All language subtitles for Queen Victorias Children 01 - The Best Laid Plans

Victoria. A Queen in a passionate
marriage with Prince Albert.

Yet behind closed doors, their
domestic life was a battlefield.

Victoria and Albert had terrible rows.

Think of the worst row you've
ever had with a partner,

and then magnify it.

But it wasn't the only stormy
relationship in Victoria's life.

She had nine children who didn't
always do what she wanted.

He had tantrums, he threw
his book on the floor,

he pulled his brother's hair, he
screamed, and he threw his pencil,

he was rude - I mean, he was really
a sort of nightmare of a schoolboy.

In this series,

we will explore the turmoil and drama
for Queen Victoria's children,

as they grew up struggling
with domineering parents.

She expected them to be beaten

and to be made to understand
how they should behave.

Victoria and Albert's dream
of blissful domesticity

was vital to the values of the age,

and to rescuing the monarchy
from the threat of revolution.

But it came at a huge personal cost.

She wanted to control the children's lives.

Somebody said, "The Queen
is absolutely insane

"when it comes to asserting
her own maternal authority."

Victoria and Albert wanted
their children to strengthen

and redefine royalty for
generations to come.

But their plan for the family
led to a 60-year war...

between the children and their mother.

Christmas, Windsor, 1860.

Queen Victoria, her beloved husband Albert

and their nine children gathered round.

They exchanged presents.

Family games and billiards were played.

One visitor remembered...

"It was royalty putting aside its
state and becoming in words,

"acts and deeds one of ourselves.

"I have never seen more real happiness than

"the scene of the mother
and all her children."

It was a happy family image

that Victoria and Albert were
determined to make popular.

They knew they had to find a fresh
way of relating to their subjects.

The danger of revolution loomed large.

Many other European
monarchies were threatened.

The Royal couple needed to save the
British monarchy by connecting

with a middle class expanding
with wealth and empire.

Their children were key to this plan.

Albert came up with this idea that

the Royal Family should be
presented as respectable

and as a close-knit, loving family,

so from very, very early on,

you have a very strong
image of a close-knit,

almost middle-class family.

It's as if Albert and Victoria
are trying to reach out to

their middle-class subjects and say,
"Look, we are like you, trust us."

But behind the facade of this model family

was a hornet's nest of hostilities.

The Royal household was not this
chocolate box image of gorgeousness

where everybody loved each other.

It was a place of simmering
tension, huge resentments,

extraordinary conniving.

A family life riddled with conflict

was perhaps inevitable, given
the couple's own experiences.

Prince Albert was born near Coburg,
Germany, the son of a duke.

It was very hard in those days to
find suitably upmarket candidates

to marry someone like Victoria.
You know, they had to be without

stain on their character, they had
to have an absolutely exemplary

background, which Albert fitted
because he was very moral and very

upright and very dutiful, and there
was not a stain on his character.

Victoria was probably the best catch
in Europe at the time, I mean,

Queen of a huge and growing empire.
She was an extraordinary catch for

a modest little Prince like Albert
from this rather obscure duchy.

In 1839, the handsome German
prince arrived at Windsor Castle

for an arranged meeting with
his first cousin, the Queen.

From the start, their mutual
passion was obsessive.

VICTORIA: "Oh! How I love him,
how intensely, how tenderly,

"how ardently!"

- ALBERT:
- "Your image fills my whole soul.

"Even in my dreams, I never
imagined that I should find

"so much love on Earth."

It wasn't love at first sight,

the relationship between
Queen Victoria and Albert,

but it was pretty near to it.

The second time that they met,
Queen Victoria rushed back

and said that she had seen Albert
again and he is beautiful.

I mean, she was full of admiration for him,

and it was really a love match, I
think, or the useful coincidence

of something that was politically useful.

But Albert was daunted by his role
as a subject to his feisty Queen.

"My future lot is high and brilliant,

"but also plentifully strewn with thorns."

The young couple married
the following year.

They faced a public with both
a distrust of the monarchy

and an intense dislike for Albert,

who was seen as a humourless
German intellectual.

One of the strange things was
that in Victorian England

there were all sorts of rather
obscene lampoons, one of which about

the wedding night went something like this,

that Albert entered by Bushey,

he... advanced through Maidenhead,
penetrated Virginia Water,

and left Staines behind, er,
not the sort of thing that

you'd expect in Victorian
England, but it was a reflection,

I think, of the antipathy
that Albert had created.

Here he was, this priggish,
pompous foreigner

who'd arrived in order to exploit

the wealth and the dignity of
Britain by marrying the Queen.

Victoria and Albert felt the
pressures of being anything

but an ordinary couple.

They disagreed over the
length of their honeymoon -

Victoria not wanting to be
away from Buckingham Palace

and her Royal duties.

"Our position is very different
from any other married couple.

"You forget, my dearest love,
that I am the sovereign,

"and that business can stop
and wait for nothing."

Although besotted with Albert,

Victoria did not concede any
political power to him.

He complained...

"I am only the husband and
not the master in my house."

And the power play was only just beginning.

