Queen Victoria's 200th is a big deal

Friday, May 24 was the 200^th birthday of Queen Victoria of The United Kingdom.  Canadians say that Queen Victoria’s B-Day is the day when you can safely put away your coat.  The media quips that she was the longest reigning monarch, but now eclipsed by Elizabeth II.  The real significance of V. was that she was the first Britsh monarch to make the monarchy wholly ceremonial, hence a great tourist draw without the political backlash.  Her mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg was married to George III’s fourth son.  George III was the king who lost USA, then went mad and had a long reign to 1820. His aging sons George and William were terribly unpopular.  George IV was known as Prince of Whales because he was fat and drank to excess, ruled 1820-30.  Then William IV ruled from 1830-37.  He never grew up and was always a adolescent drunk and womanizer. Neither had children. When Edward died, V’s mom, also ‘Victoria’, kept her daughter under close supervision and away from her ‘wicked uncles’.  Victoria was just 8 when she became heir apparent.  If William IV did anything correct it was to pack the House of Lords with forward thinking nobles who wanted to reform British politics so that the House of Commons Members would represent equal numbers of people. (Former landed system divided things weirdly so that some had hardly any constituents and others had industrial cities).  In 1832 it passed.  Duchess Victoria was quite German and her sister was great grandmother of my German great grandmother.   But young Victoria was thoroughly British. Her uncle Leopold became King of the Belgians and he had been sort of a surrogate father to her.  He constantly wrote back home advising her how to become a good queen.  When she did become queen, she put herself under the wing of Lord Melbourne, and amiable and avuncular Whig.  Perhaps because she trusted him, perhaps because the British were so disgusted and sour over her two uncles’ reigns, she began to quiet the monarch’s role in governing, especially war.  Then she fell in love with her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  They married in 1840. He was too German for the Brits, too spendthrift and too intellectual.  Parliament distrusted him.  So the couple retreated from politics even more.  Museums like South Kensington and publicity for charitable and worthy causes were their work instead.  When Europe exploded in revolution 1848 against dictatorial monarchs, Britain was quite content.  Then in 1851Albert conceived a Great Exhibition to show new technology of the machine age.  With Victoria and Albert the lead hosts, the entire exhibition was a spectacular success.

.     Victoria and Albert were a devoted couple and had 9 kids.  V. didn’t like child-rearing and used nannies.  But Albert put the best construction on it with pictures of the royal family around the Christmas tree and other familial photos .  It was a huge hit with the public.  All the while this was going on, wars and politics were in an uproar--Mines Act forbid child labor, a law limiting working hours to 13, Crimean War, Opium Wars with China and Indian Mutiny.  Had Victoria played a part in this, her popularity would have surely shrunk. 

.     When Albert died in 1861, Victoria was only 42, and she wore black-mourning  the rest of her life. She loved Disraeli  and disliked Gladstone, but advised them both.  And under them, England transformed from a colonial power to an empire upon which the sun never sets.  (Perhaps, someone said, God doesn’t  trust an Englishman in the dark.) Victoria became the symbol of this empire trying to rule justly and she was the “Grandmother of Europe.” When she died in 1901 she had begun the ‘century of the common man.’ But her initative to make the monarchy ceremonial and a force for good would live on to influence most of the First Ladies of USA in the 20^th century.  For just as there is a place for the rough-and-tumble of politics, there is also a place for civilization and good-will. So while we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, realize that the British Commonwealth celebrates the queen who made democracy under constitutional monarchy possible.