I honestly didn't understand why they showed the relationships between Victoria and Melbourne as romantic here. Victoria is constantly after Lord M., he is mooning over her. They even compared them with Elizabeth I and Dudley for some reason. That Fancy Dress ball.
shareI think nowadays they think it's impossible to make a show without opposing "ships" and creating camps in the fandom.
Or they think the only interesting dynamic between men and women is romance (which is total bs, a father/daughter dynamic would have been just fine).
It doesn't really make a bit of difference since she will end up with Albert anyway, but I admit it's a bit saddening to see people online wishing for Albert not to show up, already calling him a poor second choice or a rebound. It is quite a beautiful historical love story after all.
GRR...ARGH!
Daisy Goodwin, writing in the Radio Times, says this:
Diarists said at the time, "The Queen is clearly in love with her Prime Minister and her feelings for him are sexual, although she doesn't know it yet." There was as much scandal and rumour then as there would be now, and I've fed all that into the story. I've tried to look at events through the prism of what people felt at the time, as if they'd been reading the Daily Mail.
I've no idea what contemporary diarists were saying. It may be a complete distortion of events - I don't know. Although I'm sure it's possible to bring confused sexual feelings into father-figure relationships.
If there aren't any skeletons in a man's closet, there's probably a Bertha in his attic.
Interesting quote, thank you. While I still think it is completely inaccurate, I appreciate her explanation about wanting to reflect the scandal in this way.
I don't care either way as long as they do the V&A relationship justice, which is after all factually documented.
Just need to tune out the online silliness surrounding this crazy "shipping" stuff.
GRR...ARGH!
Amazing quote "Diarists said at the time 'The Queen is clearly in love with her Prime Minister and her feelings for him are sexual, although she doesn't know it yet.'" Diarists of 1840 writing just like a 21st century showbiz gossip columnist - the indelicate language and the claimed intimate knowledge in an era when pregnancy was referred to as "an interesting condition" and newly married famous art critic mortified to discover on his wedding night that women had pubic hair.
Beyond my worst imaginings of Daisy Goodwin
Honestly the fact she's trying to throw in the Ruskin hated public hair theory which has been largely dismissed says a lot about the depth of her consideration of the era and the individuals.
shareI agree.
I watched this last autumn and enjoyed it for the fluff it is, nothing more. I've been rewatching on PBS's Roku app this week from my treadmill. My opinion has only been reaffirmed. It's delicious fluff.
I think nowadays they think it's impossible to make a show without opposing "ships" and creating camps in the fandom.
Or they think the only interesting dynamic between men and women is romance (which is total bs, a father/daughter dynamic would have been just fine).
I'm afraid that I prefer Victoria with Melbourne but know it's not possible because of real events. Although we haven't really seen Albert yet to judge, I almost wish it was a fictional story so we could have a different outcome of her and Melbourne
I hope they do the Abert / Victoria relationship justice after everyone's seemingly invested so much into the one with Melbourne. I only wish it wasn't real so we could have her and Melbourne
Those who like Sewell in this should really check out his earlier work in Zen and Pillars of the Earth.
My Chimp DNA seems to have lost its password temporarily. Sluggr-2
Loved him in Zen and The Eleventh Hour. I actually wanted Isolde to choose him instead of James Franco in Tristan and Isolde. And not forgetting Middlemarch
Melbourne is the biggest reason I'm now watching this. He has such great chemistry with the Queen that I wish this was a fictional story so they could be together. They made poor casting choices with the actors seemingly as Sewell is stealing the show
As he always does every time. In Man In The High Castle he's terrifyingly great.
shareHe was gorgeous in Middlemarch.
I could be a morning person if morning happened at noon.
I only wish it wasn't real so we could have her and Melbourne
Victoria's relationship cooled a bit after he began discussing his faithless wife and his son. The relationship took the role of a coquettish friendship with Melbourne until the second visit of Albert took her heart and soul.
shareTo spice it up and make it more interesting, but they didn't count on the fact Sewell would be much better at his job than I guess what they planned and his chemistry with the queen and general interpretation of the character have made him much more interesting and appealing than Albert.
