Kate Williams - Becoming Queen Victoria: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britains Greatest Monarch

1. Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, 1815, by Thomas Heaphy. National Portrait Gallery, London

2. Caroline, Princess of Wales, and Princess Charlotte, 1801, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

3. George IV, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1822. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London

4. The Rt Kicking Up a Row, or Warwick House in an Uproar, 1814

5. A Brighton Hot Bath, or Preparations for the Wedding!! engraving by George Cruikshank, 1816

6. Prince Leopold in His Garter Robes, by Thomas Lawrence. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

7. Back view of Princess Charlottes wedding dress. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Photograph courtesy of the Museum of London

8. Claremont HouseThe South Front, by Caleb R. Stanley. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

9. Princess Charlotte Augusta, c. 1816. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

10. Princess Charlottes Memorial, St. Georges Chapel, Windsor. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

11. The Duke of Kent, 1818, by George Dawe. The Royal Collection 2008 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

12. Sir John Conroy, 1836, by Alfred Tidey. 2010 National Portrait Gallery, London

13. Victoire, Duchess of Kent, with Princess Victoria, by Sir William Beechey. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

14. Princess Victoria with Dash, by George Hayter. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

15. The South-west View of Kensington Palace, 1826, by John Buckler. Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library

16. Louise, Baroness Lehzen. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

17. Group of Victorias dolls, 183133. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Photograph courtesy of the Museum of London

18. Princess Feodora, by W. C. Ross. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

19. Blonde lace dress, 183132, the earliest dress of Queen Victorias known to survive. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Photograph courtesy of the Museum of London

20. William IV, c. 1830, from a painting by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

21. Queen Victoria, c. 1838, by Thomas Sully. By kind permission of the Trustees of the Wallace Collection, London

22. Queen Victoria, 1838, by Sir George Hayter. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

23. Queen Victoria Addresses the Privy Council, by Sir David Wilkie. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

24. Prince Albert, by William Charles Ross. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

25. Queen Victoria, 1840, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

26. Victoria, 1843, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

27. Victoria and Albert on their way to their honeymoon

28. The Royal Family in 1846, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The Royal Collection 2010 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The English like Queens.

The Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg on hearing of the birth of her granddaughter, Princess Victoria

T he English do indeed like queens. Queen Victoria is Englands longest-reigning monarch, having ruled for sixty-three years and two hundred sixteen days. Elizabeth II seems well on the way to ruling for sixty years, after weathering more challenges than many monarchs in history. I was born into a unique conjunction of female prime minister and monarch. To a child growing up in the 1980s, women ruled. Female heads were on coins and notes, criminals were incarcerated at Her Majestys pleasure, and the queens armed forces fought a female politicians wars.

Accustomed as we are to the long reign of Elizabeth II, a queen seems a perfectly welcome outcome for the present-day British. However, in the late eighteenth century, the situation was very different. Queen Annes unhappy reign cast a long shadow, and female monarchs were seen as unreliable and untrustworthy. But with a mad king and a debauched prince regent in power, the English changed their mind about queens. They invested their hope for a stable future in a princess: Charlotte, daughter of the prince regent. She was young and pretty, apparently liberal in her views, and sympathetic to the general public. She gave the country hope throughout the rigors of the Napoleonic Wars, during an age when monarchs across Europe were being swept off their thrones. When she and her child died, the English despaired. They believed they were doomed to rule by the prince regent and his hedonistic brothers, including the buffoonish Duke of Clarence and the evil Duke of Cumberland.

Then, within a few years, Victoria appeared, the bearer of a slightly ridiculous anglicized version of a French name, given to her because the prince regent hoped she would always remain a minor princess. Few thought she would ever be queen.

In order to be queen, Victoria had to navigate prejudices, the unfriendliness of her relations, and her mothers quest for power. We have a vision of her as dreary and stolid, the embodiment of stoic virtue and repressively moralistic views. But as a girl, she was passionate, impulsive, and eager for gaiety.

The idea of Victoriayoung, fresh, liberal, and seemingly concerned with the plight of her peoplekept the British hopeful throughout the largely appalling reigns of George IV and William IV. When she became queen at the age of eighteen years, three weeks and three days, an era of drunken, selfish kings who cared only for their own privilege came to a much-needed end. The profligate sons of George III had pushed a portion of the population closer to revolution than at any time since the English Civil Wars. Had the next king after William been his brother the universally detested Ernest, Duke of Cumberlanda notorious blackguard suspected of blackmail, incest, and murderthen the fate of the monarchy might have been spectacularly different.