On 15th October 1839, Queen Victoria became engaged to her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
The two first met in May 1836 when Prince Albert visited Kensington Palace for Victorias seventeenth birthday celebrations.
When the two met again three years later in October 1839, Victoria was clearly smitten by the princes pleasing appearance, which she described in intense detail in her journal:
Within a couple of days of Albert’s arrival, Victoria’s reluctance to marry disappeared and on the 14th October she declared to Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, that her mind was made up “about marrying dearest Albert”.
As Victoria was Queen, protocol meant that she had to be the one to propose. At half-past twelve the following day, Victoria met Albert in her closet at Windsor Castle. After a few minutes she asked him to marry her and he, of course, said yes; making it the “happiest brightest moment” of Victoria’s life.
The couple spent the next month planning the wedding. Albert left Windsor one final time as an unmarried man on 15th November. Over the coming months Victoria would fight tirelessly for her soon-to-be husband to gain the respect of her parliament. However, tensions arose when the Queens request for Albert to be given the title ‘King’ were rejected. To make things worse, parliament offered Albert a much lower allowance than had been expected.
Despite the commotion, Albert was well received when he arrived in England on 7th February 1840. The couple got married in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace just three days later. Over the next seventeen years, Victoria and Albert would produce a total of nine children, who all survived to adulthood.
While their relationship could be particularly frosty at times, Victoria and Albert’s love for one another is what makes them one of history’s most iconic couples.
©️Queen.Victoria.Roses 2024
I hope you enjoyed reading today’s post. If you would like receive email updates about my newest articles, please feel free to subscribe to my website using the box below. If you enjoyed today’s article and would like to support my work going forward, please consider donating to my Ko-fi page, which helps me to fund my website subscription. Thank you x
This article is the intellectual property of Queen.Victoria.Roses and should not be COPIED, EDITED, OR POSTED IN ANY FORM ON ANOTHER WEBSITE under any circumstances unless permission is given by the author