I know the real life Albert and Vicky had a wonderful love story but they should've cast the actors more appropriately then. I totally understand why people are rooting for Melbourne here, and if the real life versions had been or looked anything like what they are portrayed here I believe history would have played out much differently.
Well I do not. Royalty married royalty. Period.
shareFor the sake of facts, royalty not always married royalty, including in English history.
shareMost monarchs did.
shareYeah, but still. Marriages to non-royals did happen.
shareYeah, but still my point is that Victoria was expected to marry a royal because that's what monarchs/future monarchs did back then.
shareNot always true, both King James II and King Edward IV married commoners.Ann Hyde and Elizabeth Woodville, respectively were not royal or of the nobility, even.
shareVictoria was expected to marry royalty.
Seriously, James II and Edward IV were more than a century and four centuries before Victoria.
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Victoria was expected to marry a royal because that's what monarchs/future monarchs did back then.
Elizabeth was expected to marry royalty
No need to get snarky. You have no reason to assume that I didn't like your response. Furthermore, it doesn't contradict my point, which was that Victoria was, indeed, expected to marry a royal. Bringing up Marriages that took place 100-400 years before this is unnecessary. We're all aware of them and how those marriages were received at court.
The name Elizabeth was a typo on my part, I meant to type Victoria, not Elizabeth. (Very early in the am here.)
I indeed did think you meant Victoria, but I wasn't sure.
No need to get snarky.
Elizabeth Wydville(Woodville) was an exception among the Plantagenet Queen Consorts,and she did have a Royal Mother (Jaquetta of Luxembourg)who married beneath her station after her first marriage to a Royal Duke,much older than she and son of a Monarch. They had no children.Elizabeth's Father was Earl Rivers, and not of royal blood at all. But all one has to do is look at the times this occurred at the height of the utter confusion during the War of the Roses-England's second Civil War. All the other Plantagenet Kings married Royal Princesses.You have to go as far back as the Anglo-Saxon Kings to find a Commoner as Queen Consort,and even rare then.It seems now the House of Windsor has had enough of genetic inbreeding and are so welcoming of Kate Middleton, a true Commoner who will be Queen Katherine-the times they are a changing.😊
shareChealseagirl, Elizabeth Wydville had the Blood Royal in abundance from her Mother the Royal Duchess of Luxembourg-a bloodline that reached all of the way back to Charlemagne. And the Salic Law that kept Women from inheriting Royal Title was not enforced in the royal Grand Duchy of Luxembourg😄😄😄
shareKing James II and King Edward IV married commoners.Ann Hyde and Elizabeth Woodville, respectively were not royal or of the nobility, even.
In historical fact, until very recently English Monarchs never married anyone without the Blood Royal. Historically the first marriage to a non royal in modern times was the Queen Mum,who was the youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore- and her title was simply Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,of Scottish nobility. She married to George VI (known as Prince Albert, the Duke of York until his Accession),the present Queen's Mother and Father. Remember that until Edward VIII fell in love with Wallis Simpson,an American divorcee,and abdicated the throne to his brother who became George IV. In comparison,Princess Diana was of much bluer bloodline than the Queen Mum. Before this,every British Queen Consort was always a Royal Princess(Elizabeth II's Grandmother was Princess Mary of Teck(German though a Granddaughter of Victoria),her Great-Grandmother was Princess Alexandra,the Daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark. To find another marriage of minor nobility marrying the British Monarch was George II,who married Sophia of Celle under duress-and later was repudiated.Sophia was the the Daughter of a low class French Hugenot mistress of George William, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-cousin of George I of England,who was only obtusely the heir to the English Throne,to prevent a Catholic Monarch from ruling England. Queen Consorts of non royal blood were almost always the result of a marriage of the Duke of York,the Title of the Second Son of a British Monarch. James II is another Duke of York who inherited because of the death of his brother,long after Anne Hyde was dead. He was married to an Italian Princess, Mary of Modena- and they were both deposed because he was a secret Catholic who could not keep it a secret.Both of Anne Hyde's daughters then succeeded their Father because they were Anglicans.