I think she was very
stroppy and argumentative,

and there is a funny comment
Albert made not long after

he was married to her in 1840.
He wrote home to his brother and

he said, "Well, Victoria's
shaping up very well,

"she's only had two tantrums recently,"

and his attitude with her was
sort of knocking her into line,

making her calm down, and be
the dutiful meek little wife.

Within weeks of their marriage,

Victoria would give them
both a project to work on.

She was pregnant.

The Royal couple's own experiences
of family life had not been happy.

Albert's early years in Germany
were over shadowed by the dramatic

collapse of his parents' marriage.

Well, he comes from a totally
dysfunctional family,

and he had these traumas
from childhood onwards

because his father more or
less broke up the family.

He was cheating on his wife,

and discarded her when she got too old.

I mean, his father was having
affairs with underage girls

and when his own wife was over 21,
he just, you know, got rid of her.

And of course to have such
a father is pretty awful,

and Albert wanted to love and respect him,

but at the same time resented him
for all this that had happened.

So of course Albert wanted
to be completely different,

he rebelled against the bad behaviour,

he wanted to be the model
son, and later, father.

Victoria, too, had much to react against.

She had grown up secluded
at Kensington Palace,

under the control of her domineering
mother, the Duchess of Kent.

"I had led a very unhappy life as a child -

"had no scope for my very
violent feelings of affection,

"and did not know what a
happy domestic life was!"

She goes through a period of
referring to her mother as

"the Duchess", which would be
rather like us calling our mothers

"Mrs Smith", I mean, so, so estranged.

She tells Melbourne in 1838

that she doesn't think
Mama has ever loved her.

So she's beginning to become a
mother herself just at a time

when her feelings about her mother
are still very, very, very frosty.

With their own sad childhoods
still fresh in their minds,

the couple resolved to create
a happy family of their own -

a model for the dynasty and the nation.

They're determined, like all
conscientious parents, that

they're going to make it better
this time, they're in a sense going

to cure or heal their own childhoods
by doing it right with their own

children and, you know, everybody,
lots of us have been there,

it's a very, very common impulse
to think that you can put right in

the next generation what went
wrong in your own family life.

The first child, called Victoria but
known as Vicky, was born in 1840.

The young Queen, busy with royal duties,

only saw her new daughter twice a day.

She did, however, make
time to spend with Albert.

Queen Victoria was infatuated with Albert,

on a physical plane - she was
excited by his good looks,

she adored watching him shave
and put on his stockings,

and talked about the
excitement of seeing nothing -

that there was nothing underneath them.

"He was so cold, dear angel,
being in grande tenue with tight

"white casimere pantaloons, nothing
under them, and high boots."

The unfortunate byproduct of
this infatuation was, of course,

children! She didn't, they didn't,
know anything about contraception,

and the children arrived
with monotonous regularity.

Within a year of Vicky's
birth, Albert Edward,

known as Bertie, was born.

"Our little boy is a wonderfully
strong and large child.

"I hope and pray he may
be like his dearest Papa.

"Vicky is not at all
pleased with her brother."

Over the next five years, another
three children appeared -

Alice, Alfred and Helena.

She didn't like babies, she
always said they were horrible,

ugly little things and they were
not even acceptable to look at

or hold till they were
about six months old.

Queen Victoria later grumbled...

"An ugly baby is a very nasty object
- the prettiest are frightful

"when undressed. As long as
they have their big body

"and little limbs, and that
terrible frog-like action."

Victoria not only found
her own babies repulsive,

she also refused to
breastfeed them, having a...

"Totally insurmountable
disgust for the process."

She installed a wet nurse
in Buckingham Palace.

I think the idea of giving over
her body for another six months,

for another 12 months, to
these frog-like people is

absolutely disgusting to her.

I think the central relationship
for her is always the one with

Albert - we know that they enjoyed
a very vigorous sex life,

and I think she had that
feeling that her breasts were,

as it were, were for Albert,
they weren't for the children,

her breasts were sexual
rather than maternal.

The couple's vigorous sex life
brought more children - Louise,

Arthur, Leopold, and Beatrice,
making nine born over 17 years.

Having a large family wasn't
just about purging the couple's

unhappy past.

For the survival of the monarchy,
Victoria and Albert knew it

was vital to distance themselves
from the louche Hanoverians,

as epitomised by Victoria's
notorious uncle, George IV.

George IV, the Prince Regent,

has been famous for being fat, unfaithful,

and spending a very great deal of
money, and his other brothers were

no better, and in fact one of them,
Cumberland, was famously involved in

all sorts of accusations that he'd
murdered his valet, so, er, really,

the Royal Family before Victoria had
been extremely publicly unpopular.

So Albert came up with this idea
that the Royal Family should be

presented as respectable, and
as a close-knit, loving family.

Victoria and Albert needed to create
a fresh image that would be approved

of by their most important audience -

the expanding middle class.

Family values were key to
this new bourgeois ideal,

as the artist Landseer understood.

Landseer painted a portrait
of Victoria and Albert

and the Princess Royal in 1841,

and it's called Windsor
Castle In Modern Times.

