Kim Reynolds
The Victorian Court

The character of any court depends on a combination of the cultural and political circumstances in which it exists and on the personality and preferences of the monarch at its head: just as the flamboyant, highly-structured Versailles court of Louis XIV was a unique product of the king's ambitions and the times in which he lived, so too was Victoria's court a reflection of both her personal interpretation of the role of the monarchy and the circumstances of the British state in the nineteenth century. A reign of almost sixty-four years witnessed great changes in Britain, and the character of the court shifted and evolved in parallel with the queen's life.

Victoria's accession to the throne on 20 June 1837 came at a time when the esteem in which the monarchy and the court were held was at its lowest point in centuries. Despite his domestic virtues, George III had lost the American colonies and for ten years suffered from a debilitating illness giving the appearance of insanity. His eldest son, the Prince Regent, later George IV, was notorious for gambling, womanizing, and for disappointing the political hopes of the friends of his youth. William IV, who never expected to be king, was a naval man who had lived with an actress for more than a decade and produced a string of illegitimate children. Thus from 1810, when George III's final illness began, until the accession of the eighteen-year old Victoria in 1837, the British court was tainted by the failures and failings of its monarchs. George IV's betrayal of the Whigs when he became Regent suggested that the court could no longer be relied on as a route to political power, while the flagrant immorality of a court dominated by the king's mistresses and the sloth of the ageing king prevented it from acting as the pre-eminent social centre for the British aristocracy and continental visitors which was its other traditional role.

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