Most notable of these in this period were the visits of Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie to Britain in 1855, and the reciprocal visit by Victoria and Albert to Paris in the same year, cementing the alliance forged for the Crimean War. Here ceremonial display and formal etiquette combined to form a potent image of national power, symbolized by the persons of the monarchs. In a world re-forming its political structures in the wake of revolutions and changes of dynasty, Victoria and Albert's court bore witness to the longevity and continuity of the British monarchy, and asserted the preeminence of their position among the troubled royal houses of Europe. When their eldest daughter married Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia in 1858, Victoria made clear her views of the relative status of the British and Prussian crowns; faced with demands that the marriage take place in Berlin, she vetoed them firmly: 'Whatever may be the usual practice of Prussian Princes, it is not every day that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England.***

Under Albert, then, the British court finally shook off its reputation for immorality, acquiring instead a patina of domestic virtue which was to be, enhanced in the following decades by Victoria's cult of her dead husband, particularly through the publication of two volumes of excerpts from her journal: Leaves from a journal of our life in the Highlands (1868) and More Leaves (1884). If the court had been dull, earnest and unglamorous during Albert's lifetime, his death on 14 December 1861 brought it to a complete standstill.

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