And that title is really important,

because it's... it's signalling
very clearly that there's been

a change, that this is about, um,
a modern version of the monarchy.

I think what's the most interesting
aspect of that painting is

the way that the couple, Victoria
and Albert themselves, are shown.

She holds a posy of flowers
in her hand, so it clearly

demarcates that she represents
femininity, gentleness, um, purity.

I think Landseer's painting
shows us the way in which

the Royal Family were using
images of the family, intimacy,

femininity, in order to support and
promote a new image of the monarchy.

VICTORIA: "They say no sovereign
was ever more loved than I am,

"I am bold enough to say, and this
is because of our domestic home

"and the good example it presents."

One place more than any other gave them

a stage on which to play
out their domestic ideal.

Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
Queen Victoria enthused...

"We are more and more delighted
with this lovely spot.

"The combination of sea, trees,

"the purest air, make
it a perfect paradise."

During these holidays, the children
absorbed some of the most cherished

values of the middle classes -
on their vast Royal estate.

Enjoying modest pleasures,
they hunted butterflies

and played on Osborne's beach.

They learnt to be self-sufficient
in a specially built Swiss cottage,

where they were taught to cook,
and where Albert helped them

grow fruit and vegetables.

He and Queen Victoria were very keen
that they should learn real skills -

all the princesses could
cook and bake beautifully,

which astounded people, in later life.

They just assumed they would have
always had cooks, they would

never have had to do this kind of,
you know, servants' work themselves.

They all learned to tend gardens,
to grow vegetables and flowers.

They learned about the natural world,

they learned all sorts of really
important life lessons as well.

This was, I think, a way of
trying to genuinely engage with

the business of everyday
life and acquire skills,

domestic skills. I mean, even if
they weren't really going to use

them very much in later life, Albert
certainly thought it was important

that those children knew what to
do in a kitchen, you know, knew

how to grow a carrot, these sort of
things, they were important to him.

Celebrations of the family
ideal were created throughout

the house and gardens at Osborne.

Victoria and Albert's
initials are intertwined.

The children, cherub-like, adorn furniture,

as characters in a new kind of Royal drama.

Albert, the patriarch, was crucial
to the design of this utopia.

It was meant to be a stark contrast
to society life in London.

Albert hated the loose morals of
lavish dinners, cards and parties.

He was described at a London
ball as looking, "Like a cowed

"and kept pet, frightened to
sit, frightened to stand."

Despite cultivating an ordinary
domestic image, the Royal Family

was in a class of its own,
living in splendid isolation.

Really, when one contemplates
the life of the Royal Family

in the Victorian era, it's
more and more bizarre.

Bertie, for example, could only
have an even number of asparagus

stalks on his plate, because an odd
number would bring him bad luck.

Princess Louise thought that, er,

the only way that you
could achieve good health

was to boil your knees
in whisky every evening.

I mean, it was quite extraordinary.
They lived in this strange,

regal bubble, in which
the only conversation

was something that they themselves
created so, so they couldn't

really relate to other people, other
people had to relate to them.

Morally upright in the extreme,

Albert was everything his
amoral father hadn't been.

He became emblematic of a new kind
of fatherhood - totally loyal

to his wife, with a hands-on
approach to his children.

Albert adored the eldest, Vicky.

Lady Lyttelton remembered him playing
with his daughter. Albert...

"Tossed and romped with her,
making her laugh and crow

"and kick heartily."

- The Queen, however, didn't join in, saying...
- "He is so kind to them

"and romps with them so delightfully,

"and manages them so
beautifully and firmly."

Albert is not an absent aristocratic
dad wandering over the grouse moor

and seeing his children,

you know, once a year

and not even remembering their names.

Prince Albert is this new
kind of man, this new

kind of bourgeois father who gets
most of his pleasure and definition

from what goes on at home, who's
intimately involved in the nursery,

who comes home after a
hard day at the office

or, in the case of Prince Albert,

hard day signing papers, and plays
and romps with the children.

Albert, considering himself
an expert on human behaviour,

was fascinated by the
progress of his brood.

"There is certainly a great charm,
as well as interest in watching

"the development of feelings and
faculties in a little child."

Albert wasn't just curious
about the children.

He organised a fastidious plan
for moulding his offspring

into role models for the
nation, and for Europe.

Prince Albert observed...

"Upon the good education of princes,

"and especially those who
are destined to govern,

"the welfare of the world in
these days greatly depends."

Prince Albert himself was
the product of an efficient

German education. He developed

a kind of educational programme

which his advisor, Baron Stockmar,

said, anybody who carried

this out would develop
brain fever immediately,

that it was too much for
them to have to undergo.

Albert's plan for the children
began when they were infants.

"The chief objects here are
their physical development,

"the actual rearing up, the
training to obedience."

The young Alice received a
real punishment by whipping

for telling a lie.

She wasn't the only one subject
to Albert's harsh discipline.

