Book Spotlight: Under The Sword by Luv Lubker

 

From acclaimed Victorian historical author, Luv Lubker, the author of "Under His Spell" comes the continuing romance of the Princess Royal Victoria and Frederick III of Prussia.

Join Queen Victoria's eldest daughter and her husband, future German Emperor Frederick III in this third installment of The Rival Courts family saga, as they climb the treacherous path to their dream of German unification in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.

In the calm after the storm, Vicky and Fritz have it all: a devoted marriage, a growing family, and the promise of a bright future. But Fritz's Uncle Karl lies in wait behind the scenes, hatching his newest plot. A shocking outcome of Vicky's Royal duties will bring fresh doubts to Fritz's heart, and his fatherhood.

As personal tragedy strikes and shakes them to their core, Fritz is forced to lead the largest battle history has ever seen. One which could change the face of Europe forever.

Vicky's best friend struggles to shield her daughters from the sinister force that seeks to control them. The youngest shares her grandfather's uncanny ability to know the truth behind others' motives. But can she see the truth in him? In such a dangerous world, what heroic role will this small child play?

Can they escape the danger and betrayal that lurks in every corner as they travel to the icy expanse of Russia, the peaceful Mediterranean shores, and the vast Eastern deserts?

Will Vicky and Fritz's love and marriage survive a mysterious illness, or will Uncle Karl's conspiracies tear them apart for good?

Fans of Clare McHugh's A Most English Princess, Mary Hart Perry's The Shadow Princess, and Daisy Goodwin's Victoria will be swept away by this gripping tale of love, war, and intrigue. With rich historical detail and deeply human struggles, Under the Sword, the third installment of The Rival Courts saga, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies in a fight against a nefarious trade which flourished in the shadows of the Royal court. A must-read for lovers of Victorian-era royal fiction.

 

Buy Link:

 Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/u/mqLqv6

 

Luv Lubker began life in the Animal World, researching creatures great and small since before she can remember, and earning her degree in chicken psychology by age twelve. Not long after, she immigrated to the Victorian era, where she has lived half her life in close company with the Brontë sisters and made friends with Queen Victoria’s extended family, whom she now knows quite as well as her own kin.

 

Born in a cattle trough in the Appalachian Mountains, Luv currently resides in Texas’ Great Plains when visiting the modern world. When she isn’t writing or reading, she delights in preparing and savoring gourmet raw food with her family and exploring nature on long bike rides. Her special abilities include researching in seven languages and riding a unicycle since age seven.

 

Luv’s research delves into the unwritten stories that history left behind. Through unpublished letters, altered manuscripts, and deeply buried secrets, she reveals emotional truths concealed beneath the era’s refined exterior. Her novels give voice to the silenced, reveal what Victorians were taught to suppress and what their biographers chose to omit, tracing invisible scars that shaped lives, choices, and history itself.

 Author Links:

 Website: https://TheRivalCourts.com

Twitter / X: https://x.com/LubkerLuv

Facebook Series Page: https://facebook.com/TheRivalCourts  

Facebook: https://facebook.com/Luvy.Lubker

Instagram: https://instagram.com/luvlubker

Threads: https://threads.net/@LuvLubker

Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/luvlubker/

Amazon Author Page: https://amazon.com/stores/Luv-Lubker/author/B0C5TRY327

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21511046.Luv_Lubker

 

Top 5 Dickensian recipes

History Extra

Oxtail stew. (© CICO Books 2017)

 The many scenes of eating in the novels of Charles Dickens (1812-1870) are useful ingredients of Victorian social history, particularly his scenes of the young, who are hungry for food and security and are let down by the well-fed adults and, crucially, the institutions who should be caring for them.

Dickens knew the agony of childhood hunger and loneliness. He loved convivial meals and we know his wife Catherine gave a lot of thought to them, because she published a little book of ‘bills of fare’ called What Shall We Have for Dinner? In their London home, she oversaw the cook sweltering over a coal-burning cast-iron range in a cramped basement kitchen, to produce an impressive variety of dishes for a dinner party. To help balance the books, family menus featured economic and filling puddings.

Dickens’ knowledge of domestic details is unusual in a Victorian man: in A Christmas Carol, he knows that Mrs Cratchit, too poor to have an oven, sends her goose to the baker’s and the washing copper doubles up as a pudding pan; in Martin Chuzzlewit he makes a joke about making a beefsteak pudding pastry with butter. This is all part of a picture he loved to paint – a rosy-cheeked young woman learning to cook for her brother or husband.