shareEngland since the Norman Conquest was ,like the rest of Western Europe, adopted the Salic Law. Written by Charlemagne this law forbid inheritance of a Royal Crown by Men alone. The only time the law could be circumvented, was when the Monarch had no male issue and his only children were daughters,as was true in the case of Henry VIII. Though he had a son Edward by Jane Seymour,he died at 14,and Mary,Katherine of Arragon's daughter in the only inherited. In like circumstance Victoria came to the crown,being the only child of Edward,the Duke of Kent.His eldest Brother George IV having only a daughter,Charlotte Princess of Wales who died in childbirth with the baby,a boy. Victoria's Uncles, older than her Father were childless.The race for the Heir was won by her Father Edward and his wife Victoria Duke and Duchess of Kent ,were blessed with the Princess of Wales later Alexandra Victoria (She dropped the Alexandra part when she acceded to the throne in 1837.
Agreed, I think they didn't expect it. He made a masterful job and Tom Hughes just doesn't compare (I'm not speaking about the appareance, I'm speaking of the charisma and acting skills).
The potrayal of Melbourne is fictionalized, at least partly (as Victoria's potrayal btw...the barely touched any of the most 'controversial' and 'reactionary' aspects of her character) but it's true Victoria had a crush on him and liked him a way you wouldn't like your father.
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In every biography of Victoria I have ever read,and I have read 5, the relationship of Victoria and Melbourne was more like that of a Father(since she never knew her own)or Uncle-nothing romantic. That sort of relationship she knew was reserved for a Royal Prince,as was Albert. Even Prince Phillip was a Prince of Greece.
shareInteresting. While watching this series I wondered myself whether the relationship between Victoria and Melbourne was being fictionalized for drama purposes. I haven't read any biographies about her, so I couldn't tell. But then I knew beforehand that Helen Rappaport was a historical consultant on this series, and I know she is one reliable source. So I wondered.
Still, in this kind of productions there are always "licences" to some extent.
This was a lifelong pattern for her. Later in her long life she came into close Relationships with PM Gladstone,Palmerston,Salisbury became more than just PMs-they became friends the Master of Gamekeeping her estate at Balmoral, a man known only as Mr. Brown. She came to rely on him She had much t nearly totally after Albert's death in 1861,despite vigorous attempts by her older Children the Kaiserin Victoria and Prince of Wales Edward to pull her away. It worked moderately well and Brown died in he same relationship with Benjamin Disraeli, In 1868, Disraeli 'climbed to the top of a greasy pole' as the new prime minister. He oversaw a shift towards the emergence of two parties, each with their own, coherent, policies. The polarization was accentuated by the mutual loathing of Disraeli and Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone.
In 1874, the Conservatives won a huge election victory and Disraeli once more became prime minister, aged 70. Domestically, he concentrated on social reform. He codified the law on public health and passed laws to prevent labor exploitation and recognizing trades unions. Abroad, his acquisition of shares in the Suez Canal was a major success. He had a special and close relationship with the Queen. So as one can see,the relationship with Lord M was just the first.
it's not well known but it's true she had a crush on him and not a small one.
It's not even sure if later she realized it (some of her courtiers put it that way.. that she had sexual feelings for him but failed to recognize them because it was the first time)and we'll never know for sure if she ever addressed the iussue with him because her diaries, that many people consider the holy bibile are in truth heavily censored (her daughter Beatrice destroyed 2/3 - !!! - of them because Victoria ordered her to cut off anything potentially dangerous, inappropriate, etc. so of course IF there was something really 'big', it has been cut off).
