The Prince Who Disappointed Queen Victoria
Albert Edward (1841 – 1910), who went on to reign as King Edward VII of the United Kingdom from 1901 until his death, was no great shakes as a ruler. He was a bit of a mediocrity, both as a man and as a monarch. As a libertine, freak, and all around royal pervert, however, Edward VII shone. He stood in stark contrast to his notoriously straitlaced mother, Queen Victoria, who lent her name to an uptight and prudish age. As he grew up, the then-Prince Albert, or “Bertie”, was a disappointment to his prim and proper parents, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
It began with Bertie’s first sex scandal, with a prostitute, when he was just sixteen-years-old. The queen was not amused. On the way back home from chastising Bertie for his wayward ways, his father caught a fatal bout of pneumonia. For the next four decades, Queen Victoria blamed Bertie for the death of her beloved husband, and actively tried to prevent his following her as monarch. She failed to get him removed from the line of succession, but often remarked that her longevity and long reign were due to her determination to outlive Bertie and prevent him from ever becoming king.
