Download We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals AudioBook Free
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
It was the most important marriage of the nineteenth hundred years–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 English Empire was at the elevation of its ability, and felt doomed to find failure as a monarch and misery as a female until she committed her German cousin Albert and accepted him as her lord and grasp. Now renowned chronicler Gillian Gill turns this familiar history on its mind, revealing a solid, feisty queen and a brilliant, fragile prince working mutually to build a family based on support, trust, and fidelity, attributes neither possessed seen much of as children. The romance that emerges is a lot more captivating, complex, and relevant than that depicted in any previous consideration.
The epic romantic relationship began improperly. The cousins first fulfilled as teenagers for a couple of brief, uncomfortable, chaperoned weeks in 1836. At seventeen, captivating alternatively than beautiful, Victoria already “exhibited signs of seeking her own way.” Albert, the young man who had been groomed for her since delivery, was chubby, self-absorbed, and exhibited no involvement in girls, aside from this princess. So when they fulfilled again in 1839 as queen and presumed prince-consort-to-be, neither possessed particularly high hopes. However the queen was delighted to discover a grown man, sophisticated, accomplished, and whiskered. “Albert is beautiful!” Victoria had written, and she suggested just three times later.
As Gill discloses, Victoria and Albert joined their marriage longing for romantic companionship, yet each was decided 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 just two generations, Victoria and Albert employed in a very public competition for dominance. Against all probabilities, the marriage succeeded, but it was always a work in progress. And in the long run, it was Albert’s early on death that set the Queen free to create the misconception of her marriage as a peaceful idyll and her partner as Galahad, real and perfect.
As Gill shows, the marriage of Victoria and Albert was great not because it was perfect but because it was excited and complicated. Wonderfully nuanced, unexpected, often acerbic–and educated by exposing excerpts from the pair’s publications and characters–We Two is a innovative portrait of any queen and her prince, a fascinating modern perspective over a couple who have become a legend.
From the Hardcover edition.
