Queen Victoria and Her Tragic Family

Watching "Queen Victoria and her Nine Children" on TVOntario, I was rewarded with a comprehensive and surprisingly frank documentary series on Victoria and her relationship with her children, particularly after the death of her husband Prince Albert. Albert was the love of her life who left an impressive legacy of public service as well as a family of nine children. When Albert died in 1861, the Queen was an emotional wreck with severe consequences for her family over the next 40 years.

This series shows us how devastated the Queen was by this tragedy through diary excerpts, photographs, letters and anecdotes. Albert's death sent the monarchy into a tailspin. Not only did Victoria go into seclusion for many years but she vented her grief and anger on her children.

This is the real tragedy of Albert's death. Victoria ridiculed and bullied her children instead of assigning them roles that could have averted some of the public hostility directed to the Queen, who became known as the Widow of Windsor. She did not spare any of them from her wrath, particularly her oldest son and heir Bertie, later King Edward VII. We find out the grim details about his life of indolence, debauchery, and serial promiscuity, in large part due to his mother's lack of confidence and her failure to give him a public role.

Young Bertie married the beautiful Danish Princess Alexandra who became the Princess of Wales and the Princess Diana of her era. The example of the young Victoria and Albert could have served the family well. But it was not to be. The young Prince Albert (Bertie) was a capable man who undertook an immensely successful tour of India. Instead of putting the Prince's positive qualities to the service of the nation, the spiteful Victoria used the publicity to have Disraeli declare her the Empress of India.

I knew that Victoria carried the hemophilia gene which was passed on to the son of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. However, I did not know that one of her sons, Prince Leopold, was also a victim of hemophilia. The Queen wanted to keep him closeted and out of the public domain. Leopold was often in great pain but he was a talented pianist who attended Oxford, married and had a child. He and Princess Louise were close and she nursed him through a number of critical health episodes.

Louise herself was a very beautiful young woman and evidence strongly suggests she had a child out of wedlock who was given up for adoption. The child and the family were paid off handsomely and any official documents or registrations related to the child were never found. She later married the Marquess of Lorne, a notable in London's gay underground, in an arranged marriage where both lived separate lives. One of her lovers was a French sculptor, who apparently died while she was making love to him. This event was never made public.

The Queen strived to conceal the private life of Bertie and his siblings. Yet her own love life after Prince Albert's untimely death was thought to revolve around a Scotsman named John Brown, a man who set himself up as her personal guard, not even allowing her family access to her room. He came into her life several years after Albert's death. Her family wanted a companion who would assist her in coming out of seclusion. But before long, they came to despise and resent his influence. There were widespread rumours about the two of them being lovers and there were notes and letters pointing to an intimate relationship.

Victoria's behaviour following Albert's death was alarming to the point where her family threatened to have her declared insane, which of course never came to pass. There was always a deep respect for the royal family as evidenced by the national concern over Bertie's brush with death ten years after his father's passing. Fortunately for the royals, Victoria's behaviour never went far enough to erode the monarchy as an institution.

Nevertheless, it seems that the monarchy survived despite her, not because of her. She certainly made life difficult for her family to the point of not letting them follow their own dreams; instead they were expected to do as she pleased, look after her and when conflicts arose, obey her orders. Some 40 years after Albert died, she passed from the scene. Bertie became a very able monarch in the ten years that remained of his life and beyond that a series of solid monarchs have reinforced the institution of the monarchy.

The constant rubbishing of Queen Victoria becomes incredibly boring and tedious. The BBC used to be renowned for quality documentaries, sadly those days are gone.

This documentary was entitled "Victoria and Her Nine Children" when it aired on PBS, so I expected this to be a documentary about her children. A better title would have been "Victoria and Six, Maybe Seven, of Her Children." Vicky, the eldest child, is hardly discussed, and Affie and Arthur are barely mentioned at all.

This program was even more of a mess than Dan Jones awful "Britain's Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets". It seemed all over the place with the narrative and what it did and did not explain or reveal. Albert, the future Edward VII, is portrayed as a problem child who just gads about London, much to the dismay of his long-suffering mother. Very little, if anything, is said about how he was bullied and abused by his parents practically from birth because he was not as smart and quick as his older sister, Vicky. There is a brief, passing mention in the final episode of the fact that his parents refused to let Albert be involved in affairs of state or anything that he should have been learning in order to be a future king, yet that is a huge factor in his behavior.

This documentary seemed to be more interested in the sex lives of the children than anything substantial about their existence. I've read books about the daughters and about Edward VII that provide much more information about the children's broader lives than simply who had an affair with whom. Even as pandering titillation, this documentary fails to deliver. I gave it three stars because at least the photographs were interesting to see.

What a huge disappointment this program was, because it really could have been an interesting look at the children living in the shadow of a formidable woman and her husband's ghost. One commentator stated that Victoria made everything about HER at the expense of her children, taking focus at their weddings and even their funerals. Well, she's still doing it over a century later in a documentary. A sad re-hash of highlights of her life at the expense of an in-depth look at her children.