Changes

<i>Victoria</i> Season 1 looks at the early reign of Queen Victoria (1819-1901) who ruled at a time when there were many social and technical changes in British society during the 19th century. Her long rule also saw the United Kingdom become a major global power, where the phrase "the empire on which the sun never sets" was used to describe the fact that the United Kingdom's empire stretched to many parts of the globe. The first season looks at her accession to the role as queen, her marriage to Albert, and her struggles to assert her authority as many saw her as a child or lacked the reason to be an effective monarch.

==Key Events==

Season 1 begins with the death of King William, who was Victoria's uncle. As the king did not have any legitimate children through his marriage, the succession passed down to Victoria. The first few episodes focused on Victoria's inexperience, her sometimes naivety, as she was only 18 years old at the time she became queen in 1837. Key events focused on her mother (Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld) and John Conroy, her mother's secretary and friend. Rumors, as suggested by the show, had it they were possible lovers, but this was unclear. In both reality and the series, Conroy and Victoria's mother caused difficulties for Victoria, where Conroy was portrayed as controlling and he even was shown as attempting to rule in a regency. However, his attempts at a regency likely did not happen, although he did try to have greater influence in court. One early controversy was Victoria having accused Lady Flora, a lady-in-waiting close to Conroy, of being pregnant, which would have been scandalous as she was unwed. However, after physical examination by a doctor, it was determined that Lady Flora had a terminal liver tumor, causing Victoria embarrassment and public anger at falsely accusing Lady Flora. This made Victoria look insensitive and loose popularity given how she treated the dying Lady Flora. There is truth Victoria's sheltered life, as Victoria was brought up in a system called the Kensington system, which greatly controlled who Victoria could talk to and interact with. The system was intended to have greater control of her. This also made her have few true friends and Victoria did describe that she had a melancholy childhood (Figure 1).<ref>For more on Victoria's early reign, see: Williams, K. (2009) OCLC: 276647568. <i>Becoming queen.</i> London, Arrow.</ref>

As Victoria struggled to break free from the grips of Conroy, and to some extent her mother, she forms a close relationship with Lord Melbourne, or William Lamb, who was the Prime Minister at the time. He became a close confidant of Victoria, which was accurate. The series also indicates a very close relationship formed between them, which is also likely ture. It even suggests Victoria had a romantic interest in Lord Melbourne, where she eventually proposes to him (the queen had to propose in order to get married). This marriage proposal was unlikely to have occurred, as Lord Melbourne was 58 years old at the time that Victoria came to power and, given the fact that Victoria never knew her father, likely treated Melbourne as a surrogate father figure. The show focuses on political rivalries that were occurring at the time in the late 1830s between the Tories and Whigs, the two primary parties. There was even a crisis, the so-called Bedchamber crisis, where the Tory leader Robert Peel was to be given the Prim Minister role. However, he insisted that Queen Victoria remove some of her ladies of the bedchamber, as they had husbands who were Whig politicians, suggesting to Peel that Victoria was too heavily biased toward the Whigs. However, as these were Victoria's friends, she refused, causing a crisis since Peel would have normally taken the role of Prime Minister as his party now controlled parliament. Eventually, Melbourne was again asserted as Prime Minister, where the events depicted are mostly accurate in the series.<ref>For more on early controversies in Victoria's reign, see: Rappaport, H. (2003) <i>Queen Victoria: a biographical companion.</i> ABC-CLIO biographical companions. Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO.</ref>

Although Victoria was sometimes called the grandmother of Europe due to the many monarchs that derived from her line and that married into various European households, she, in fact, hated childbirth and having to go through the process of having children (she had nine children). This worry about childbirth was shown in the series, where she brings up her fear of death in the process as this occurred to some other royal women in her line. Some of Victoria's diary entries did, in fact, suggest her worry and fears of childbirth.<ref>For more on Victoria's children and their birth, see: Van der Kiste, J. (2009) <i>Queen Victoria’s children.</i> 2nd ed. Stroud, History Press.</ref> Meanwhile, there were social tensions in the United Kingdom, as widespread poverty in the country and social unrest in places created tensions. Edward Oxford did try to assassinate the young Queen as she rode in her carriage with Albert near Buckingham palace, which had just become the official palace. This did occur and Oxford, as the show depicts, was committed to an insane asylum after the attempt, with the queen showing some indignation that he was not executed for his acts. The series indicates her uncle, who was now King of Hanover but also was the potential successor to Victoria until she gave birth to a child, did suggest that she may be assassinated, which possibly implicated him in a plot. However, no such evidence of this was found, in the series, and most likely there was never any serious suspicion of her uncle.<ref>For more on social discord and assassination attempts on Victoria, see: Murphy, P.T. (2013) OCLC: 859559768. <i>Shooting Victoria: madness, mayhem, and the rebirth of the British monarchy.</i></ref> In fact, any plot could have caused war against Hanover, which would have deterred him.

==Main Characters==

==Victorian Culture==

Victorian culture is often portrayed as emphasizing a sense of moral duty and responsibility. The show begins to depict this in the early years of Victoria, where she shows disgust with her father and male German relatives who seemed to mostly have mistresses often with their wives' knowledge. Victoria even is shown as confronting Albert asking if he intended to have a mistress. The Victorian age was known as a period of rapid industrialization and technical change. This is shown in the early episodes as Albert rides a train near Windsor Castle. The series depicts locomotives as novel, but they had already been developed by the reign of Victoria and were beginning to spread in places. Nevertheless, the use of locomotives spread far and fast during the reign of Victoria along with other technologies and sciences such as photography, the telegraph, anaesthetics, and theory of evolution.<ref>For more on the Victorian era and Victorian culture, see: Moran, M. (2006) OCLC: ocm71239257. Victorian literature and culture. Introductions to British literature and culture. London ; New York, Continuum.</ref>

==Summary==

<i>Victoria</i> is a colorful series that mixes a lot of historical detail with fictional characters and events. It tries to humanize one of the most influential reigns of a monarch that had impact not only in the United Kingdom, but by extension the globe given the influence of the British Empire at the time. The show does a masterful job in weaving the complex personalities of the characters as they are shaped by and shape event that occurred early in the reign of Victoria, as she struggled to assert her authority and married Prince Albert.

==References==