We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals

Summary (from the publisher): It was the most influential marriage of the nineteenth century–and one of history’s most enduring love stories. Traditional biographies tell us that Queen Victoria inherited the throne as a naïve teenager, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, and seemed doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a woman until she married her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and master. Now renowned chronicler Gillian Gill turns this familiar story on its head, revealing a strong, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working together to build a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, qualities neither had seen much of as children. The love affair that emerges is far more captivating, complex, and relevant than that depicted in any previous account.

The epic relationship began poorly. The cousins first met as teenagers for a few brief, awkward, chaperoned weeks in 1836. At seventeen, charming rather than beautiful, Victoria already “showed signs of wanting her own way.” Albert, the boy who had been groomed for her since birth, was chubby, self-absorbed, and showed no interest in girls, let alone this princess. So when they met again in 1839 as queen and presumed prince-consort-to-be, neither had particularly high hopes. But the queen was delighted to discover a grown man, refined, accomplished, and whiskered. “Albert is beautiful!” Victoria wrote, and she proposed just three days later.

As Gill reveals, Victoria and Albert entered their marriage longing for intimate companionship, yet each was determined to be the ruler. This dynamic would continue through the years–each spouse, headstrong and impassioned, eager to lead the marriage on his or her own terms. For two decades, Victoria and Albert engaged in a very public contest for dominance. Against all odds, the marriage succeeded, but it was always a work in progress. And in the end, it was Albert’s early death that set the Queen free to create the myth of her marriage as a peaceful idyll and her husband as Galahad, pure and perfect.

As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was perfect but because it was passionate and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced, surprising, often acerbic–and informed by revealing excerpts from the pair’s journals and letters–We Two is a revolutionary portrait of a queen and her prince, a fascinating modern perspective on a couple who have become a legend.

Review: It's hard to imagine that many other couples would be as well suited to a dual biography as Queen Victoria and her Prince Consort, Prince Albert. Not only were they raised virtually from birth with the understanding that their families encouraged their union, but they were first cousins with very intertwined family trees, making their childhood histories very intertwined. Furthermore, their childhoods, even before their lives assumed the same path, were very similar. Victoria was raised as a fatherless daughter and Albert as a motherless son.

Gill does a wonderful job of conveying the complicated family history and relationships that surrounded both Victoria and Albert from their birth and throughout their lives. I also enjoyed seeing behind the veil - both Victoria and Albert, as public figures, carefully tended to the image of themselves known to the world. But behind closed doors, they were just "we two," Albert the adored, and Victoria the adoring. I was surprised to learn how hardworking Albert was, and learn more about how their reign pushed the monarchy into the modern world. For example, as the first queen with regular access to trains, Victoria was also the first to go on holidays rather than just royal visits to her subjects. As such, Victoria and Albert established the tradition of the British monarchy visiting their vacation homes in Scotland. I was also surprised to learn that, despite his paternalistic and domineering view of women, Albert was a surprisingly hands-on father who doted upon his children, particularly his eldest, Vicky. As opposed to Victoria, who found pregnancy (nine of which she suffered through) intolerable and was frustrated by talking to her children even when they were older, it was Albert who was adored by his children.

I was really taken by this book, and couldn't stop thinking about it while reading. Unlike some other recent biographies I have read, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, which is in the too far distant past to have comprehensive records, Victoria and Albert satisfy because of their lifelong diary keeping and a wealth of both public and private documentation of their lives. I loved reading about the life of a marriage whose legacy still lives on in the form of Victoria and Albert's great-great granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II, as well as countless other royal families throughout Europe. I felt completely absorbed and captivated reading Gill's account of the famous couple's lives, which frequently featured the battle of wills between two strong individuals.  

My only frustration with this book (aside from the tiny print in my copy) was my desire to learn more. Only Vicky and Albert, her two eldest children, and briefly Leopold, her youngest son who suffered from hemophilia, are really discussed in much detail. Additionally, the book concludes soon after Albert's relatively youthful death. I wish Gill had gone on to have a brief synopsis of the remainder of Victoria's life. However, complaints about wanting more are chiefly a sign that I enjoyed a book, and this book is primarily about Victoria and Albert's marriage, so I understand the rationale to conclude with his death. 

Stars: 5