Albert, Prince Consort

British prince
Also known as: Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Franz Albrecht August Karl Emanuel, Prinz von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha
Quick Facts
Original name:
Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
German:
Franz Albrecht August Karl Emanuel, Prinz von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha
Born:
August 26, 1819, Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Died:
December 14, 1861, Windsor, Berkshire, England (aged 42)
Notable Family Members:
daughter Victoria
son Edward VII

Albert, Prince Consort (born August 26, 1819, Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha—died December 14, 1861, Windsor, Berkshire, England) was the prince consort of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and father of King Edward VII. Although Albert himself was undeservedly unpopular, the domestic happiness of the royal couple was well known and helped to assure the continuation of the monarchy, which was by no means certain on the queen’s accession. On his death from typhoid fever, the British public, which had regarded him almost as an enemy alien, finally recognized his exceptional qualities. Throughout almost 40 years of widowhood, the queen decided important questions on the basis of what she thought Albert would have done.

A member of the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty, he was the second son of Ernest, duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. He was educated in Brussels and at the University of Bonn. The marriage between Victoria and Albert, who were first cousins, was promoted by their uncle Leopold I, king of Belgium. On October 15, 1839, the young queen proposed to Albert, and they were married on February 10, 1840.

Albert soon became, in effect, Victoria’s private secretary and chief confidential adviser. Following his example, the queen, who had been inclined to indolence, became almost as hardworking as he. At his urging she abandoned her Whig partisanship in favour of a more seemly political neutrality. Disputes with Prussia in 1856 and the United States in 1861 ended peacefully, at least in part because Albert suggested rewording Foreign Office dispatches so that they could not be construed as ultimatums.

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Albert’s vigilance was unwelcome to various government ministers, especially Lord Palmerston. The British aristocracy did not care for the severe moral tone of the royal household, for Albert’s professorial manner (although he rode and shot as well as they), or for his artistic versatility. In collaboration with the London contractor Thomas Cubitt, Albert designed Osborne House (1845–51), the royal residence on the Isle of Wight. He was also an accomplished musician. He successfully managed the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace, London, and was planning the South Kensington Exhibition of 1862 when he became fatally ill. Albert and Victoria had nine children: Victoria (1840–1901), the princess royal, who later married Frederick III of Prussia; Albert Edward (1841–1910), who later became King Edward VII; Alice (1843–78), later grand duchess of Hesse; Alfred (1844–1900), later duke of Edinburgh and duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; Helena (1846–1923), later Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein; Louise (1848–1939), later duchess of Argyll; Arthur (1850–1942), later duke of Connaught; Leopold (1853–84), later duke of Albany; and Princess Beatrice (1857–1944), later Princess Henry of Battenberg.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Quick Facts
In full:
Alexandrina Victoria
Born:
May 24, 1819, Kensington Palace, London, England
Died:
January 22, 1901, Osborne, near Cowes, Isle of Wight (aged 81)
Title / Office:
empress (1876-1901), India
House / Dynasty:
House of Hanover
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'Rare' young Queen Victoria coin sells for £1,600 in Lichfield Apr. 29, 2025, 3:26 AM ET (BBC)

Victoria (born May 24, 1819, Kensington Palace, London, England—died January 22, 1901, Osborne, near Cowes, Isle of Wight) was the queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901) and empress of India (1876–1901). She was the last of the house of Hanover and gave her name to an era, the Victorian Age. During her reign the British monarchy took on its modern ceremonial character. She and her husband, Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, had nine children, through whose marriages were descended many of the royal families of Europe.

Victoria first learned of her future role as a young princess during a history lesson when she was 10 years old. Almost four decades later Victoria’s governess recalled that the future queen reacted to the discovery by declaring, “I will be good.” This combination of earnestness and egotism marked Victoria as a child of the age that bears her name. The queen, however, rejected important Victorian values and developments. Although she hated pregnancy and childbirth, detested babies, and was uncomfortable in the presence of children, Victoria reigned in a society that idealized both motherhood and the family. She had no interest in social issues, yet the 19th century in Britain was an age of reform. She resisted technological change even while mechanical and technological innovations reshaped the face of European civilization.

Most significantly, Victoria was a queen determined to retain political power, yet unwillingly and unwittingly she presided over the transformation of the sovereign’s political role into a ceremonial one and thus preserved the British monarchy. When Victoria became queen, the political role of the crown was by no means clear; nor was the permanence of the throne itself. When she died and her son Edward VII moved from Marlborough House to Buckingham Palace, the change was one of social rather than of political focus; there was no doubt about the monarchy’s continuance. That was the measure of her reign.

Lineage and early life

On the death in 1817 of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the prince regent (later George IV), there was no surviving legitimate offspring of George III’s 15 children. In 1818, therefore, three of his sons, the dukes of Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge, married to provide for the succession. The winner in the race to father the next ruler of Britain was Edward, duke of Kent, fourth son of George III. His only child was christened Alexandrina Victoria. After his death and George IV’s accession in 1820, Victoria became third in the line of succession to the throne after the duke of York (died 1827) and the duke of Clarence (subsequently William IV), whose own children died in infancy.

Victoria, by her own account, “was brought up very simply,” principally at Kensington Palace, where her closest companions, other than her German-born mother, the duchess of Kent, were her half sister, Féodore, and her governess, Louise (afterward the Baroness) Lehzen, a native of Coburg. An important father figure to the orphaned princess was her uncle Leopold, her mother’s brother, who lived at Claremont, near Esher, Surrey, until he became king of the Belgians in 1831.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II smiles to the crowd from Buckingham Palace (London, England) balcony at the end of the Platinum Pageant in London on June 5, 2022 as part of Queen Elizabeth II's platinum jubilee celebrations. The curtain comes down on four days of momentous nationwide celebrations to honor Queen Elizabeth II's historic Platinum Jubilee with a day-long pageant lauding the 96 year old monarch's record seven decades on the throne. (British royalty)
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Victoria’s childhood was made increasingly unhappy by the machinations of the duchess of Kent’s advisor, Sir John Conroy. In control of the pliable duchess, Conroy hoped to dominate the future queen of Britain as well. Persuaded by Conroy that the royal dukes, “the wicked uncles,” posed a threat to her daughter, the duchess reared Victoria according to “the Kensington system,” by which she and Conroy systematically isolated Victoria from her contemporaries and her father’s family. Conroy thus aimed to make the princess dependent on and easily led by himself.

Strong-willed, and supported by Lehzen, Victoria survived the Kensington system; when she ascended the throne in 1837, she did so alone. Her mother’s actions had estranged her from Victoria and taught the future queen caution in her friendships. Moreover, her retentive memory did not allow her to forgive readily.

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