When Vicky misbehaved, he was
perfectly prepared to have

her hands tied behind her back, and
she was whipped and, er, Bertie was

whipped and when Louise played
the piano, for example, and

she hit a wrong note, Albert would,
would hit her fingers, and she

hit quite a lot of wrong notes.

So, Albert was not, by any means,
an enlightened, modern father,

but he wasn't an ogre either.

As part of his plan,

Albert trained the children
relentlessly in social graces.

They practised at what he called
"circling" - to enter a room

and make one's way around it,

speaking to each of the
assembled company in turn.

Victoria and Albert's children were
educated at their station in life,

I mean, obviously only one of them
was going to accede to the throne.

But they had to all take part,

as it were, in Royal life, so they had to

learn how to make conversation, how
to circulate at levees and parties.

All the sort of politesses
that were necessary

for a Royal education.

And also things like languages
- I mean, after all,

they knew they were going to
meet other royal households,

so the education in language
was very important too.

It was a strict regime.

Fortunately, the eldest child,
Vicky, was extremely bright.

Under Albert's regime, she
was first taught French

when she was just 18 months old.

Albert, right from the time when
she's a tiny baby, dotes on Vicky.

And, you know, the arrival
of more children doesn't

shake his absolute devotion to Vicky.

Vicky is an almost an infant
prodigy - she's speaking Latin,

she's speaking French,

she's reading Shakespeare,
all at a very early age.

Lady Lyttelton, a governess,
noted that the Princess,

before her seventh birthday...

"Might pass for a lady of 17 in
whichever of her three languages

"she chooses to entertain the company."

Vicky, like all her siblings,
could speak German.

In private, Victoria and Albert
didn't hide their German roots,

but to the public,

the Queen was anxious to
appear completely British.

"The Prince and Queen speak
English quite as much as German."

One of the things that's most
surprising about Queen Victoria

is how much she preferred
Germany to England,

although she was Queen of England.

She obviously was half German
herself, and she married

a German, and in private, the
family conversation was in German.

All of the Royal children were
commented on as having quite

prominent German accents.

Even in old age, their friends
would comment on them

as speaking with a German accent.

And there's a lovely letter that

remains from one of Princess
Louise's ladies-in-waiting, who

said that when Prince Arthur came
to visit Princess Louise, when they

were quite elderly, and they were
reminiscing about their childhood

in the nursery, their accents became
incredibly Germanic, and she said

it was as if they'd started speaking
in a completely different language.

They were still speaking English,

but their accents sounded as
though they were Germans,

newly arrived in England, because
they went back to their childhood.

Victoria and Albert had a clear
mission for their children.

But the couple's obsessive
relationship would threaten

to derail it.

Victoria was distracted
from her role as mother

by her intense passion for Albert.

Even after the exhaustion
of having many children,

the Queen was still longing
for sensual pleasure.

It was clearly a very passionate
relationship, physically, too.

Queen Victoria hated being pregnant,

but she loved the process
by which she got pregnant.

I think that she may have been
a little bit more passionate

than him, partly because she was
a slightly more physical person.

You can imagine him in bed
still thinking about guttering

and city planning, and a statistical
conference he might have been

wanting to organise some
time in the near future.

Besotted with Albert, Victoria idolised him

in front of the children.

"None of you can ever be
proud enough of being

"the child of SUCH a father who
has not his equal in the world,

"so great, so good, so faultless."

Victoria worshipped Albert

so ardently, she wanted her
children to be made in his image.

When pregnant with Bertie, the heir
to the throne, she remarked...

"I wonder very much who our
little boy will be like.

"You will understand how
fervent my prayers,

"and I am sure everybody's must be,
to see him resemble his angelic

"dearest father in every, every
respect, both in body and in mind."

I think Victoria was more interested
in recreating Albert in her

children than she was
in actually seeing what

kind of personalities they had themselves.

She is really heir to a much
older tradition of thinking

of children as blank slates, in a sense,

whatever you put into
them they will become, so

if she puts into them the qualities
of Albert, the best qualities - his

rationality, his good sense, his,
you know, prudence - you will get,

you will get it back, you will, you
will produce lots of little Alberts,

some of them will wear
breeches, some of them skirts.

But, basically, they're all little Alberts.

She treats them like a
particularly tricky engineering

project, and if you get the mechanics
right, you will get a nice

sturdy result that will go forth
in the image of their father.

Victoria, like Albert,

believed that she could shape her
children's character and destiny.

But this master plan for saving the
monarchy was creating a battlefield.

The problem is that Victoria is
Queen as well as wife, and so

when she says cross words to Albert,
you know, what is he to do?

Is he to sort of say, "Shut
up!" or is he to treat them

as though they're Royal commands?

And Albert dislikes confrontation, I think,

a very reasonable, very rational man.

Victoria is not really
into rational debate.

And so, yes, you get this
extraordinary picture of Albert

chasing Victoria round from room to
room, or sometimes Albert shutting

himself in his room, and writing her
rather pathetic notes, scolding her.

It is a very tempestuous
marriage and there are all

sorts of conflicts in that marriage
that are not fully resolved.

Victoria and Albert had terrible rows.

