Albert's legacy
Never can I forget how beautiful my darling looked lying there with his face lit up by the rising sun, his eyes unusually bright, gazing as it were on unseen objects and not taking notice of me. I stood up, kissed his dear, heavenly forehead and called out in a bitter agonising cry: 'Oh! my dear darling!', and then dropped on my knees in mute, distracted despair unable to utter a word or shed a tear.
Queen Victoria, December 1861
Albert was involved in a number of projects that were similar to the Great Exhibition, albeit smaller. Among the many other offices that he held was the founding presidency of the British Society for the Advancement of Science. He was also, in a hard-fought contest, elected chancellor of Cambridge University and became master of Trinity House. He took efficient charge of the royal household and estates, developing a model farm at Windsor and increasing rent receipts on the Duchy of Cornwall's holdings from £11,000 to £50,000 a year.
Tradition and democracy
As chairman of the committee that chose the artists and paintings for the interior of the new Palace of Westminster, opened in 1852, Albert also left an indelible physical mark on Parliament itself. But it was in establishing a new accommodation between the legislature and the sovereign that he bequeathed his most important legacy.
It was an accommodation that brought together the traditions of the past with the more democratic institutions of the modern world. And the fact that a reformed and remodelled monarchy has remained with us, for better or for worse, ever since is in no small part due to Albert's achievements.
Victoria may have outlived him by four decades after his death on 14 December 1861, but what became known as the Victorian age owes as much to him as to her.
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 Franz Xavier Winterhalter's 1859 portrait of Prince Albert
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