years,
was sufficient to explain her dislike of him
without us needing to look for other reasons.
Seemingly destined to become queen,
Victoria was still a pawn in the marriage market.
But an unlikely suitor now appeared on the scene,
a man who would play a major part in her battle with her mother.
Prince Albert first arrived here in Kensington Palace in May 1836.
Victoria waved at the top of the stone steps
and watched Albert and his brother Ernest being shown in.
She was not immediately impressed
by Albert, rather preferring his brother Ernest,
although she did admit to her diary that Albert had
"a most honest, good-natured and intelligent countenance".
She's very attracted to him,
but this is partly because she leads this isolated life,
and she doesn't get out very much
and she's very glad to see another young person.
She's not instantly in love and wanting to marry,
but it's a significant moment. How could it not be?
It's the start of her life, in many ways.
In 1836, the King's health began to fail.
If he died now, before Victoria reached 18,
then the Duchess and Conroy would finally get their hands
on the money and power they so craved.
He was desperate to make sure that he stayed alive for long enough
for Victoria to ascend the throne as queen in her own right,
not with her mother
and particularly her mother's, consort, co-conspirator,
John Conroy, as a sort of co-regent.
The lines were now firmly drawn and the battle between the King
and the Duchess was about to come to a head.
On a trip to Parliament,
the King took a detour past Kensington Palace.
He was horrified to find that the Duchess had occupied
and re-modelled the entire upper floor.
Without his permission, she had taken over 17 rooms
and transformed his state bedchamber into her new boudoir.
This, for the King, was the final straw.
The furious King waited his chance to confront the Duchess.
It came on the occasion of his birthday in August 1836.
The situation really came to boiling point at the King's birthday.
A couple of days before,
he'd been to Kensington Palace on an unexpected visit
and he'd found that the Duchess had appropriated several suites of rooms
which he had refused permission for her to do.
So he upbraided her for that.
And then on his birthday, in view of 100 guests, an important,
a public occasion, he berated her.
The King's angry speech
was noted verbatim by diarist Charles Greville.
"I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer,
"after which period, in the event of my death,
"no regency would take place.
"I should then have the satisfaction
"of leaving the royal authority
"to the personal exercise of that young lady,
"the heiress presumptive of the Crown,
"and not in the hands of a person now near me,
"who is surrounded by evil advisers."
Victoria burst into tears
before the furious King could finish his speech.
The other guests reeled in shock,
leaving the fine wines and food untouched.
The Duchess sat stony faced, and when the ladies left the table,
she declared that she and Victoria would walk out immediately,
and she had to be begged not to do so for fear of newspaper headlines.
It seemed as if matters between the King and the Duchess
could not get any worse.
It was an amazing thing to do.
It embarrassed the Duchess terribly. She couldn't look him in the face.
Victoria burst into tears.
They were guests in his house. He must have felt extremely strongly
to have done such a thing,
which was completely against protocol and against courtesy.
But the King went even further.
Just a few days before Victoria's 18th birthday,
the King made her an incredible offer - £10,000 a year
and permission to appoint her own attendants.
He wanted her well away from Mama. But the Duchess was furious.
She and Conroy forced Victoria to copy out a letter which read,
"I wish to remain as I am now, in the care of my dear mother."
On 24th May 1837, Princess Victoria turned 18.
'There can have been few mothers throughout history
'for whom their daughter's 18th birthday was such a disaster.'
"I will strive every day to become less trifling and more fit for what,
"if Heaven wills it, I'm someday to be!"
Victoria could now inherit the throne.
But she was still under Conroy's control, forced to obey her mother
and subjected to the Kensington System.
The Kensington System, although it was horrible,
was kind of the fiery furnace
in which the steel in Victoria's soul was forged.
And she, she does comes through it.
It must have been "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".
And she learnt a lot of important lessons there about being nice to
people that you don't like, being patient,
um...playing a waiting game and just staying true to herself.
She has a very disciplined mind, she has a propensity for hard work
and a quick intelligence, and she is strikingly sure
of her own fitness to rule.
In the summer of 1837, the waiting game was nearly over.
The King was very ill.
The Duchess resorted to emotional blackmail.
She wrote to her daughter
begging her to appoint Conroy as her private secretary.
"That person, I must repeat to you again, your father considered
"to be Sir John Conroy.
"This advice I give you only for your own security."
