The consort of Queen Victoria was born in the same year as his future wife in the small duchy of Saxe-Coburg, in what is now Bavaria in Germany. His mother Princess Louise had taken a German baron as a lover, and when Albert was only five, she and her husband Duke Ernst I separated and were divorced two years later. From the moment they parted, the duke refused to let her see Albert and his older brother Ernst again. After marrying her baron, Louise died of cancer when Albert was 12.
With his brother (who would become Duke Ernst II), Albert was educated at the University of Bonn. There he studied natural science, political economy and philosophy, as well as music, painting, gymnastics and fencing.
As a younger son of an aristocrat, Albert was in great need of a wife with a fortune. Victoria was the absolute best choice, and his candidacy for her hand was supported by a number of prominent relatives plus Victoria's own mother, the duchess of Kent. However, the incumbent king of Britain, William IV, did not approve of Albert, preferring instead Prince Alexander of the Netherlands. So although Victoria became interested in the German prince during a visit he paid to her in 1836, nothing formal was settled until after she became queen.
|
|
 Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Albe
rt_of_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Wikipedia biography of the prince consort, accompanied by illustrations and cross-references.
Queen Victoria: Grandmother of Europe
www.geocities.com/naciones_unidas_queenv
ictoria/queen_victoria.html
Despite the title, this site has a good biography of Albert and his role as prince consort. Includes photos and illustrations.
The Great Exhibition
www.victorianstation.com/palace.html
Great photographs of the 19th-century 'world's fair' in which Albert was intimately involved.
| |
Uncrowned King: The life of Prince Albert by Stanley Weintraub (John Murray, 1998)
A man of great intelligence, pride, and ambition, Albert was forced to move behind the scenes, playing major roles in running the Crimean War and working to keep Britain out of the American Civil War. While his wife adored him, his adopted people scorned him for his German accent, his foreign ways and his covert activities as a surrogate ruler.
Get this book
|
| |
The Crystal Palace: A portrait of Victorian Enterprise by Patrick Beaver (Phillimore, 2001)
This book provides the narrative for a unique building that is also an enlightening social study of the period.
Get this book
|
 Osborne House
Isle of Wight PO32 6JY
Tel: 01983 200 022
Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk/ server/show/conProperty.205
1 mile south-east of East Cowes
This Italianate seaside holiday house was built by Albert in 1848. All was sobriety and efficiency. The site was bought at a bargain price and building works completed to time and to budget. The layout was innovatory: servants and the business of state were shunted off into the household wing, while the family pavilion provided the setting for 'the home life of our dear queen', which was really Albert's creation – a model of modern, almost bourgeois, privacy and respectability. It became Victoria's favourite retreat and is full of the royal family's mementos.
Channel 4 Television takes no responsibility for the content of third-party sites. |
|