I mean, think of the worst row
you've ever had with a partner

and then magnify it. It involves
lots of slamming doors, people

sort of locking themselves
into rooms, lots of shouting.

ARGUING ECHOES

Victoria saying, you know,
"I never realised I'd be

"so miserable being married,"

I mean, absolutely appalling.

The first huge row came two
years into their marriage.

An argument developed

over who else should have a say
in the children's upbringing.

Victoria's closest and most powerful
confidante, Baroness Lehzen,

looked after the nursery. But
Albert hated the German governess.

It's a position of great power.
Now, when Victoria marries Albert,

Albert clearly realises that
Lehzen is the one he's going to

have to watch, but he's prepared to
play a softly, softly game at first.

And so when the first
baby comes along, Vicky,

the Princess Royal, Victoria puts
Lehzen in charge of the nursery

and Albert is prepared to go
along with it for a while.

But he clearly, clearly
has problems with Lehzen

and what he does is, I mean
everybody in this psychic

drama does very complicated
manoeuvrings, they shuffle off the

bits they don't like about somebody
and put them on to somebody else.

So, what Albert does is he
blames Lehzen for everything

he doesn't like about Victoria.

A heated quarrel broke out over
Lehzen's treatment of baby Vicky,

who was losing weight.

Albert wrote to advisor Baron Stockmar.

"Victoria is too hasty
and passionate for me

"to be able often to speak
of my difficulties.

"She will not hear me out but flies
into a rage and overwhelms me

"with reproaches of suspiciousness,
want of trust, ambition, envy."

Queen Victoria herself wrote to Stockmar.

"There is often an irritability
in me which makes me say cross

"and odious things."

Of the family row, Stockmar despaired.

"The nursery gives me more trouble
than the government of a kingdom."

Albert, vying for control,
described Lehzen as...

"The hag,

"obsessed with the lust of power,

"a crazy, stupid intriguer who
regards herself as a demi-god."

So, in a sense, they are
on a collision course,

one of them has got to go, they
are two very, very tough Germans,

and you know, there isn't really
room for two tough Germans in the

Royal nursery, one of them has got
to go and in the end it's Lehzen.

Albert was also deeply troubled
by Victoria's fierce temper.

It was a reminder of a particular
Royal Family legacy - insanity.

Albert scolded Victoria, particularly
when she lost her temper

and there was a whole sort of
atmosphere around Victoria

losing her temper, I mean, not,

it wasn't just that she had a filthy
temper, which she did, but there

was also this sort of fear that, you
know, if the Queen loses her temper

this is the sign of the beginning
of the madness of George III.

They were all very conscious of
the idea that Victoria might have

inherited this awful Hanoverian
malady - of course, she hadn't,

she was incredibly sane - but
it means that Albert tiptoes

around Victoria and the doctor says
you mustn't confront her when she

has a temper because it will make it
much worse, you must just walk away.

Sir James Clerk, the
Royal doctor, advised...

"Regarding the Queen's mind
- unless she is kept quiet,

"the time will come when
she will be in danger.

"Much depends upon the
Prince's management."

Increasingly, the Prince Consort
treated Victoria like his children -

he sought control over his Queen,

and began to re-mould her character.

He made her his own creature, and
I think in a way it's rather sad

because the one thing I like
about Victoria was her wonderful

spontaneity, her honesty,

and in a way her impetuosity
was very charming.

Before she married Albert she loved
to stay out late and dance till

two in the morning and gossip with
her ladies, and he knocked all that

out of her, you know, they went to
bed at ten, he didn't like staying

up late because he'd fall asleep, he
didn't like dancing late and he kind

of knocked that wonderful, rounded,

vibrant personality down into

the kind of mould of this rather
dutiful and dowdy little hausfrau.

Victoria, still obsessional and insecure,

would seek Albert's
approval after an outburst.

"How sadly deficient I am and how
over-sensitive and irritable,

"and how uncontrollable my
temper is when annoyed and hurt.

"Have I improved as I ought?"

I think she was difficult to
live with and I think Albert

actually in his way was a little
bit difficult, he was rather

school-masterly, he treated Victoria
rather like an errant child,

which of course in a sense she was,
you know, he was all for improving

her and he would congratulate her
if he felt she had improved.

Albert praised her for what he called...

"Unbroken success in the hard
struggle for self-control."

Unlike their father, the
children had no escape

from their mother's unpredictable
and stormy temper.

Victoria would consent to
her children being beaten.

She expected them to be beaten

and to be made to understand
how they should behave.

There's famously a comment in one
of the ladies-in-waiting's diaries

about when Prince Leopold was
being naughty as a little boy

and Queen Victoria wanted to beat him.

And we must remember that
Leopold was haemophiliac.

And Queen Victoria's
mother, you know, said,

"Oh, no, please don't beat him,
he's just being a little boy.

"How can you bear to hear him crying?"

And she says, "Once you've had nine,
Mother, you don't notice it."

Unsurprisingly, the children would
always be scared of Victoria.

The Queen's private secretary once recalled

seeing the children flee their mother.