Victorian food may have a reputation for being either stodgy or unnecessarily fussy, but recreating the dishes that Dickens and his characters tuck into shows that it can be delicious, savoury and warming, light and elegant – and always best shared. Here, author Pen Vogler shares five top Dickensian recipes, updated for modern kitchens…

Charitable soup Catherine Dickens’ menu book is most indebted to the recipes of the celebrity chef Alexis Soyer. In 1847, in the midst of the Irish potato famine, he travelled to Dublin to set up a famine-relief kitchen and wrote Soyer’s Charitable Cookery, the proceeds of which he gave to charity. He later travelled to the Crimea to change the diet of soldiers, particularly those in hospital.

SERVES 6
2 onions, sliced a little olive oil, for frying
2 leeks, sliced and washed free of grit
2 sticks of celery, chopped
 2 lb 3 oz/1kg shin of beef or neck of lamb, bone in, cut into pieces by your butcher, plus some stock bones
2 small turnips, chopped bouquet garni or 2 bay leaves and a few sprigs of thyme and curly parsley, tied together
8½ cups/2 litres water (or beef stock if you are using meat without bones)
6 tablespoons pearl barley
3 carrots, chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven, if using, to 325°F/165°C/Gas 3.

Sauté the onions in a little olive oil in a skillet/frying pan until they begin to soften, then add the leeks and celery and continue to soften for 5 minutes.

Tip this into a saucepan. Add a little more oil to the pan and brown the meat lightly on all sides in two batches—don’t let it sweat in the pan—then add it to the onions. Add the turnips, herbs, and either stock or cold water plus the stock bones. Season with salt and pepper, bring to a simmer and simmer on a very low heat, or cover and put it in the preheated oven, for 1½ hours.

Add the pearl barley and carrots and continue to simmer for 45 minutes, or until the pearl barley is cooked. Toward the end of the cooking time, take the stock bones and herbs out of the pan and discard.

Take the meat out of the broth, pull it off the bones and shred it, then return the meat to the pan.

Oxtail stew
 In The Old Curiosity Shop, Nell, her grandfather, and their eccentric fellow travellers are revived at The Jolly Sandboys with an equally eccentric “stew of tripe… cow-heel… steak… peas, cauliflowers, new potatoes, and sparrow-grass [asparagus] all working up together in one delicious gravy.” Margaret Dods’ dish of oxtail rather than cow-heel, served with peas and root vegetables, is also good for a hungry crowd on a rainy night.

SERVES 4
1 oxtail, about 3¼ lb/1.5kg, cut into short lengths (your butcher will do this for you)
4 slices of unsmoked streaky bacon, chopped olive oil, for frying
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
 3 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped 1 small turnip, peeled and roughly chopped a sprig of thyme, a few stalks of parsley, and a bay leaf, tied in a bouquet or in a muslin
1 quart/1 litre organic beef stock salt and freshly ground black pepper sauce hachée  or horseradish sauce

 For the sauce hachée
2–3 gherkins, finely chopped
1 tablespoon flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, finely chopped salt and freshly ground black pepper Optional extra flavourings for sauce
 2 scallions/spring onions, very finely chopped or ½ teaspoon grated horseradish or a little lemon zest

Rinse the oxtail pieces and then leave to soak in salted cold water for an hour or two.

Drain the oxtail, place in a pan of fresh water and bring to a rolling boil for 10–15 minutes, skimming the scum from the surface (this removes the bitterness).

If you are cooking the stew in the oven, preheat it to 300°F/150°C/Gas 2. Fry the bacon in a very little olive oil in a large flameproof pot. Add the onions and garlic and sweat until they begin to soften, then add the rest of the vegetables.

 Add the drained oxtail pieces to the pot, fry them a little in the fat until they start to color, then add the herbs, the beef stock, and enough water to make sure the meat is completely covered. Bring to a simmer, check the seasoning, and add a little salt if necessary. Cover and either keep on a very low heat or put in the oven for 4 hours. Add a little water if the oxtail is becoming dry.

When the meat is falling off the bone, take the stew off the heat or remove from the oven. If the gravy is too thin, remove the meat and vegetables with a slotted spoon and boil it fast to reduce it until it is the depth of intensity you like, then add salt and pepper to taste and return the meat and vegetables.