In the years and months before the death of William IV,
the Duchess of Kent, instead of boosting her daughter for the role
that it was becoming pretty obvious that she was going to have to take,
actually sought in a sense to undermine her.
She told her all the time that she was young, she needed advice,
she was far too young a girl to take on the role of state
that was going to be hers. And she did more than that.
She wrote to people saying that Princess Victoria
needed the guidance of a mother, and, more than that,
she needed the guidance of a man.
And that man, of course, was John Conroy.
She tried to blackmail her,
saying, "This is what your father would have wished."
Just four weeks after Victoria reached her 18th birthday,
King William IV finally died.
The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain
hurried to Kensington Palace, arriving at five in the morning,
but the Duchess refused to let them in.
Finally, at six, she woke Victoria
to tell her she had important visitors.
The Duchess tried to enter the room with her, but Victoria refused.
Instead, she walked in alone, in her nightwear, and saw
the great men kneel to her and tell her she was Queen of England.
Outside the door, the Duchess plotted.
She was sure that the Kensington System had worked,
that Victoria was under her control,
and that great power and riches were still within her grasp.
Victoria's first act as queen was simple and telling.
She requested that her bed
be moved from her mother's room and made up in her own chamber.
Her bid for freedom had begun and her closest ally from now on
would be the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
She immediately formed a bond with Melbourne, and I think,
from her perspective, the attraction is obvious.
This is a dutiful and necessary relationship
with the incumbent Prime Minister and it represents
an immediate escape from her mother's domination.
So from the off, the relationship is supercharged,
and I think his influence is enhanced
by the very novelty of her acting independently -
by her emancipation from the Kensington System.
She tells Melbourne that she plans to retain his administration
and his ministers.
Melbourne bows to kiss her hand in thanks.
She then underlines that she wishes to make one change
in the royal household,
and that, of course, is the dismissal of Sir John Conroy.
And Conroy realised the game was lost, so he threw in the towel.
But he also made excessive demands.
He demanded a peerage and he demanded a pension of £3,000.
But Victoria was so desperate to get rid of him that she agreed,
on condition that he was never to attend court.
She sticks to that one, despite her mother begging her
to have him and his children at court.
She won't do it. He's completely cut out of the picture.
Victoria's first duty as queen was to host a Privy Council
and introduce herself to 220 of the most important men in the land.
The Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne,
asked if she wished to be accompanied,
but even though she was young,
inexperienced and utterly sheltered from men, Victoria refused.
The doors opened and the new queen entered
in her plain black mourning gown.
The room fell silent.
"I will place my firm reliance upon the wisdom of Parliament
"and upon the loyalty and affection of my people
"and promote to the utmost of my power the happiness and welfare
"of all classes of my subjects."
As soon as Victoria came to the throne,
her mother made repeated attempts to see her.
The new queen refused her permission.
"I had to remind her who I was," she told Lord Melbourne.
"Quite right," he replied, "disagreeable but necessary."
The new queen's first day was consumed with giving audiences
to various dignitaries, all the while ignoring her mother.
She dined on her own in the evening
and talked with Lord Melbourne just before she retired.
That night, she slept alone for the first time
in her entire life.
The next step towards freedom lay in one of the many letters
of congratulation.
It was from her cousin Albert, and to this one she replied in person.
"I cannot tell you how happy you have made me by your kind, dear letter.
"My new situation is not an easy one,
"but I trust, with goodwill, honesty and courage, I shall not fail.
"I delight in the business which I have to do,
"and which is not trifling either in matter or quantity."
Just a few weeks later,
Queen Victoria turned her back on Kensington Palace.
Her life under the Kensington System was finally over.
"I have gone through painful and disagreeable scenes here,"
she wrote, "but still I am fond of the poor old palace."
Despite her words, she didn't return to Kensington for many years.
Her new home would be the building
we now most closely associate with the Royal Family -
Buckingham Palace.
Victoria's first six months as queen
was complete when Parliament voted her an annual income
of almost £400,000. At just 18,
she was not only the most powerful woman in the world,
but also the richest. And she was about to be celebrated
in one of the most flamboyant coronations in history.
Diarist Charles Greville described the preparations for the big day.
"Not a mob here or there, but the town all mob,
thronging, bustling, gaping,
"and gazing at everything,
"the Park one vast encampment,
"with banners floating on the tops of the tents,
"and still the roads are covered,
"the railroads loaded with arriving multitudes."
