The Unbelievable Impact of Queen Victoria How She Changed the Entire World

, a new Masterpiece miniseries, premiered on PBS earlier this month. The show features Jenna Coleman as the young queen, and Tom Hughes as Prince Albert. And while we’ve been excited about this show for a while — especially since we binge-watched

— we’ll admit that there are a few aspects that we are looking forward to more than others. One such example has got to be Victoria’s 1840 royal wedding to Prince Albert, which will be covered in the show’s first season. Victoria may have started the enduring trend of white wedding dresses, but from her bridal party to her accessories, there’s a lot more to know about the wedding of the (19th) century. Just beware — for those truly vested in learning about Victoria and Albert’s romance as it unfolds on their laptop’s screen, spoilers are ahead.

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Victoria wanted a simple wedding. Victoria didn’t want an elaborate — or huge — ceremony. However, Lord Melbourne, who was at the time England’s prime minister, convinced her to have a larger affair. Lord Melbourne was Victoria’s first PM, and they were very close.

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She made white wedding dresses popular. At the time, wedding dresses were not necessarily white. Victoria chose to have her dress made in white not to reflect purity, but to best show off its lace. (The lace makers in England were then struggling, and her commission was intended to give the industry a boon.) The young queen decreed that no one else should wear white at her wedding — trend-setting, again — and had the pattern for her dress destroyed so that no one could copy it afterwards.

The Queen also wore some great accessories. On her wedding day, Victoria wore Turkish diamond earrings, a sapphire brooch from Albert, and white satin shoes. She also wore kid gloves, and a wreath of myrtle and orange blossoms. (Orange blossoms were also embroidered on her train.)

There was some drama with her bridesmaids. Victoria chose her 12 bridesmaids according to rank. Albert wanted her to pick them based off of their reputations, but Victoria ignored him. On her wedding day, Victoria’s trainbearers wore white dresses that she had designed and turquoise brooches in the shape of an eagle. The brooches were a gift from the queen to each lady.

Ten Incredibly True Facts About Queen Victoria » Mark A. Rayner

It rained (a lot) on her wedding day. Crowds however still came out to try to see the bride as she made her way to St. James’s Palace in a gold carriage.

Victoria and Albert got married in a church, and then there was a feast afterwards. The wedding ceremony took place in St. James’s red-and-gold Chapel Royal. Victoria thought St. James was ugly, and didn’t want to have her wedding there. After the ceremony, Victoria changed into another dress and a huge bonnet for a subsequent feast. The bride and groom stayed there until around 4:00 p.m., and then traveled three hours to Windsor Castle where they stayed the night.

Victoria wouldn’t agree to take a long honeymoon.Albert wanted to take a two-week honeymoon, but Victoria told him she didn’t have that much time to take off from work. Clearly, even at age 20, she was devoted to the monarchy.

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By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.In the 1800s, Queen Victoria oversaw the expansion of the British Empire—which would cover a fifth of the Earth's surface by the end of the century—and critical reforms to the monarchy. Her legacy was so profound that the time of her reign is now known as the Victorian Era.

The Famine Queen. The Widow of Windsor. Grandmother of Europe. Queen Vic. In the 19th century, Queen Victoria earned all those nicknames and more—testaments to the enduring influence of her 64-year (1837-1901) reign over the United Kingdom.

During the period now known as the Victorian Era, she oversaw her nation’s industrial, social, and territorial expansion and became known as a trendsetter who made over European attitudes toward the monarchy. An estimated one in four people on Earth were subjects of the British Empire by the end of her rule. But when Victoria took the throne, the British monarchy was deeply unpopular.

Queen

Marie Of Romania

Victoria was the product of a succession crisis in England’s royal family that occurred when Princess Charlotte, the presumptive successor to King George, and her infant son died in childbirth. Charlotte’s brothers—all of whom were single and had given the monarchy a bad name with their profligate spending and messy personal lives—raced to produce an heir. One of those brothers, Edward, hastily married a widowed German princess and became the first to produce an heir. Born in 1819, Alexandrina Victoria was a direct successor to the crown.

Palace intrigue made for a miserable childhood. Victoria’s father died when she was a child, and her ambitious mother allied herself with the scheming Sir John Conroy, a member of the royal household who seized the chance to gain power and influence through the future queen. He created what became known as “the Kensington system, ” an elaborate set of rules that isolated the young princess at Kensington Palace and put him in control of her education and upbringing. Designed to keep Victoria dependent and loyal to Conroy and her mother, the system resulted in an unhappy childhood—and a growing sense of resentment.

Victoria broke free in 1837, when she turned 18 and rose to the throne. As soon as she became queen, she banned Conroy from her court and marginalized her mother. In 1840, she married her cousin Albert, a German prince. It was a genuine love match—she wrote that her wedding night was “bliss beyond belief”—and they went on to have nine children.

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Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert were patrons of the arts—including the burgeoning field of photography. They commissioned images to document life at the palace and even reenacted their wedding for a photograph in 1854.

During her early reign, Victoria was heavily influenced by Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, and Albert, who was her closest political advisor and whom some historians believe was “king in all but name.” Together, they pursued an agenda of modernization and stability in an era of political upheaval. The monarchy’s reputation had been badly damaged by Victoria’s predecessors, and the British populace clamored to replace the monarchy with a republic. And in Ireland, the potato famine between 1845 and 1852 fomented outright rebellion.

Together with her husband, Victoria faced those challenges head-on, working to strengthen the position of the monarchy in England and throughout Europe, where there was also a growing distaste for royals who expected the public to foot the bill for their lavish lifestyles. In contrast, Victoria expanded the monarch’s public role, supporting charities, the arts, and civic reform to counter the view that British royalty wasn’t worth the expense. As a result, the queen and her growing family became beloved celebrities and influenced popular culture, introducing England to everything from white wedding dresses to Christmas trees.

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In 1861, tragedy struck when Albert died at 42. Victoria was devastated and went into deep mourning. She wore black for the rest of her life and withdrew from the public eye for years. The republican movement grew during her isolation, and she was criticized for her absence from public life.

Victoria resumed her public duties by the late 1860s. Her later reign was largely devoted to encouraging peace in Europe and expanding and consolidating her massive political empire. She became Empress of India in 1877 and influenced foreign relations closer to home through her children and grandchildren, many of whom married into European royalty.

At the beginning of her monarchy, Britain was seen largely as a trading power. But under Victoria, it became a mighty empire and the world’s most powerful nation. Over the course of the 19

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Century, it grew by 10 million square miles and 400 million people. Those gains came at a tremendous price: England was almost constantly at war during Victoria’s reign, and the colonialism practiced in her name involved brutal subjugation.

Though Victoria was popular, her subjects still pushed to reform the monarchy. Ultimately, this led to an erosion of the monarch’s direct political power as ordinary British people gained the vote, the secret ballot, and other political reforms in the mid- to late 1800s.

Queen Elizabeth II opens a session of the Parliament of Canada in Ontario with Prince Philip at her side. Britain's reigning monarch is also Canada's head of state, a government structure left over from when the region was under British rule, and the queen has visited Canada more than any other country during her reign.