"We were suddenly nearly carried
away by a stampede of royalties,

"headed by the Duke of Cambridge
and brought up by Leopold,

"going as fast as they could.
We thought it was a mad bull.

"But they cried out, 'The Queen!
The Queen!'"

I imagine the children were fairly,
um, certainly in awe of Victoria.

You know, as more... I mean,
Vicky certainly wasn't.

Vicky would give as good as she got.

Edward, I think, largely,
Bertie largely ignored her.

But I'm sure the younger children
would have been, you know,

been pretty much in awe of her.

Of course, scared of her tempers.

Victoria's harsh parenting
frustrated Albert.

"It is indeed a pity that
you find no consolation

"in the company of your children.

"The root of the trouble
lies in the mistaken notion

"that the function of a mother
is to be always correcting,

"scolding, ordering them about."

She wanted to control the children's lives,

absolutely, right down to the last T.

And she went on doing that
into their adulthood.

It was most extraordinary.

Somebody said, "The Queen
is, is absolutely insane

"when it comes to asserting
her own maternal authority."

The rows and Victoria's temper

were not the only cause of
problems for the family.

Albert's heavy workload
also created tensions.

Being trapped in the perpetual
cycle of pregnancy and childbirth

forced Victoria to allow Albert

to take on some of her political duties,

on top of his own ambitious projects.

Albert, attempting to be
the role model father,

struggled to balance work and family.

He loved his children when
he had time for them.

But Albert was on this
self-created treadmill

of work, work, duty, endlessly
wearing himself out

on 101 committees doing
this, that and the other.

The more Albert worked,
the more he was away

not just from the children,
but his needy wife.

"You cannot think how much it costs me

"or how completely upset I am
and feel when Albert is away.

"All the numerous children are as
nothing to me when he is away."

BABY WAILS

In the absence of her husband,

Victoria came to resent the children.

"No-one recognises more than I do
the blessings of having children,

"but the anxieties and
trouble, not to say sorrows,

"are quite as great as the blessings."

Despite the tensions between parents
and children behind closed doors,

the public face of the
plan was a great success.

Victoria and Albert were setting
the moral tone for a new age.

Helped by a fledgling technology
in the 1850s - photography.

This is the first publicly-shown
photograph of the Royal Family,

taken at Osborne in 1857,

of Victoria, Albert and all nine children.

They have their official portraits,
they have their family album,

but they also become a
kind of surrogate family

or an extra family for
the rest of the country.

Because you can collect pictures
of the Royal household.

It was a hugely successful
rebranding exercise.

Because for the first time, the monarchy,

instead of being seen as a
kind of abstract form of power

that people couldn't relate to,

instead they started to see
as a distorted reflection

of their own families, of their own lives.

The Queen became a person.

The children became real people.

You could understand them, you
could sympathise with them,

you could gossip about them.

The Royal couple learned to turn
lack of privacy into an advantage.

The public lapped up these
nuggets of Royal intimacy.

But behind the media image,
the plan for the family

was not going as smoothly
as it could have been.

It soon became apparent that
personalities might get in the way

of Victoria and Albert's desire
for princes and princesses

to be made in the image of their father.

It was Bertie, the heir to the throne,

who presented the biggest problem.

From an early age, he refused
to conform to Albert's plan

for the children's education.

Unlike his sister Vicky,

he found learning difficult
and couldn't concentrate.

Bertie was...

I think... abnormally backward.

He just couldn't focus his mind.

Perhaps he really didn't have
much of a mind to focus.

His tutor Frederick Gibbs remarked...

"I had to do some arithmetic
with the Prince of Wales.

"Immediately, he became passionate.

"The pencil was flung
to the end of the room,

"the stool was kicked away

"and he was hardly able
to apply himself at all."

With him, it was a complete
and utter failure.

Right from a very early age.

He acted out.

He had tantrums.

He threw his book on the floor,
he pulled his brother's hair,

he screamed, he threw his
pencil, he was rude.

I mean, he was really a sort
of nightmare of a schoolboy.

Bertie was forever chastised
by Victoria for his...

"Systematic idleness,

"laziness, disregard of everything."

His ever-anxious parents even
consulted a so-called expert,

a phrenologist, on the
nature of Bertie's brain.

The verdict did little
to allay their fears.

"The feeble quality of the brain

"will render the Prince highly excitable.

"Intellectual organs are only
moderately well developed.

"The result will be strong self-will.
At times, obstinacy."

And Albert, rather sort
of typically, says, um,

"I wonder where that Anglo-Saxon
brain of his has come from?

"It certainly wasn't in the German family.

"It must have come from the Stewarts."

SHE LAUGHS

Other Royal offspring also rebelled
against their domineering parents.

Leopold was known for telling lies.

"I heard your musical box playing
most clearly this afternoon..."

Victoria complained to her son.

"Impossible! My musical box never plays!"

Later in life, Victoria would recognise

a fundamental shortcoming
in the grand plan.

"You will find as your children grow up

"that as a rule, children are
a bitter disappointment.

