Queen Victoria's Children

Yum yum

Yes I agree that V and A thought that about Bertie, but it was one of the "experts" who said maybe he was just stupid (or something similar).Clearly much more to it than that.
I think it is hard to judge the past from a modern perspective; I thought the bit about her objections to breastfeeding should be seen from the perspective of someone's reaction today if their daughters said b/f was old-fashioned and bottle feeding was all the rage....
I absolutely agree that she was utterly self-centred and needy, but with everyone fawning over her, I don't think she was ever going to be anything else.
Would like to continue discussion, but need to go and put potted shrimps on blinis before visitors arrive!

I too am reading the Jane Ridley biography and I think both she and the other historians (including A N Wilson and other serious, academics ) were authentic in what they had to say. Your point Mamie is exactly right - Victoria and Albert decided Bertie was slow, had his head bumps "read"by a phrenologist who decreed his brain wasn't working the right way (ridiculous or what!) and treated him accordingly. I absolutely agree that his later years once King gave the lie to that, but in his childhood he was denigrated by his parents as "slow-witted". I thought the quotes from Victoria's letters were very revealing and basically, that's about as much as any biographer has to go on. Victoria and Albert, like many of their class and generation had dysfunctional childhoods which possiblt explains her obsession with the man but doesn't obscure her whingeing and selfishness once widowed vis a vis her children!

I am no great fan of Queen Victoria, but I think this was a bit of an over-simplification. If you read her letters to her daughters, especially Vicky, you see a much more complex relationship. I can't abide the over-dramatic, breathless hush style of narration in these programmes. For example, I have just read the new biography of Bertie and I really don't see how the early comments that he had no brain and was completely hopeless make sense as he then turned into a fairly successful and wise King (as far as these things go).
Victoria had a deeply dysfunctional childhood as did Albert, so parenting was always likely to be hard. She was clearly very needy and her children had an awful time, but I dislike the way the programme turned her into a pantomime baddie. It sometimes seems that everyone else is entitled to compassion and understanding, but bad mothers are just bad, without any understanding of why they are as they are.

Didn"t watch 1st one , why did she boil her knees in whiskey and ^ why ^

and ^ how ^

I've just watched the first one. The mind boggles at the thought of a young Princess Louise boiling her knees in whisky every night What a waste of good whisky.

I missed the middle episode but will catch up on it. Amazingly, she had to check up on Alexandra's menstrual cycle! Victoria and Albert both give a whole new meaning to 'control freak'. No wonder that Bertie, when he had his chance, was, though all too briefly, a highly popular monarch. George V and Queen Mary were, as far as I know, much more stiff and starchy.

I'm going to watch this on iplayer, gracesmum Sounds good.

Exactly - she was a cruel, selfish and unfeeling monster
(oops that's my OBE gone, I expect)

I watched it for about 15 mins. and found it so unbearable , what a cruel , cruel person she was .

In fact I have a picture of her hanging on my landing , not so sure now .

Was always under the impression she was a kindly old soul .