Serve with peas, mashed carrots, and parsnips. For the sauce hachée, simply mix the ingredients and any extra flavouring you select together and serve separately, along with a bowl of horseradish sauce. Or make horseradish mash by infusing warm milk with grated horseradish root while the potatoes are cooking.

Ruth Pinch's beefsteak pudding

Beefsteak pudding. (© CICO Books 2017)

 In Martin Chuzzlewit, Ruth Pinch - the sort of ingénue housekeeper that Dickens loved writing about - is worried that the beefsteak pudding she cooks for her brother Tom will “turn out a stew, or a soup, or something of that sort.” Tom enjoys watching her cook, but later teases her when they realize she should have used suet for the pastry. Eliza Acton gives Ruth the last word by devising “Ruth Pinch’s Beefsteak Pudding,” made with butter and eggs.

SERVES 4

For the pastry
3½ cups/450g self-rising flour a pinch of salt
2/3 cup/150g cold butter, cubed, plus extra for greasing
3 eggs

For the filling
1 lb 2 oz/500g stewing steak, cubed 1 onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons freshly chopped thyme
2 teaspoons freshly chopped parsley
3 level tablespoons all-purpose/plain flour about
 2/3 cup/150ml beef stock (or water plus a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup) salt and freshly ground black pepper

And any of Eliza Acton’s suggested additions:
a few whole oysters or 5½ oz/150g kidney, chopped (Eliza recommended “veal kidneys seasoned with fine herbs”) or
6 oz/170g “nicely prepared button mushrooms”
or a few shavings of fresh truffle
or 5–7 oz/150–200g sweetbreads, chopped

Start by making the pastry. Sieve the flour and salt into a basin; add the butter and rub it in. Beat the eggs together with a dash of cold water, then stir them into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon. Pull the mixture together with your hands, adding a little more water or flour as necessary. When you have an elastic dough, turn it onto a lightly floured board and roll out into a large disc. Cut a quarter out and put to one side.

Fold the two outer quarters over the middle quarter and put into a well-buttered 2-pint/1.2-litre basin, with the point in the bottom. Unfold the two outer quarters and push the pastry into the sides of the basin, wetting the edges so that they seal together and the whole basin is fully lined. Trim the top edge so there is ½–1 inch/1–2cm of pastry overhanging the edge of the basin.

Roll out the remaining quarter to make a circular lid.


Mix the meat with the remaining ingredients except the liquid, making sure the flour is well distributed. Turn it into the pastry-lined basin and pour the stock or liquid over. Brush the top edge of the pastry in the basin with water and put the pastry lid on top, pinching it around to seal.

Put a lid of buttered foil or a circle of parchment or greaseproof paper and a cloth on top, adding a pleat to give room for the pudding to puff up.

Place the basin in a saucepan so that the water comes halfway up the side of the pudding. Cover and steam for up to 4 hours, checking and topping up the water level every half hour or so.

Serve straight from the bowl or turn it out and cut it into segments. The butter crust makes this easier to do than the traditional suet one.

French plums

French plums. (© CICO Books 2017)

 The French Plums that Scrooge sees in the greengrocer’s are “blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes” (which, if “exceedingly ornamental,” even Mrs. Beeton concedes might be put directly on the dining table). Port and cinnamon turn too-tart plums into a Christmas delight. Candied French plums were Christmas gifts, but should not be confused with “sugar plums,” which are, in fact, sugared nuts or seeds.

Put the water or orange juice, port, sugar, cinnamon stick, and lemon rind in a pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved and you have a syrup.

Add the plums, cover, and stew gently for 15 minutes.

Serve with cream, Italian Cream (see page 157), or custard. Alternatively, make into a plum pie by mixing the ingredients together in a pie dish, adding a pastry lid (see pastry recipe on page 129), and baking at 400°F/200°C/Gas 6 for 30–35 minutes.

SERVES 4
3 tablespoons water or juice of
 1 orange
3 tablespoons port
1 tablespoon soft brown sugar a cinnamon stick a small piece of orange or lemon rind
approx. 1 lb 2 oz/500g French plums, halved and stones removed

Almond cake for Steerforth
The feast of currant wine, biscuits, fruit, and almond cakes that Steerforth persuades David Copperfield to provide feeds David’s infatuation with the charismatic older boy. A subsequent gift from Peggotty, of cake, oranges, and cowslip wine, he lays at the feet of Steerforth for him to dispense. William Kitchiner’s light almond cake pairs well with oranges, berries, or other fruit.

