by Lucy Worsley
‘I think that you will require a steady private secretary beside you,’ he said as if I had not spoken, and resting an elbow possessively upon the mantelpiece. ‘You are inexperienced; you require a man of business to help you make the decisions which will be matters of life and death. A little miss like you cannot be all alone on the throne.’
Ah. He did not know it, but he had made it easy for me.
I would not be alone on my throne.
‘Thank you, Sir John,’ I said. ‘But the duchess and I release you from our employment. We have our own advisors now, advisors from Germany and our family connections there.’ I did not say Albert’s name, but the thought of him gave me strength. ‘And the Princess Sophia, of course,’ I added. ‘She is familiar with all the business of a court.’
He grew pale with rage at this, and an ugly, angry snarl escaped his lips.
‘As – I – said – last – night, Miss V,’ he panted, now discomposed and breathing harder, ‘I see some advantage to this plot, but you must not get too high-handed. You need the support of a secretary, of a father, to carry this off.’
‘I need no support,’ I said, although my knees were now trembling under the pressure of the emotion I felt. ‘I need none of your green bottles, Sir John. I am not your creature. I am your queen. And my name is Victoria.’
For the first time in my life, I had left my father speechless. He stood, staring, as if he had been turned into stone.
Lehzen coughed.
‘Her Majesty,’ she said coldly, ‘now wishes to be alone with her household.’
My father looked steadily at me, and now, recovering himself slightly, he raised one eyebrow. I dreaded and feared what he would say next. I had stood up so well so far, but he still had the power to wound me, perhaps fatally.
But what I saw in his eyes was the barest flicker of amusement. When he spoke, it was under his breath.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed,’ he said quietly, gathering up his cane into his hand. ‘You can certainly count on a Conroy. She means it. The mouse means it.’
Without further ceremony, he turned to go.
‘Sir John!’
At first I thought it was the parrot. But it was Lehzen croaking out a final warning to my father.
‘Ah, indeed, I forgot.’
He turned back and, placing his hat over his heart, cocked out a leg and bowed down low before me.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said solemnly. ‘May I have leave to withdraw?’
‘You may,’ I said. ‘I give you leave to retire.’
As soon as the door closed behind him, I knew that the worst was over. As if enjoying a gleam of sunlight after a storm, I allowed my mind for a moment to travel to Albert in Germany, and to the joy waiting for me there. Perhaps a letter, soon a visit. How long would we have to wait until our wedding? Surely Victoria would be there too, in her role as Miss V. Conroy, bridesmaid.
And that is how my reign began.
Epilogue
Why I Wrote This Book
If you visit Kensington Palace today, you can see the room where Queen Victoria was born. You might visit the bedroom where she woke up on that May morning to learn that her uncle was dead. You will certainly walk through the Red Saloon, where the eighteen-year-old queen held her first Privy Council meeting.
As one of the curators at Kensington Palace, I’ve long been intrigued by Queen Victoria, our most celebrated palace character. Most people think of her as a grandmother in black, looking rather like a potato, and immensely old, tired and fat.
But she wasn’t always like that. In her youth she was passionate, joyful and a lover of dancing. I say that she’s ‘intriguing’ though, because it’s hard to work out whether she’s a saint or a sinner. She had a powerful sense of duty, yet she could be ridiculously intolerant of other people’s failings. She’s full of contradictions. But the person you are as an adult is shaped by your childhood, and I started to think that some of the secrets of Queen Victoria’s character might lie locked up in the Kensington Palace of her youth. She was brought up there in a curious state of strict seclusion which was intended to keep her safe, secure and untainted by the unpopularity of her Hanoverian uncles who were kings before her.
The architect of ‘the System’ was, in truth, Victoria’s mother’s comptroller, Sir John Conroy. Victoria thought of him as her arch-enemy and nemesis. She called him the ‘Arch-Fiend’ and the ‘Monster and Demon Incarnate’. The best that can be said for him is that he created the abysmal conditions in which the young queen’s character was challenged and strengthened. The Kensington System – a real name for a real thing – is seen as the fiery furnace in which was forged the steel in Victoria’s soul. And Sir John Conroy did have a real daughter, called Victoria, with whom he forced the young princess to play.
But the trouble the historians face is that most of the evidence for what it was really like to live under ‘the System’ comes from Queen Victoria herself, in her letters and diaries.
And we also know that Queen Victoria tended to self-pity and to melodrama. What if we can’t really trust and believe in her to report the truth?
I began to imagine an alternative course of events at Kensington Palace, where everything was not what it seemed. What if Sir John Conroy’s daughter, Victoria Conroy, was not really Princess Victoria’s enemy – as she claims in her diary – but her friend?
Once I had asked myself these questions, I decided to create a parallel universe where some of the ‘known facts’ of history get turned on their head. This is something that’s fun to think about, but impossible to do in a normal history book … so that’s why I wrote a novel instead. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all my Historic Royal Palaces colleagues at Kensington Palace, Queen Victoria’s childhood home, for our many conversations about her over the years. A.N. Wilson’s excellent Victoria: A Life (2014), especially the chapter in which he speculates on Conroy’s motives, set off a train of thought that led to my counter-factual approach. Other people to whom I’m extremely grateful are Catherine Clarke, Hilary Van Dusen and Hannah Sheppard, as well as Helen Vick, Helen Szirtes, Katie Everson, Jenny Beer, Lizz Skelly, Charlotte Armstrong and everyone else at Bloomsbury. Most of all, though, I’m indebted to Zoe Griffiths and Hannah Sandford.
About the author
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that runs the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and other sites, which attract more than four million visitors a year. Lucy also presents history programmes for the BBC on topics including royal palaces and the court, such as Britain’s Tudor Treasure with David Starkey. Her latest television series, Six Wives with Lucy Worsley, is about the wives of King Henry the Eighth.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in March 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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This electronic edition published in March 2017
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Copyright © Lucy Worsley 2017
Illustrations copyright © Joe Berger 2017
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eISBN 978 1 4088 8202 3
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