On 28th June 1838, Queen Victoria was woken at four in the morning
by the sound of cannon fire.
By seven o'clock, the streets were teeming.
Victoria entered her gilded state coach and set off
on the slow journey to Westminster Abbey.
The Abbey was decorated in crimson,
and gold tapestries hung on the wall,
while oriental carpets covered the floor.
At the altar shining with gold plate, the Archbishop of Canterbury
received Victoria and pronounced her "the undoubted queen of this realm".
The congregation responded to a man, "God save Queen Victoria!"
"The Archbishop came in and ought to have delivered the orb to me,
"but I had already got it.
"I replaced my crown, which I had taken off for a few minutes.
"The Archbishop had put the ring on the wrong finger,
"and the consequence was
"that I had the greatest difficulty to take it off again."
It's like Bo Peep in the middle of a Hammer film sequence.
She doesn't know what's going to happen next, or what it's about,
but she has to go through this whole thing.
She was this kind of frail vision. And things went wrong.
Somebody turned over two pages, so a great chunk was missing,
and she went through to St Edward's Chapel, and she got through there,
then they realised they'd missed two pages so they got her back again.
The Archbishop rammed the coronation ring on her finger.
She couldn't get the darn thing off
and had to soak her finger in cold water to get it off.
So it was a kind of enormous muddle.
Victoria was now Queen of England
and out from under her mother's direct gaze.
But she complained to Lord Melbourne
that the Duchess was still living with her.
It was clear that the only way Victoria could escape her mother
completely would be if she married.
In October 1839, Ernest and Albert arrived back in London.
As soon as Victoria saw them, she was delighted.
Her cousins had grown into handsome men.
"It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert, who is beautiful,
"and so excessively handsome.
"Such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose
"and such a pretty mouth."
Well, he comes back into her life. He's improved.
He's travelled in Italy.
He's got more self-confidence, although he'll never be a charmer.
He's not a ladies' man, Albert, and he's obviously...
She obviously fancies him -
there's quite a strong sexual attraction between them.
It's a very isolated position, being the Queen of England.
There was nobody who was her equal - who could approach her.
And I think she had begun to find that she wanted companionship -
she wanted a relationship.
And so I think when she met Albert again two years later,
she had a predilection -
she had a predisposition to fall in love, which she did - heavily.
A mere five days into his visit, she sent for Albert to see her alone.
"'It would make me too happy
"'if you would consent to what I wished - namely, to marry me.'
"We embraced each other over and over again,
"and he was so kind, so affectionate.
"Albert was too great a delight to describe!"
The Queen of England was now engaged.
But she took a whole month to tell her mother. And when she did,
she told her that she would have to leave the household.
When she becomes queen, she suddenly realises
that what she demands can happen,
and there is this marvellous moment when she thinks,
"I can actually have a dinner without mother there."
And that's a moment of revelation, when...
And one warms to her,
because her entire life was so circumscribed.
There was nothing beyond it and
nothing beyond these people who controlled and manipulated her.
Victoria's escape was complete.
The focus of her life from now on would be her beloved Albert.
After a very brief engagement,
they were married on February 10th 1840.
Tens of thousands gathered early to see the royal wedding.
It was a measure
of just how popular the new monarch was in the eyes of her subjects.
At 12.30, Victoria left the Palace
and drove through the rain and cheering crowds
to meet her bridegroom. At the Chapel Royal, 12 bridesmaids
carried her six-foot train, and she was resplendent in white and roses.
It was Victoria's wedding day,
but she still could not forgive her mother.
As she left the Chapel, she stooped to kiss Queen Adelaide,
but merely shook hands with the Duchess.
Marrying meant that she was able to remove her mother from the household.
It was perfectly proper for her to live with her husband
and not have her mother there.
So in a sense it was the final act of separation from her mother.
It sounds odd to be the queen and need to separate from your mother,
but I think that was the case, and after that, of course,
the Duchess did not live with her and really had absolutely no role at all.
This incredible story,
the bitter struggle between the most powerful little girl in the world
and the woman who wanted that power, ushered in the modern era.
Victoria left behind the debauched, self-indulgent, corrupt monarchs
of the Regency period and became the first people's Queen.
The country would never be the same again.