SERVES 8–10
butter, for greasing
5 free-range eggs
1 cup minus
 1 tablespoon/180g golden superfine/caster sugar (or granulated sugar, if you cannot find golden superfine/caster sugar) finely grated zest of 1 lemon or orange
1 teaspoon almond extract (optional)
a pinch of salt
a pinch of cream of tartar
2 cups/200g ground almonds
¼ cup/35g all-purpose/plain flour

For the frosting
1 tablespoon orange or lemon juice
 ¾ cup/100g confectioners’/icing sugar, sifted
To serve fresh fruit, such as raspberries or cherries, or fruit compôte, such as orange, apricot, or plum

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Grease a 9-inch/23-cm bundt pan/tin or ring mold, or a plain springform pan/tin. Separate the eggs and leave the whites to come to room temperature.

 Make sure there is no yolk or fat in the whites, which would prevent them from beating properly.

Beat the yolks with ½ cup/100g of the sugar until pale and fluffy, then beat in the lemon or orange zest and the almond extract, if using.

In a completely clean bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff (you should be able to turn the bowl upside down and they won’t fall out!). Add a quarter of the remaining sugar, the pinch of salt, and the cream of tartar, beat again, then fold in the rest of the sugar.

Fold the whites into the batter, a quarter at a time, followed by the almonds and flour. Scrape the mixture into the mold or pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 35–40 minutes until the cake is shrinking from the sides of the pan.

 Remove from the oven and leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out.

To make the frosting, stir the orange or lemon juice into the sifted confectioner's/icing sugar, then drizzle over the cake. Fill the centre of the cake with fresh fruit such as raspberries or cherries.

Alternatively, keep it plain and serve it with a compôte of fruit such as oranges, apricots, or plums.

Almond cake. (© CICO Books 2017)

Compotes of fruit

 Eliza Acton recommends a compôte of fruit as a more elegant dessert than the “common ‘stewed fruit’ of English cookery.” The fruit, being added to a syrup, better retains its structure and taste, and the syrup is beautifully translucent. She recommends serving the redcurrant compôtes with the substantial batter, custard, bread, or ground rice puddings Victorians loved.

 The preparation is simple. Gently boil white granulated sugar and water together for 10 minutes to make a syrup, skimming any scum from the surface. Add the fruit and simmer until the fruit is lightly cooked. If the syrup is too runny, remove the fruit with a slotted spoon and arrange it in a serving dish. Reduce the syrup over a medium heat, let it cool slightly, and then pour it over. It may also be served cold, and it keeps for a day or two in the fridge. Cinnamon, cloves, vanilla beans/pods, or a little orange or lemon peel can be used as flavourings when you make the syrup.

Eliza Acton recommends the following proportions and timings:

 Rhubarb, gooseberries, cherries, damsons - syrup made from ¾ cup/140g sugar with 1¼ cups/280ml water; add 1 lb/450g fruit and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Redcurrants and raspberries - syrup made from ¾ cup/140g sugar with 2/3 cup/140ml water; add 1 lb/450g fruit and simmer for 5–7 minutes.

Mrs. Beeton recommends the following proportions and timings:

 Oranges - syrup made from 1½ cups/300g sugar with 21/3 cups/570ml water; add 6 oranges, skin and pith removed, cut into segments. Simmer for 5 minutes. Apples—syrup made from 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons/225g sugar to scant 1¼ cups/280ml water; peel, halve, and core the apples and simmer in the syrup with the juice and rind of a lemon for 15–25 minutes.

Dinner with Dickens: Recipes Inspired by the Life and Work of Charles Dickens by Pen Vogler (CICO Books, £16.99) is on sale now. Pen Vogler is a food historian whose other books include Dinner with Mr Darcy and Tea with Jane Austen.

In profile: the British princess who scandalised the royal family

History Extra

Here, Laurie Graham, the author of The Grand Duchess of Nowhere, tells you everything you need to know about the famous British princess…

 Born: 25 November 1876, San Antonio Palace, Valletta, Malta
 Died: 2 March 1936, Schloss Amorbach, Bavaria
 Family:
Ducky was the daughter of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg and Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna of Russia. She therefore had two illustrious grandparents: Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II.
 Famous for:
Her prowess as a horsewoman, her scandalous divorce, and her position in the crumbling House of Romanov in 1917.
 Life:
At the time of Ducky’s birth, her father was serving in the Royal Navy. Her childhood was spent at various naval bases and in a rented house, Eastwell Park, in Kent. She and her siblings also travelled with their mother to her native Russia, where Ducky fell in love with one of her cousins, Cyril Vladimirovich Romanov.

