Queen Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in February 1840. They had nine children. He died of typhoid (or possibly cancer) in December 1861. What did she do afterward?
Victoria entered a formalised public mourning that lasted the rest of her life. She wore black on every public occasion; she withdrew from London for most of the 1860s and 1870s; she commissioned an extraordinary number of Albert memorials (the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, the Royal Albert Hall, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and dozens of smaller monuments). She continued the queen's duties from Windsor, Osborne, and Balmoral. Her eldest son Edward eventually succeeded her as Edward VII in 1901 — without an abdication.
Read the full facts →Queen Victoria (1819–1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901 and Empress of India from 1876. Her 63-year, seven-month reign — the longest of any British monarch before Elizabeth II — coincided with the British Empire's territorial maximum, the Industrial Revolution's mature phase, and the political-cultural period subsequently called *Victorian*.
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