"Their greatest object being to do

"precisely what their parents do not wish

"and have anxiously tried to prevent,

"and often when children have been
less watched and less taken care of,

"the better they turn out.

"This is inexplicable and very annoying."

We all, as parents, would like our children

to turn out exactly as we want.

And one of the things you have
to accept is that children,

you know, are not little mini-me's

and they are not going to
do exactly what you want.

And you have to accept that and
build that into your plan.

And if you don't, you're
going to be disappointed.

Victoria and Albert weren't just hoping

to gain public approval
through their children.

They had aspirations for the dynasty.

The Royal couple had a vision
of a harmonious Europe

with an Anglo-German dynasty at its heart.

They believed a marriage between
daughter Vicky and Fritz,

heir to the Prussian throne,

could create a pro-English Germany.

A meeting was arranged at Balmoral.

The meeting at Balmoral,

a very erotically-charged
meeting between Fritz and Vicky

in Scotland,

was supposed to be entirely secret.

Immense efforts were
made to keep it secret.

Of course, these efforts
were completely in vain.

And no sooner had the meeting
occurred than the news leaked out.

The leading papers had people at court

who were listening, picking
up titbits for them.

When the arrangement was
announced in the press,

far from celebrating, the
British public were horrified.

Prussia had refused to unite
with Britain in the Crimean War

just a few years earlier,
intensifying anti-German feelings.

One newspaper commented...

"The supposed political
character of the match

"and the distrust of a policy
for Germanising England

"have been the real causes
of the general disfavour

"with which the proposed
marriage has been regarded."

Prince Albert knew he had to spin
the marriage as a love match,

despite his political ambition
for a re-drawn Europe.

"The more it is made clear
that our children's marriage

"is the outcome of mutual attraction,

"rather than of political motives,

"the more certain it is that
any storm which might arise

"between now and the date of
the wedding will pass by."

Albert was very aware of how the
Royal Family were written up,

how they were perceived.

He was quite interested
in managing that process.

And the marriage of his eldest
daughter was something that, er...

He wasn't going to be asleep
about the implications of this.

It was, in effect, a
kind of political match.

Unity between England and Germany was
something that everybody wanted.

Despite being part of the plan,

both Victoria and Albert were devastated

at losing their totally
inexperienced 17-year-old daughter

in this child marriage.

Days before the wedding, Victoria wrote...

"After all, it is like taking
a lamb to be sacrificed."

"The pang of parting was
great on all sides.

"And the void which Vicky has left
in our household and family circle

"will stand gaping for many a day."

Yet the Queen characteristically

seemed even more concerned
with her own feelings.

One of the stories that I
found very poignant and sad -

this is during Albert's lifetime -

when her daughter Vicky gets
married and she moves to Prussia,

she's been married for a few
weeks, maybe five or six weeks,

and she writes to her mother saying

how difficult she's
finding life in Prussia.

There's always other people around,

she's constantly having to
go to official functions

and she longs for the times

when it's just her and Fritz, her husband,

who she loves very much and she
wants to be on her own with.

And her mother responds, to a woman
who's just married, and says,

"Oh, darling, at last you understand

"why I always resented you
children being around.

"I only ever wanted it to be me and Papa."

Their first child was out of
the nest as part of the plan.

But there were further
strains on the family.

Albert found his enormous
workload exhausting.

By May 1860, he compared himself
to a donkey on a treadmill.

"He, too, would rather munch
thistles in the castle moat.

"Small are the thanks he
gets for his labour."

He had a tremendously, um...

..toilsome approach to life.

And, ultimately,

I think you might well say

that this, this exhausted
him and perhaps killed him.

Albert's health was declining.

By this point, he was pained
with neuralgia and toothache,

insomnia and fits of shivering.

But Victoria had little room for sympathy.

Having given birth to nine children,

she thought Albert was weak in
his inability to endure pain

and found it most trying.

The attitude to Albert's illness
that you see in Victoria often is,

"Oh, it's man flu, you know,

"he's putting on a big
act about how ill he is

"and we women are sterner stuff. We
women have to endure childbirth."

So she always felt Albert was
rather putting on the agony

and didn't take it very seriously.

Victoria was a very
selfish, egocentric person.

She had a place for Albert,
she needed Albert,

she needed Albert to be a rock.

She needed him to be
somebody SHE could rely on.

Of course, if he was weak and
ailing, she couldn't rely on him.

She had to care for him.

And I think, obviously,
she then got scared.

I mean, the possibility of losing
Albert seemed to her quite dreadful.

How on earth would she carry
on her life without him?

To add to the strains on the family,

in early 1861, Victoria's mother died.

Although they had never been
close, the Queen was devastated.

Prince Albert wrote...

"She is greatly upset

"and feels her whole childhood rush
back once more upon her memory

"with the most vivid force.
And with those recollections

"come back the thought of many a sad hour."

"I do not want to feel better.

"I love to dwell on her and not
to be roused out of my grief."

In an orgy of despair,

Victoria was reluctant to
acknowledge Albert's ill health.

Writing to daughter Vicky, Victoria
spelt out her frustration.