 Queen Victoria, always planning advantageous marriages for her grandchildren, thought the Romanovs too foreign for consideration. The husband she chose for Ducky was another cousin, Grand Duke Ernest of Hesse. He and Ducky were married on 19 April 1894.

 Ernest was a reluctant bridegroom, and on the day of the wedding, his sister Alix rather stole the couple’s thunder by announcing her own engagement, to Tsesarevich Nicholas, soon to be Tsar Nicholas II. The marriage of her sister-in-law to the next Russian Emperor was to shape much of Ducky’s future life.

 Cyril Vladimirovich was aware of Ducky’s feelings for him and reciprocated them, but he held out no hope for their future. He was a serving officer in the Russian Navy, travelling the world. She was married to Ernest, and divorce was unthinkable.

 To the amazement of those who knew Ernest’s sexual preferences (it was common knowledge that he was attracted to men), Ducky became pregnant. Their daughter, Elisabeth, was born in March 1895, and Ernie proved to be a besotted father.

 Nevertheless, Ducky’s misery and loneliness in the marriage prompted her to beg Grandma Queen for permission to divorce – her plea was denied.

 On 22 January 1901, Queen Victoria died. Freed of her grandmother’s iron rule, Ducky left Ernest and demanded a divorce. Cyril, all too aware of the ramifications of marrying a divorced cousin, kept a low profile. Ernie’s sister Alix, now Empress of Russia, was appalled by the divorce and the insinuations about her brother’s sexuality. She became Ducky’s avowed enemy.

 In autumn 1903, tragedy struck: Ducky and Ernie’s eight-year-old daughter died of typhoid. Ducky’s grief finally brought Cyril to her side. They were married, quietly and without the tsar’s permission, on 8 October 1905.

 Empress Alix’s revenge was swift: Cyril was stripped of his title, expelled from the navy, and banished from Russia.

 Ducky and Cyril began their married life in happy exile in Paris. Two daughters were born – Masha in 1907, and Kira in 1909.

 In Russia, Tsar Nicholas was beginning to feel isolated. His brother, Grand Duke Michael, had also been banished for marrying a divorcee. Cyril’s father, a pillar of the Romanov family, was dying, and the young tsesarevich, Alexis, was stricken with haemophilia.

 Nicholas invited Cyril to return to Russia and bring with him his wife and young family. Overnight Ducky became the Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna.

 But time failed to soften Empress Alix’s antipathy to Ducky. Even as civil unrest intensified and the tsar became increasingly beleaguered, the Imperial family kept their distance.

 When war broke out August 1914, Ducky formed an ambulance unit and travelled with it to the Polish front.

 At the end of 1916, following the murder of the Empress’s controversial favourite, Grigori Rasputin, the Romanov dynasty began to splinter. Some believed Tsar Nicholas could be persuaded to make reforms, while others felt it was a lost cause.

 Ducky’s husband was one of the first to declare himself. In March 1917, after a mutiny at the Kronstadt garrison, Cyril broke with the tsar and pledged allegiance to the new government.

 As the Revolution gathered momentum and the prospects of the Romanovs became clear, Cyril and Ducky (40 years old and heavily pregnant with her third child) escaped to Finland. They spent the rest of their lives in exile, principally in France, where Cyril continued to use his imperial title and to plot for the eventual restoration of the Romanov monarchy.

 In late January 1936 Ducky was in Germany at a granddaughter’s christening when she suffered a stroke. She died just over four weeks later, and was buried in her family vault in Coburg. Cyril survived her by less than three years.

 The torch of restoration passed to their son, Vladimir, born in exile in Finland, and is still carried today by his daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna.

 Laurie Graham is a historical novelist and journalist. Her novel about Ducky, The Grand Duchess of Nowhere, is published by Quercus, hardback £19.99.

