Victoria

Set in late 1830s England, this historical novel follows the early reign of Queen Victoria, from her sheltered girlhood at Kensington Palace to her engagement to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The novel opens in 1835. Sixteen-year-old Princess Alexandrina Victoria, heir presumptive to the British throne, lives under the suffocating control of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duchess's advisor, Sir John Conroy. Under a rigid set of rules called the Kensington System, Victoria shares her mother's bedroom, is forbidden from walking downstairs alone, and is kept isolated from society. When Victoria falls gravely ill with typhus, Conroy attempts to force her to sign a document appointing him her Private Secretary. Victoria refuses, and her devoted governess, Baroness Lehzen, intervenes before Conroy can strike her. Victoria resolves never to yield and prays that King William IV will survive until her 18th birthday, sparing her from a regency under her mother.

On June 20, 1837, Victoria learns the King has died, making her Queen at 18. She insists on receiving the Archbishop of Canterbury before waking her mother, descends the stairs alone for the first time, and claims her own bedroom. When Conroy tries to dictate how she will rule, Victoria dismisses him. She then meets William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, the Prime Minister, who offers guidance. Victoria initially refuses help but panics when she must address the Privy Council, the body of senior officials who formally receive the new monarch. Melbourne sends a draft speech and practical advice, including the suggestion she wear the Order of the Garter, an insignia of high chivalric rank, on her arm as Queen Anne had done. At the Council meeting, Melbourne stands beside her, whispering the names of councillors she does not recognize. Victoria steps onto the balcony to be proclaimed Queen, insisting on being known simply as Victoria.

Victoria moves to Buckingham Palace and fills her household with ladies connected to Melbourne's Whig Party, including Harriet Sutherland as Mistress of the Robes, the queen's senior female court attendant, and the politically astute Emma Portman as a lady-in-waiting. Melbourne advises Victoria to bring her mother along to avoid scandal, so Victoria places the Duchess's apartments in the distant north wing. Over the following months, Victoria settles into a routine of morning sessions with Melbourne over government papers, afternoon rides, and charitable visits. She grows deeply attached to him, referring to him affectionately as "Lord M."

A scandal erupts when Lehzen suspects Lady Flora Hastings, the Duchess's lady-in-waiting, of being pregnant, noting that Flora shared a carriage alone with Conroy on a journey from Scotland. Melbourne urges caution, but Victoria ignores him and orders the court physician to examine Flora. Victoria's coronation at Westminster Abbey proceeds amid this tension. The state crown is too large and must be altered, and the Archbishop forces the ring onto the wrong finger. Melbourne's steady presence helps Victoria maintain composure. After the ceremony, the physician reports that Flora is a virgin; her swelling is caused by a tumor, not pregnancy. Victoria is mortified. In the weeks that follow, Flora declines and dies. Lord Hastings, Flora's brother, publishes her account of the forced examination, and the public turns against Victoria. At a military inspection, crowds boo and shout Flora's name. Victoria endures the hostility until a child's voice calls out from the crowd in her support.

Melbourne's government weakens when the Tories, the conservative opposition party, erode his majority using an anti-slavery bill concerning Jamaica. Melbourne believes his position is untenable and resigns. The Duke of Wellington, a senior Tory, declines to form a new government and refers Victoria to Sir Robert Peel, the Tory leader. Peel demands that Victoria replace her Whig ladies-in-waiting with Tory-connected women. Victoria refuses, and Peel withdraws, unable to form a government. Victoria visits Melbourne at Dover House to beg him to return, but he tells her that resuming office without parliamentary support would be unconstitutional.

The Duke of Cumberland, Victoria's uncle and King of Hanover, conspires with Conroy to have Victoria declared mentally unfit and a regency established, with Cumberland and the Duchess as co-regents. On Victoria's 19th birthday, a rat runs across her foot, causing her to scream, and Conroy seizes the moment to suggest the Queen needs seclusion. Victoria insists on attending the unveiling of her coronation portrait at Westminster Hall. Melbourne, summoned by Emma Portman, talks Victoria out of her locked room by sharing the story of his son Augustus, who had an intellectual disability and died three years earlier. Melbourne tells Victoria that serving her has given him a reason to live. At the ceremony, Melbourne steps forward to help Victoria unveil the portrait and agrees to form a government again. Cumberland's plot collapses.

Victoria begins to see Melbourne differently. At a costume ball at Syon House, she attends as Queen Elizabeth, and Melbourne speaks of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester as companions whose mutual inclination was powerful but who could never marry. Victoria understands he is speaking about the two of them. Emboldened, she travels to Melbourne's country estate, Brocket Hall, and tells him he is the only companion she could ever desire. Melbourne holds her hand but then releases it, saying he mates for life, like a rook, referring to his dead wife. Victoria runs away in tears.

Turning her attention to governing, Victoria negotiates Conroy's departure, granting him a barony and pension in exchange for permanent retirement to Ireland. The Duchess, devastated by Conroy's willingness to leave, accepts Victoria's comfort, and mother and daughter begin to reconcile. Victoria also exercises her royal prerogative for the first time by commuting the death sentences of the Newport Chartists, a group convicted of treason for an uprising in Wales, to transportation.

Victoria's uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians, presses her to marry her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria resists, but Leopold secretly summons Albert and his older brother Ernst to England. When Albert enters the drawing room at Buckingham Palace, Victoria is playing the piano and does not notice him until he turns her page of music. Albert is stiff and critical, disapproving of Victoria's ignorance of art and her closeness with Melbourne. Victoria finds him priggish. Yet when they play a Schubert duet, their physical proximity at the piano creates an undeniable connection.

Victoria moves the court to Windsor Castle. Riding together, Albert opens up about his mother, who left his father when Albert was five and whom he never saw again. Victoria is deeply moved, but Albert then criticizes her for neglecting the poverty around her. They quarrel bitterly, and Albert decides to return to Coburg. Ernst persuades him to stay by recounting how he once saw their mother, years after she left, standing on a terrace crying, and assures Albert that not all women leave.

Melbourne encounters the departing Princes and invites Albert to visit Parliament. During the tour, Melbourne signals his intention to step aside, making clear that Victoria will need someone beside her. When Victoria confides that she wants Albert to smile at her, Melbourne encourages her, saying only a fool would turn her away.

Victoria summons Albert to the picture gallery, where she stands before a portrait of Elizabeth I wearing gardenias in her hair. Albert recognizes the scent from childhood memories of his mother. Victoria proposes marriage. Albert says his answer depends on whether she will let him kiss her. She agrees, they kiss, and Albert accepts, declaring his heart is hers. Victoria predicts theirs will be a marriage of inconvenience but says she has no choice. Albert replies that neither does he.