It's true she initially says he's like a father to her in her diaries but then she says or records things that you wouldn't say or think about your father, like she was jealous of any woman who talked to him, she loved to gaze at him when his hair was ruffled by wind, she cried that all her happiness was gone from her life when he resigned as PM adn she truly said the line 'do you really mean to forsake me' while holding his hand in hope that 'doing so, he could not leave me', she named the city of Melbourne in Australi after him and that city is the capital of the State of Victoria, she wasn't bothered by being called mrs melbourne and never changed her behavior to make those rumous stop, etc. etc.
Then she fell for Albert physically and proposed in five days and the rest is history, their marriage worked, but the most important biographer of Queen Victoria called her relationship with Melbourne 'one of the romances in history'.
They touched upon it - although abit more subtly - in The Young Victoria aswell with Paul Bettany's Melbourne
I've also just purchased a novel called The Queen and Lord M so it seems all the rage at the moment
The film 'The Young Victoria' also hinted at an attraction between the Melbourne and the queen, whose detractors dubbed her Mrs Melbourne. In that film he was played by Paul Bettany who is even younger than Rufus Sewell, though Melbourne was older than both, being in his mid-50s when Victoria ascended the throne. Stranger things have happened. Hayley Mills and Peggy Seeger both married men old enough to be their father.
shareMarriages that we would consider rather strange due to age difference are quite common in British Social norms.
shareWhy? Because it's a soap for little girls. I'm honestly shocked they didn't throw in a vampire for good measure.
For every lie I unlearn I learn something new - Ani Difranco
Actually you're wrong (not about the show being a popular one, but about the relationship between Melbourne and Victoria).
Almost all the biographies of Victoria and Melbourne talk about it and mention they had romantic feelings for each other, including the most important and famous ones.
“she could hardly bear to have him out of her sight. It was noticed that her eyes followed him wherever he moved; when he left the room, she would give a slight, involuntary sigh. If he were ill for a day, she would announce herself ‘quite annoyed’ and ‘put out’. If she thought that one of her ladies was monopolizing him at the dinner table, she would become extremely jealous. When she considered that he was spending too much time with the famous Whig hostess, Lady Holland, she accused him of finding the ageing Lady Holland more attractive than herself”
(Theo Aronson, Heart of a Queen: Queen Victoria’s romantic attachments)
“the Queen amused him and touched him and stirred his admiration and won his heart. For though his feeling for her was no so rapturous and unbridled as was hers for him, yet if went far deeper… at once his Sovereign, his daughter and the last love of his life, Queen Victoria inspired Melbourne with a sentiment tenderer if not more vehement the he had ever felt before”
(David Cecil, Lord M, 1954)
<I cannot say, though I feel confident of our success, HOW low, HOW sad I feel, when I think of the POSSIBILITY of this excellent and truly kind man not remaining my Minister! Yet I trust fervently that He who has so wonderfully protected me through such manifold difficulties will not now desert me! I should have liked to have expressed to Lord M. my anxiety, but the tears were nearer than words throughout the time I saw him and I felt I should have choked, had I attempted to say anything”.
<what is worse of all is being deprived of seeing Lord Melbourne as she used to>
<I really thought my heart would break; he was standing near te window; I took that dear hand of his and sobbed and grasped his hand in both mine and looked at him and sobbed out “you will not forsake me?”; I held his hand for a while, unable to let go and he gave me such a look of kindness, pity and affection and could hardly utter for tears ‘Oh! no ‘in such a touching voice>
<you don’t know what a dreadful thing this is for me>
<the state of agony, grief and despair into which this placed me may be easier imagined than described. all, all my happiness gone! I felt quite in despair and I did nothing but cry>
(Queen Victoria in her Journal about the bedchamber crisis)
etc. etc.
See in detail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFLyOZc5B1k
The reall mystery is why their peculiar relationship is not well known (i guess because it was inappopriate and because it would shadow a little the perfect fairytale about VIctoria&Albert that Victoria herself and the crown in general wanted to spread).