Prince Albert: The death that rocked the monarchy

History Extra

Queen Victoria with Princesses Alice and Louise and a portrait of her late husband, Albert, in 1863. (Credit: Getty Images)

When Prince Albert breathed his last at 10.50pm on the night of Saturday 14 December 1861 at Windsor, a telegraph message was sent within the hour to the lord mayor that the great bell of St Paul’s Cathedral should toll out the news across London. Everyone knew that this sound signified one of two things: the death of a monarch or a moment of extreme national crisis such as war.
People living in the vicinity of the cathedral who had already gone to their beds that night were woken by the doleful sound; many of them dressed and began gathering outside St Paul’s to share the news with shock and incredulity. Only the previous morning the latest bulletin from Windsor had informed them that the prince, who had been unwell for the last two weeks, had rallied during the night of the 13th. The whole nation had settled down for the evening reassured, hopeful that the worst was now over.
Most of the Sunday morning papers for the 15th had already gone to press and did not carry the news, although in London one or two special broadsheets were rushed out and sold at a premium. For most ordinary British people the news of Prince Albert’s death came with the mournful sound of bells, as the message was relayed from village to village and city to city across the country’s churches.
Many still did not realise the significance until, when it came to the prayers for the royal family during morning service, the prince’s name was omitted. But it was still hard to believe. The official bulletins from Windsor had suggested only a ‘low fever’ – which in Victorian parlance could be anything from a chill to something more sinister like typhoid fever. The royal doctors had been extremely circumspect in saying what exactly was wrong, not just to the public but also Albert’s highly strung wife, and very few had any inkling of how ill he was. How could this have happened, people asked themselves; how could a vigorous man of only 42 have died without warning?
The impact of Prince Albert’s death, coming as unexpectedly as it did, was dramatic and unprecedented. The last time the nation had mourned the loss of a member of the royal family in similar circumstances had been back in 1817 when Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent – and heir to the throne failing the birth of any legitimate male heirs – had died shortly after giving birth to a still-born baby boy. Public grief at this tragedy had been enormous, and it was no less with the death of Albert.
His might not have been a young and beautiful death like Charlotte’s but its impact, both publicly and politically, was enormous. It was seen as nothing less than a national calamity, for Britain had in effect lost its king. And worse, Albert’s death had come at a time of political crisis, with the British government embroiled in a tense diplomatic standoff with the Northern states during the American Civil War. This had prompted Prince Albert’s final act of public business on 1 December. Already very sick, he had amended a belligerent despatch from Lord Palmerston following the North’s seizure of two Confederate agents from a British West Indies mail packet, the Trent. The agents were on their way to Europe to raise support for the South.

_{The royal family in c1860/61. By championing the virtues of family life, Victoria and Albert had rescued the monarchy’s ailing reputation. (Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library)}
At worst, the boarding of the Trent was a breach of British neutrality. Yet, Albert had warned that to force the issue without finding a diplomatic way out would mean war – at a time when Britain had barely recovered from the disastrous campaign in the Crimea.
His intercession had helped defuse a tense political situation, a fact that prompted Prime Minister Palmerston to observe that such had become the prince’s value to the British government that it would have been “Better for England to have had a ten years’ war with America than to have lost Prince Albert”. Yet Britain had indeed lost Albert, and the prince’s death plunged the queen into grief so profound that it would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy, not just for the rest of Victoria’s reign but in the way in which it has come down to us today.
The public response in the days immediately afterwards bears many parallels with the outpouring of grief that followed the death of Princess Diana more than a century later. And, in a sombre precursor of princes William and Harry following Diana’s coffin in 1997, the loss was made equally poignant by the presence at Albert’s all-male funeral at Windsor of two of his young sons, Bertie (20) and Arthur (11).

The whole country was swathed in black: shops were shuttered, blinds drawn, flags at half mast, theatre performances and concerts cancelled. The middle classes put themselves and their children into black, and trade at the funeral warehouses boomed as never before. Even the poorest rural cottager donned some form of black, if only an armband. That Christmas, 1861, was one of the gloomiest ever seen in England.
It would take time, however, for the far more significant, political impact of the prince’s death to unravel. During their 21 years of marriage Victoria and Albert had done much to rescue the ailing monarchy from the lingering dissolute reputation of the Hanoverians and reinvigorate it as a democratic and moral example for the new age. The royal family had become popular again and accessible to ordinary people, thanks to the example it set of the simple domestic virtues of monogamy, bourgeois decency and family life. It was an image that Albert had assiduously promoted, right from the first popular magazine illustrations of the royal family enjoying Christmas at Windsor, German-style, with decorated fir trees.

