"It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
As I draw closer to finishing the manuscript for my new book, there are stories I wish to tell. Stories that speak of love and how it manifests itself in our history and in our everyday lives.
Today is a love story about English royalty and the death of a royal. This is not the story of Princess Diana, however tragic that was. This is the story of a queen who mourned her husband's death for 40 years.
Queen Victoria was a lively, cheerful girl, fond of drawing and painting. She ascended to the throne of England in 1837 after the death of her uncle, King William IV. It was in 1840 that she married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. While at first Prince Albert was unpopular in some circles because he was German, he came to be admired for his honesty, diligence, and his devotion to his family. The couple had nine children and Victoria loved her husband deeply. She relied on his advice in matters of state, especially in diplomacy.
Sad as it may be, Albert's death came suddenly; in November of 1861 he contracted typhoid fever. He was sick in bed for several weeks and fell silent from the disease on December 14. Albert was only forty-two years old and Victoria was devastated.
She wrote to one of her daughters, "How I, who leant on him for all and everything—without whom I did nothing, moved not a finger, arranged not a print or photograph, didn't put on a gown or bonnet if he didn't approve it shall go on, to live, to move, to help myself in difficult moments?"
For three years, Queen Victoria did not appear in public. While she held herself in seclusion, this generated quite a bit of criticism and several attempts were made on her life during this period. It took the influence of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to persuade Queen Victoria to resume public life, by opening Parliament in 1866.
Queen Victoria never stopped mourning her beloved Prince Albert. She always wore the color black until her death in 1901, a sum of forty years. It was during her reign, which was the longest in English history that Britain became a world power on which it is said "the sun never set."
The sun never set on her love for Albert, an example of undying love. A love that lived on beyond the physical and beyond their time together. Love can be that lasting.
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