At the contrary, the movie young victoria totally made up the passion Albert had for her. She was besotted with him (physically), but he was not. Again, this is mentioned in almost any biography...but somehow, people prefer the fairytale.
I hope this is a 100% British production and no one can blame Hollywood for this idiocy.
1. BVS 2. TWS 3. Avengers
look, quotes are quotes. Blame Queen Victoria, her biographers and Lord Melbourne's biographers if you don't like it.
It's not me who wrote those quotes.
If you wanna write complaints, here is the list of the books quoted in the video:
Queen Victoria (her Personal Journal)
Queen Victoria (her Selected Letters)
Martina Weber, Queen Victoria’s sketchbook
Christopher Hibbert, Queen Victoria: a personal history
Lady Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria
Linda Kelly, Holland House: a history of London’s most celebrated salon
Charles Greville, The Greville Memoirs
Gillian Gill, We two: Victoria and Albert Rulers, Partners, Rivals
Theo Aronson, Heart of a Queen: Queen Victoria’s romantic attachments
Paula Bartley, Victoria
Lord David Cecil, LordM
E.J. Feuchtwanger, Albert and Victoria, the rise and fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Paul T. Murphy, Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy
Eva March Tappan, In the Days of Queen Victoria
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Queen Victoria (voice)
Thomas Dixon Jr., Weeping Britannia: portrait of a nation in tears
Clare Jerrod, The married life of Queen Victoria
Giles Lytton Stratchey, Queen Victoria
Bertrand Newman, Lord Melbourne
Actually,Albert made a rather stiff and overly serious impression on the very vivacious and liberal Victoria (who had a lifelong preference for Whig/Labour PMs)It took a seconfd visit you do not see in this dramatization by Albert,alone without his randy brother Ernst that Victoria really saw Albert as a kind,well informed,intelligent social reformer he became. And she was besotted with him like few women were ever to be besotted to their husbands. It became a match made in heaven when her Uncle the King of Belgium stopped pushing her,and Ernst was absent for it to occur. In her memoir she herself said so.
shareI haven't read all the comments so if this was already mentioned, sorry. While Lord Melbourne was an attractive man even at an older age, he was 40 years older than Victoria. He would have been near 60 when she became Queen, so it was most likely a father/daughter/mentor/student relationship which, at her young, inexperienced age, may have seemed like more. I think she may have loved him, as a daughter/student might love and admire her father/mentor, but she had no basis for comparison until she met Albert. Their love story is well known and she was very much in love with him.
It's a shame that TV viewers don't discern between real history and a fictionalized version of history. I think someone mentioned that the writers may have wanted to draw viewers in. Maybe they thought it would help the ratings, but I believe that they should have had an older actor playing Melbourne. They did the same thing in a movie version (Young Victoria) where Paul Bettany played Lord Melbourne.
I am enjoying the series for the most part and looking forward to season 2. I guess they'll be jumping ahead a few years now that she and Albert are starting their brood LOL!
So you never had a crush on a guy old enough to be your father? I know I have and I don't think I'm alone on that. (Professors, anyone?) So what if she had romantic feelings for Melbourne? That doesn't mean she couldn't sincerely love another man later on. We don't usually end up living happily ever after with the first man we fall for.
P.S. Check out Wikipedia for William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, and almost half way down the page is a portrait of Lord Melbourne. Not bad looking at all -- I'd hit that!
Rufus Sewell is 9 years younger than Lord Melbourne was when Victoria became queen. It's still quite clear in the show that he is quite a bit older than Victoria.
BTW, Jenna Coleman is 30 and she's playing an 18 year old. So Rufus is closer to the age of his character than Jenna is to hers.
The fact is that Victoria,young though she was,was infatuated by Lord Melbourne. It is well documented and by many sources including her Ladies. This all ended when She married Albert of Saxe Coburg Gotha.
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