Once the initial shock of Albert’s death had receded, the far more pressing question in everyone’s minds, particularly those in government, was its impact on Victoria. ‘How will the queen bear it?’ they all asked themselves; how would she cope with all her onerous duties without him? No one had any doubt about the extent of Victoria’s total dependency on her late husband, not just emotionally but also in dealing daily with the mountain of official business.
Albert had been all in all to Victoria: husband, friend, confidant, wise counsel, unofficial secretary and government minister. There was not a single aspect of her life on which she had not deferred to his advice and greater wisdom. Indeed, so reliant was she on his opinion in everything that she would even consult him on what bonnet to wear.

_{The queen and prince consort in 1854. (Credit: Getty Images)}
With time – and with his wife continually sidelined by pregnancy – Albert had become all-powerful, performing the functions of king but without the title, driving himself relentlessly through a schedule of official duties that even he admitted felt like being on a treadmill. But it is only after he died that the nation acknowledged the debt it owed him. The laments were many and profound in the acres of obituaries that filled the British press. Many of them were tinged with a profound sense of guilt that Albert had never been sufficiently valued during his lifetime for his many and notable contributions to British culture as an outstanding patron of the arts, education, science and business.
Victoria’s descent into a crippling state of unrelenting grief rapidly created problems. It soon became clear that her retreat from public view and her intense sorrow would endure well beyond the usual two years of conventional mourning. Without Albert she felt rudderless. To lose him, as she herself said, was “like tearing the flesh from my bones”. The isolation of her position as queen was profound. “There is no one to call me Victoria now,” she wept, in response to the grinding loss of intimacy, affection and physical love that she now felt.
Albert had been Victoria’s one great, abiding obsession in life. With no strong man to support her, with a feckless heir, Bertie, who had caused her nothing but anxiety, and a family of nine children to parent alone, she retreated into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood. Worse, she imposed the most rigorous observance of mourning on her family and her entourage and became increasingly intractable in response to every attempt to coax her out of her self-imposed purdah. Her observance of the rituals of mourning became so fetishistic and so protracted that there was a danger of her sinking so totally into her grief that she – and the monarchy – would never recover.
The only thing that interested Victoria now was her single-handed mission to memorialise her husband in perpetuity. She did so with aplomb, turning her grieving into performance art as she instigated a range of artistic and cultural monuments commemorating Albert that would transform the British landscape and set their visual stamp not just on the second half of her reign but on our perception today of the Victorian era.

_{Victoria in mourning in c1862. Her retreat from public life following Albert's death prompted a surge of anti-monarchical sentiment across Britain. (Credit: Getty Images)}
As far as Victoria was concerned, her happy life had ended the day Albert died. But by the mid-1860s her ministers – and even her own children – were becoming frantic at her continued retreat from pubic view and her dogged refusal to take part in any form of public ceremonial. Anti-monarchical feeling was growing, with regular complaints that Victoria did nothing to justify her income from the Civil List. All Albert’s hard work over 20 years in educating his wife in her performance of duty was now being dangerously undermined.
By the end of the 1860s discontent escalated into outright republican challenges and calls for Victoria’s abdication. Then, just when all seemed lost, the monarchy was rescued from disaster. The near fatal illness of the Prince of Wales in December 1871 – on the tenth anniversary of his father’s death – and his miraculous recovery prompted the first piece of state ceremonial in over a decade when Queen Victoria attended a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral. Three days later a crude ‘assassination’ attempt against her rallied public sympathy for Victoria to unprecedented levels.
By this time the queen had begun to recover, thanks to the support of her trusted Highland servant John Brown and, in 1874, the return of her adored Disraeli as prime minister. It was by now clear that the queen would never leave off her black, but as she was coaxed back into public view, she did so as a respected figure of enduring dignity and fortitude, ageing into her familiar image of matriarchal widow, empress and ‘Grandmama of Europe’. It was only now that people started calling themselves ‘Victorians’, as the widowed queen set her stamp irrevocably on the great and final days of empire at the head of a ceremonial and constitutional monarchy that survives to this day.

Queen Victoria’s Letters: A Monarch Unveiled airs on BBC Four on Thursday 23 July 2015 at 9pm. In it, AN Wilson reveals that Queen Victoria may have led a more exciting life after the death of Prince Albert than we may have first thought.