"Dear Papa never allows he is any
better or will try to get over it,

"but makes such a miserable face

"that people always think he's very ill."

Despite his wife's criticisms
and feeling desperately sick,

Albert was determined to realise
his vision for the children,

and arranged another dynastic marriage

between Bertie, the first
in line to the throne,

and Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

Once again, a wholesome
public image mattered.

It was crucial the marriage was
passed off as a love match,

not a political alliance.

The heir to the throne had to
appear to have a chaste life.

But in the summer of 1861,

Bertie started training with the
Grenadier Guards in Dublin.

His fellow officers, with
whom he became very chummy,

managed or arranged one night

for a sort of camp
follower of the regiment,

a lady called Nellie Clifton,
to join Bertie in his bed.

And so on three occasions,
Bertie slept with,

lost his virginity, with Nellie Clifton.

And then of course, eventually,
the story started to trickle out.

And Albert heard about it.

And he wrote Bertie the
most terrible letter -

sort of hysterical,
completely overwrought -

in which he says that
he foresees for his son

this future of kind of paternity suits

and, you know, the terrible
slide into total evil

and, you know, low moral character.

"To thrust yourself into the hands

"of one of the most abject
of the human species,

"to be by her initiated in the
sacred mysteries of creation,

"which ought to remain shrouded in holy awe

"until touched by pure
and undefiled hands."

He was terrified that she might
go to the papers, to the courts,

that she might end up pregnant

and make all kinds of
financial and other demands.

But I think this was an extreme reaction

to what he'd seen with his own
father and brother's behaviour.

So it was tough on Bertie

because what should have been pretty
much brushed under the carpet

turned into this enormous issue.

And Albert, the minute he heard,

was pacing up and down night after night,

not sleeping, worrying.

And he literally wore
himself into a frazzle

about this one transgression of Bertie's.

To Albert, Bertie's fall

was not only a threat to
his dynastic marriage,

but to the monarchy itself.

"You must not, you dare not be lost.

"The consequences for this country

"and for the world at large
would be too dreadful."

What I think we can say
for certain is that...

..Bertie's misdemeanour

upset Albert in an utterly visceral way.

It really got in among him.

And he was deeply, deeply upset.

And you can tell this

by the anguished letter
that he wrote to Bertie

more or less saying, you know,

this isn't, this isn't
just a, a little... sin,

it's something which
could shake the throne.

The plan for perfect children had failed.

And the dynastic dream was at stake.

Victoria went on the defensive.

"Wicked wretches had led our poor,
innocent boy into a scrape."

The sickly Albert travelled
to Cambridge to meet his son

and make him understand the disgrace

he had brought on himself and his family

and also the urgent need to get married.

Albert went to Cambridge to have
it out with Bertie about his fall.

And they went for a long
private walk in the rain

and they had this long conversation,
we don't know what they said,

but we do know that Albert came
back absolutely wet through

and that Bertie thought
that he'd been forgiven.

So in a way, it sort of... you know,
it's a resolution of the conflict.

But it was a cold and wet winter day.

After the long walk with his son,

Albert was wracked with pain in his legs.

Over the next few weeks,
his symptoms worsened.

Albert wrote to his daughter Vicky...

"I am at a very low ebb.

"Much worry and great sorrow,

"about which I beg you
not to ask questions,

"have robbed me of sleep
during the past fortnight."

Now, I personally believe,
having done the research,

that Albert did have a
longstanding gastric problem

that was wrongly diagnosed
as typhoid fever.

I don't believe he died of typhoid fever.

I believe he died of a flare-up
of probably Crohn's disease,

which goes into periods of remission

and then flares up during
times of extreme stress.

And in 1861, he'd had to deal with

a whole chain of stressful
things happening,

which precipitated a final decline,

aggravated then by contracting
a chill and a fever.

And his body just packed up on him.

He wore himself out.

In mid-December, when Albert grew worse,

Bertie was ordered home
to see his ailing father.

Albert died the following
day, aged only 42.

For Victoria, the loss of the man on
whom she had come to utterly depend,

could not have been more devastating.

"He was my father, my protector,

"my guide and adviser
in all and everything.

"My mother, I might say,
as well as my husband.

"I suppose no-one ever was
so completely altered

"and changed in every way

"as I was by dearest
Papa's blessed influence."

Queen Victoria's overbearing grief

would dominate the Royal household
and the nation for decades.

In life, Prince Albert was the
central figure within the family.

He had engineered the
upbringing of his children,

and it hadn't gone to plan.

But he had also been the visionary

behind a very modern image
of the Royal Family.

The monarchy was not a
greatly popular institution

at the beginning of the 19th century.

And actually, I think we
can, we can thank Albert

for stabilising it as a concept.

The fact that we still
have the monarchy today,

I think is quite a lot to do with
the way that Albert and Victoria

quite consciously presented
themselves to the public

as some version of an ordinary,
middle-class family.

Following Albert's death,

the plan to mould perfect princes
and princesses had to go on.

But in the process, the children

would become locked in decades
of warfare with their mother.

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