{"id":31772,"date":"2023-12-27T11:35:51","date_gmt":"2023-12-27T10:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=81207"},"modified":"2023-12-27T23:11:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-27T22:11:42","slug":"queen-victorias-unhappy-childhood-life-under-the-kensington-system","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/queen-victorias-unhappy-childhood-life-under-the-kensington-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Victoria\u2019s unhappy childhood: life under the \u2018Kensington System\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

What was Queen Victoria like as a child? And did she have a normal childhood? Here, historian Lucy Worsley explores the monarch\u2019s youth at Kensington Palace \u2013 where she lived under the rules of the ‘Kensington System’ \u2013 and finds that it might not have been as unhappy as Victoria herself would have had us believe <\/p>

By Lucy Worsley\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 27 December 2023 at 10:35 AM<\/p>

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On 24 May 1819, a baby girl was born at Kensington Palace. It\u00a0was then the least fashionable of the royal palaces, hidden away behind the lime trees of its wide green gardens to the west of London.<\/p>\n

The arrival of Alexandrina Victoria, as she was christened, did cause some excitement. A\u00a0long line of carriages calling for news about the health of the mother, the Duchess of Kent, reached all the way to Hyde Park Corner. But at that point the new baby, King George III<\/a>\u2019s latest granddaughter, was fairly low down the royal pecking order.<\/p>\n

As the years of her childhood passed, however, and as her elder cousins failed to thrive and died, Alexandrina Victoria grew in importance. It gradually emerged that the little girl growing up quietly behind closed doors at Kensington Palace would one day reign over the whole of the British Isles, including Ireland. And, in due course, a quarter of the globe\u2019s landmass.<\/p>\n

\"The\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
The young Victoria with her mother, Victoire, Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait by William Beechey. \u201cMy greatest of fears was that I loved her too much,\u201d said Victoire. (Photo by Kean Collection\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

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The death of Queen Victoria\u2019s father<\/h2>\n

Just as Queen Victoria<\/a>\u2019s path to the throne was not obvious at the time of her birth, her education and training for the position seem at first sight to have been quite shockingly inadequate. One of the problems was the early loss of her father, the Duke of Kent.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0had terrible debts, caused partly by an expensive refurbishment of his apartment at Kensington. In the winter of 1819\u201320, he tried to save money by taking his beloved wife and baby daughter to live cheaply in a rented holiday house, out-of-season, at Sidmouth in\u00a0Devon. There he caught pneumonia and passed away.<\/p>\n

This left his widowed duchess, whose name was Victoire, in a difficult position. German, and only recently married to her duke, she spoke no English and felt ostracised by the rest of the royal family. She had few resources, either financial or intellectual, on which to fall back for the care of her daughter.<\/p>