Discovering the secret life of Queen Victoria since 2018
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust RCIN 980024.f Ink sketch by Queen Victoria of her eldest child, Princess Victoria, dated 25th August 1841. The nine month old can be seen sitting on the floor, holding a rattle. This is one of many intimate sketches that Queen Victoria made of her first… Continue reading Sketchbook Saturday, week 30
Kicking off my new series, ‘Royal Fashion Friday’, we’re looking at Queen Victoria’s earliest surviving dress, best known as the ‘Blonde Dress’. The ‘Blond Dress’ at Kensington Palace, 18th October 2025 © Shannon McInulty / Queen.Victoria.Roses Made in the early 1830s, this delicate rare survival is believed to have been a gift from King Leopold… Continue reading ‘The Blonde Dress’: Queen Victoria’s earliest surviving dress
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust RCIN 980024.gj Watercolour by Queen Victoria of her youngest child, Princess Beatrice, dated 28th July 1860. At that time the family had been staying at their seaside home, Osborne House, on the Isle of Wight. In her journal for the day Victoria wrote: ‘After luncheon,… Continue reading Sketchbook Saturday, week 29
1896 had been a traumatic year for Queen Victoria. Not only was it ‘the 35th anniversary of that dreadful day which crushed my life!’1, but she also watched ‘the terrible sorrow that has befallen my poor darling child [Princess Beatrice] & made her a widow too.’2 While Queen Victoria had initially been reluctant for Beatrice… Continue reading ‘A great feeling of strangeness & unlikeness to Christmas’: Queen Victoria’s Christmas 1896
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust RCIN 980014.an Ink drawing by Queen Victoria of what is believed to be Prince Albert’s hand. The sketch, believed to be dated 1861, is on black bordered mourning paper, suggesting that the sketch was completed either before or just after the Prince Passed away on… Continue reading Sketchbook Saturday, week 28
‘With joy do I hail the return of this blessed festival,’1 wrote Queen Victoria on Christmas Eve in 1845. By this time in her life Victoria was eight years into her reign, had been married for five and was mother to four children, with her fifth child, Princess Helena, expected the following May. To Victoria,… Continue reading ‘It was a very merry Xmas’: Queen Victoria’s Christmas 1845
‘This festive day, the eve of such blessings & the day when ever since our childhood we have been happy & joyous, in giving & receiving,’ wrote Queen Victoria as she began her Christmas Ever journal entry in 1847; adding ‘I know no day, or rather more anniversary which we celebrate with more feelings of… Continue reading ‘This festive day’: Queen Victoria’s Christmas 1847
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust RCIN 980024.gp This Sketchbook Saturday we’re taking a look at a pencil sketch by Queen Victoria, which shows her third child, Princess Alice, with her new fiancé, Prince Louis of Hesse on 11th December 1860. Just a couple of weeks earlier Louis had arrived at… Continue reading Sketchbook Saturday, week 27
Christmas 1860 was the final happy festival to have been spent by Queen Victoria before the premature death of Prince Albert the following December. However, while this Christmas was later looked upon with sorrow, at the time, the scene captured a thriving family, who celebrated the engagement of their third child, Princess Alice to Prince… Continue reading ‘A merry happy night’: Prince Albert’s final Christmas
Queen Victoria’s final Christmas was filled with nothing but heartache for the 81 year old monarch. 1900 had been Victoria’s annus horribilis, with the deaths of her third child, Prince Alfred, and her grandson, Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein. On top of this, the second Boer War was in full swing and the elderly… Continue reading “This has indeed been a terribly sad Christmas for us all”: Queen Victoria’s final Christmas
© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust RCIN 980026.ah This Sketchbook Saturday we’re taking a look at this watercolour sketch by Queen Victoria. Dated 5th December 1847, this painting is titled ‘View from my dressing room window at Osborne looking towards Barton’. In her journal Victoria describes how it was a ‘fine,… Continue reading Sketchbook Saturday, week 26
Until the Victorian era Christmas was a reasonably uncelebrated festival amongst the ordinary people. However, in the 1840s, something changed. The publication of Charles Dickens’ novel ‘A Christmas Carol’ on 19th December 1843 not only brought people’s attention to the religious event, but also created a new perspective on the joys that the otherwise depressing… Continue reading 1832: Christmas with Queen Victoria at Kensington Palace