70 Fun Facts About Queen Victoria

Where in London was Victoria born on 24 May 1819?

She was the only child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent and was christened in its Cupola Room.

Which first given name did Victoria drop from official use on becoming queen?

It honoured her godfather, Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, was which son of the reigning king?

His three elder brothers all died without surviving legitimate children, clearing her path to the throne.

What was the strict regime under which Victoria was raised by her mother and Sir John Conroy called?

It was designed to make her weak and dependent; she later called her childhood rather melancholy.

What was the name of the young Victoria's King Charles Spaniel?

Her last pet, the Pomeranian Turi, was laid on her deathbed at her request.

At age ten Victoria wrote and illustrated a children's story that was finally published in what year?

It was called The Adventures of Alice Laselles.

Which maternal uncle, first King of the Belgians, engineered Victoria's introduction to Prince Albert?

She called him her best and kindest adviser; William IV preferred a Dutch prince she found very plain.

How old was Victoria when she became queen on 20 June 1837?

William IV had publicly wished to live until her 18th birthday so that her mother would never be regent; he died 27 days after it.

How was Victoria dressed when told at 6 am that she was queen?

She saw them alone, she wrote proudly in her diary.

Why did Victoria not inherit the throne of Hanover, which Britain had shared a monarch with since 1714?

Her unpopular uncle Ernest Augustus became King of Hanover, and her heir presumptive until she had a child.

Which Whig prime minister became a father figure to the young queen?

Charles Greville thought the widowed, childless Melbourne was passionately fond of her as of a daughter.

Victoria was the first sovereign to take up residence in which building?

She was granted a civil list of £385,000 a year and, financially prudent, paid off her father's debts.

Which household members did Victoria refuse to let Robert Peel replace in the 1839 crisis that restored Melbourne?

Peel refused to govern under her restrictions, and Melbourne returned to office.

Whose abdominal growth, wrongly rumoured to be a pregnancy by Conroy, damaged Victoria's early reputation?

The post-mortem found a large liver tumour; the queen was hissed in public over the affair.

How did Victoria's engagement to Albert come about in October 1839?

As sovereign she had to do the asking; it was five days after he arrived at Windsor.

What relation was Prince Albert to Victoria?

They married in the Chapel Royal of St James's Palace on 10 February 1840.

How many children did Victoria and Albert have?

She hated being pregnant, viewed breast-feeding with disgust and thought newborns ugly.

What nickname did Victoria earn from her descendants' marriages into royal houses across the continent?

Thirty-four of her grandchildren survived to adulthood.

Who made the first attempt on Victoria's life, firing at her carriage in 1840 during her first pregnancy?

Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was committed to an asylum and later sent to Australia.

How did Victoria respond the day after John Francis aimed a pistol at her in 1842?

He fired again, was seized by plainclothes police, and his death sentence was commuted to transportation.

How did the ex-army officer Robert Pate injure the queen in 1850?

He crushed her bonnet and bruised her forehead, and got seven years' transportation.

Which of Victoria's childhood governesses was pensioned off in 1842 after a row between the Queen and Albert?

Albert thought her incompetent and blamed her for their daughter's poor health.

How much did Victoria personally donate to the British Relief Association in 1847?

The story that she gave only £5, and the same to Battersea Dogs Home, is a late-Victorian myth.

Which French king did Victoria visit in 1843 and 1845, the first such visit since 1520?

He fled to England after the 1848 revolution; Victoria retreated to Osborne during the Chartist scare.

On which island did Victoria and Albert buy the private estate of Osborne House in 1845?

She spent every widowed Christmas there and died there in 1901.

Which foreign secretary was sacked in 1851 for approving Louis-Napoleon's coup without consulting the queen?

Four years later she was forced to appoint him prime minister after the Crimean fiasco.

Which new anaesthetic did Victoria use for the births of her eighth and ninth children?

Clergymen called it against biblical teaching; she was so impressed she used it again in 1857.

Victoria's 1855 Paris trip was the first by a reigning British monarch in how long?

They visited Napoleon I's tomb and attended a 1,200-guest ball at Versailles.

Victoria's eldest daughter married Prince Frederick William of which state in 1858?

Their first child, born a year later, became the last German emperor, Wilhelm II.

What did Victoria discover on reading the duchess's papers after her death in 1861?

Heartbroken, she blamed Conroy and Lehzen for wickedly estranging them.

Of what disease was Prince Albert diagnosed by William Jenner before his death on 14 December 1861?

Victoria blamed his death on worry over the Prince of Wales's affair with the actress Nellie Clifden.

What nickname did Victoria's long seclusion after Albert's death earn her?

She wore black for the rest of her life and put on weight through comfort eating.

Which Scottish private estate did Victoria and Albert acquire in 1847?

She later published Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands about her time there.

In 1864 a protester stuck a notice on the palace railings announcing what?

Republican feeling grew as she hid from public view; her uncle Leopold urged her to appear.

Which Scottish manservant became so close to the widowed queen that rumours spoke of a secret marriage?

A lock of his hair and his photograph went into her coffin, hidden in her left hand by flowers.

Which prime minister said royalty should be flattered 'with a trowel' and told Victoria 'we authors, Ma'am'?

When he died she wept fast-falling tears and put up a tablet from his grateful Sovereign and Friend.

