Victoria was the granddaughter of
King George III of
England and the oldest of a few surviving
legitimate children of any of his sons.
George IV's daughter Charlotte died in 1817 and at the time there were no other legitimate offspring of George IV or any of his siblings; three of his brothers married hastily to provide heirs to the throne and Alexandrina Victoria happened to be the first one born, in May 1819. She succeeded her uncle
William IV, whose own children died in infancy, to the
throne of England in
1837 at the age of 18.
Her father died when she was 8 months old, so she was raised by her mother and uncles and a governess, Louise Lehzen. Contrary to popular belief, Victoria grew up in England and was only German by ancestry; she could not even rule Hanover in Germany as her male ancestors had because in Hanover a woman could not be the ruler.
In 1840 she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and they had nine children. Albert was a man of culture and taste and passed these things on to his wife. When he died of typhoid in 1862, Victoria mourned deeply and dressed in black for the rest of her life; for a long time she also refused to participate in any public events, a great annoyance to the politicians of the day who felt it was her duty to represent the country. She did form a close friendship with her Scottish groom, John Brown (chronicled in the movie "Mrs. Brown") which worried her friends and family. When Brown died she worried them even more by making another close friendship with her Indian secretary Abdul Karin.
Victoria did not always get along with politicians, especially those of the Liberal party; she did like Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. She also liked the prestige of the British Empire and was very pleased to be officially titled "Empress of India" in 1877. She was also a very popular queen in her later years, after she started appearing in public again. She died after the longest reign in British history in January 1901 and was succeeded by her son Edward VII.