Part of the problem, of course, was that under a queen regnant, many of the courtiers with most regular access to the queen were women, and the Victorians were more squeamish than their predecessors had been about using female influence for political ends. (Under the last queen regnant, Anne, the Duchess of Marlborough and Abigail Masham were politically active and influential courtiers.) Albert's distrust of women and fear of gossip kept him aloof from the women of his wife's court; the courtiers commented on how little they knew of royal opinions, or of political events, despite constant arrivals and departures of ministers. Because Albert constituted himself as Victoria's principal adviser and private secretary, male courtiers were also kept at a distance: the influential private secretaries of George IV and William IV (Sir William Knighton and Sir Herbert Taylor) had no equivalent at Victoria's court during Albert's lifetime.

For twenty years, then, the royal couple had a political agenda which largely excluded the court. Socially, too, the court withdrew from the engagement with aristocratic society which had characterized its earliest years. Presentation at court was still a necessary adjunct of a young women's début in society; dinners, concerts and balls were still held, sometimes of great elaboration, as for instance in the case of the fancy dress ball at Buckingham Palace on 12 May 1842, at which all the guests wore fourteenth-century dress (Victoria and Albert appeared as Queen Philippa and Edward III). They continued to patronise the theatre and opera., but it was clear that the heart of the court was no longer in London society. In 1842, a new Maid of Honour passed her preliminary verdict on the society in which she found herself: 'I think it very formal and rather dull, but this is a profound secret'.** It was a verdict to be repeated, with varying degrees of emphasis, throughout the reign. The building of a new palace at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and the purchasing and remodelling of Balmoral in the Highlands of Scotland demonstrated in bricks and mortar the emotional distancing of the court from the metropolis; the physical distances and inconvenience of the journeys, the discomforts of the accommodation for courtiers and visitors (which were frequently remarked upon) all emphasized the desire of Victoria and Albert to maintain a 'private life'; the insistence on etiquette and on maintaining a due sense of rank and hierarchy even when removed from the centres of symbolic display, demonstrated that the much-vaunted domesticity of the royal family bore little relation to the common understanding of the term. In sharp contrast to the image of Victoria's court as a haven of domestic, family values, were the great state visits of and to foreign courts.