Which prime minister did Victoria complain addressed her "as though she were a public meeting"?

She later called him a half crazy and really in many ways ridiculous old man.

Which surgeon lanced an abscess in Victoria's arm in 1871 using his new antiseptic carbolic acid spray?

That winter the Prince of Wales nearly died of the disease that had killed his father, and his recovery revived royal popularity.

What did the 1867 Reform Act, which Victoria supported, do to the electorate?

She was not, however, in favour of votes for women.

What additional title did Victoria assume from 1 May 1876 under Disraeli's Royal Titles Act?

It was proclaimed at the Delhi Durbar of 1 January 1877.

How many times did Victoria threaten to abdicate in 1877-78 while pressing Disraeli to act against Russia?

The threats had no effect on the Russo-Turkish War or the Congress of Berlin.

Which of Victoria's daughters died of diphtheria on 14 December 1878, the anniversary of Albert's death?

Victoria found the coincidence almost incredible and most mysterious.

Who shot at Victoria as her carriage left Windsor railway station in 1882?

Two Eton schoolboys beat him with umbrellas; she said it was worth being shot at to see how much one is loved.

What did Victoria say after the 1882 shooting, delighted by the expressions of loyalty it provoked?

She was outraged that the gunman was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

What happened to Victoria's eulogistic biography of her Highland servant, begun after his 1883 death?

Her private secretary and the Dean of Windsor warned it would stoke rumours of a love affair.

For whose death at the Siege of Khartoum in 1885 did Victoria blame Gladstone's government?

She thought that ministry the worst she had ever had.

How many kings and princes were invited to Victoria's Golden Jubilee banquet on 20 June 1887?

By then she was once again hugely popular.

Which Indian servant, engaged as a waiter in 1887, became the 'Munshi' who taught Victoria Urdu?

Her household accused him of spying; she dismissed their complaints as racial prejudice.

On 23 September 1896 Victoria overtook which monarch as the longest-reigning in British history?

She asked that celebrations wait for the Diamond Jubilee of 1897.

Why were foreign heads of state excluded from the 1897 Diamond Jubilee?

Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain suggested making it a festival of empire.

Why was the Diamond Jubilee thanksgiving service held outside St Paul's Cathedral rather than inside?

She stayed in her open carriage throughout after a six-mile procession.

Which country did Victoria become the first reigning British monarch to visit, in 1889?

By 1900 the Boer War was so unpopular in Europe that she went to Ireland instead of France.

How old was Victoria when she died at Osborne House on 22 January 1901?

Her eldest son and her grandson Wilhelm II were at the bedside.

How long did Victoria reign?

Elizabeth II surpassed her on 9 September 2015.

What colour did Victoria stipulate for her funeral, in instructions written in 1897?

It was to be military, as befitted a soldier's daughter; she was dressed in white with her wedding veil.

Where was Victoria interred beside Prince Albert?

Her son Edward VII was the first British king of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

How many volumes did Victoria's detailed journal eventually fill?

Her daughter Beatrice edited and transcribed them, burning the originals as she went.

According to biographer Giles St Aubyn, how many words a day did Victoria write on average as an adult?

Only after her diaries and letters emerged did the public grasp how much political influence she had wielded.

According to Walter Bagehot in 1867, what three rights did the monarch retain?

Under Victoria the monarchy became more symbolic and increasingly a family monarchy of middle-class morality.

Which blood-clotting disorder did Queen Victoria pass to the Russian and Spanish royal families?

Its absence in her ancestors probably reflects a spontaneous mutation, her father being over 50 at her conception.

Which gallantry medal, still Britain's highest, was founded by the queen in February 1856?

She also founded the Royal Red Cross, the Distinguished Service Order and the Royal Victorian Order.

How tall was Victoria in her later years?

Stout and dowdy, biographers say, but she projected a grand image.

Whose 1921 biography Queen Victoria predated the release of her papers and so aged badly?

Weintraub's 1987 life, the first gold-standard biography by an American, concluded she was emotional, obstinate, honest and straight-talking.

Victoria's first name honoured which godparent?

The Prince Regent struck out the extra names Georgina, Charlotte and Augusta that her parents had proposed.

Where in the line of succession was Victoria at birth?

She stood behind the four eldest sons of George III, but the two eldest had no surviving children and William IV's daughters died as infants.

Which Italian refugee's 1858 bomb attack on Napoleon III triggered a crisis that toppled Palmerston?

The bomb had been made in England; Victoria and Albert later visited Cherbourg as Napoleon III tried to reassure Britain.

Which disease nearly killed the Prince of Wales in late 1871, at the height of the republican movement?

It was the illness believed to have killed his father almost exactly ten years earlier, and his recovery brought general rejoicing.

What left Victoria lame until July 1883 and plagued with rheumatism thereafter?

John Brown died ten days after the accident, prompting her to start the eulogistic biography her advisers talked her out of publishing.

Why did Victoria travel to Ireland in 1900, her first visit since 1861?

The Boer War had made her usual spring trip to France seem inadvisable, so unpopular was it on the continent.

What was the name of the favourite Pomeranian laid on Victoria's bed as a last request?

She died at Osborne House on 22 January 1901 with her eldest son and her grandson Wilhelm II present.