ABSTRACT
Victoria’s first day as as queen was an extraordinarily busy one. In it she both set the themes for her sixty-three-year reign, the longest in English history, and revealed many of the strains engendered by a difficult childhood and adolescence. Victoria was born on 24 May 1819 in Kensington Palace, the first and only child of an improbable union. The duke’s new love was far less accommodating than the old one. Victoria’s feelings towards Melbourne were more complicated than she would admit even to her journal. Royalty had changed. While it had ceased to be a political force well before Victoria came to the throne, during her reign it found a new role. Victoria founded the modern monarchy by making it into a symbol for the nation, and the empire’s hopes, aspirations, fantasies and mundane worries.
