- This article is about the British monarch. For the British colony named after her, see Victoria. For the Egyptian canal named after her, see Victoria Canal.
Queen Victoria.
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) (1819 - 1901) was Queen of Great Britain and the nations of the British Empire including the Confederation of North America from her uncle William IV's death in June 1837 to her own death in January 1901. She was the granddaughter of King George III through George's son Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. She married her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who became Prince Consort in 1840.
Victoria always took a keen interest in affairs in the C.N.A. When the two major North American parties, the Liberals and Conservatives both held national conventions in 1841 calling for the creation of a unified national government, Victoria supported the request, and at her direction Prime Minister Sir Duncan Amory guided a bill through Parliament in January 1842 calling for a special meeting of the Grand Council called the Burgoyne Conference to amend the Britannic Design. The instrument of government that resulted, the Second Britannic Design, met with Victoria's approval, and she raised few objections to it.
Victoria's interest in the C.N.A. was shared by her husband, Prince Albert. He went on a tour of the C.N.A. in 1860, at the conclusion of which he wrote to her: "If one had to pick a place to live in the seventeenth century, it would be France. In the eighteenth century, London was the center of the world, a position it held when we first met. Now the flag of civilization has been passed to the North Americans. During the last two months I have seen the shape of the future; it is here, in this wonderful land."
Victoria's affection for the C.N.A. continued for the rest of her life. She was particularly proud of the North American inventor Thomas Edison. "To who shall we compare Edison?" she asked in 1897. "There is none who has contributed more to the betterment of mankind than this wonderful man."
After her death she was succeeded by her son Albert Edward, who reigned as King Edward VII.
Victoria was held in equally high esteem by the North Americans. Sixteen years after her death, the locomobile magnate Owen Galloway wrote, "Queen Victoria was far more intelligent than is generally believed. By refusing an active political role she was able to act as a stabilizing force, a symbol for all Britain, and a major check on those politicians she rightly despised."
Sobel's sources for the life of Queen Victoria are Sir John Welles' Queen Victoria's Table Talk (London, 1929) and A Love That Never Died: The Letters of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (London, 1935).