title: Becoming Queen Victoria: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain's Greatest Monarch
author:  Kate Williams 
description: Williams tells the story of two royal women whose lives were intricately linked and who gave hope to the British people in a turbulent period when they were ruled by the boorish, hedonistic prince regent, later George IV. The first woman was Princess Charlotte, he daughter and only child of George IV and Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Charlotte was neglected by her self-centered parents. But during the chaotic era of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain invested its hope for a stable future and a principled ruler in the pretty, and politically liberal princess, But Charlotte's 1817 death following delivery of a stillborn infant led to a royal baby-making competition, resulting in the birth of Victoria, whom the British adored from infancy. A passionate, impulsive, fun-seeking girl, Victoria was bullied by a power-crazed mother and used by Charlotte's husband, Leopold, the ambitious Belgian king, who engineered Victoria's marriage to his nephew Albert. Despite some careless writing and editing, Independent British historian Williams's (England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton) latest is an informative, entertaining, gossipy tale of two beloved Hanoverian princesses, one of whom became England's longest-reigning monarch. 16 pages of color photos. (Aug.) <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  # QUEEN VICTORIA
  
    
  
  ## By Lytton Strachey
  
    
    
  
  #### New York Harcourt, Brace And Company, 1921
  
    
    
  
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  ## Contents
  
  [ **QUEEN VICTORIA** ](text00000.html#filepos0000002319)
  
    
  [CHAPTER I](text00000.html#filepos0000002441)
  
  [BIBLIOGRAPHY AND LIST OF REFERENCES IN THE NOTES,
  ARRANGED](text00000.html#filepos0000526465)
  
    
    
  
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  # QUEEN VICTORIA
  
    
  
  ## CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS
  
  ### I
  
  On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince
  Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had hardly been a
  happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and vehement, she had always
  longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it. She had been brought up
  among violent family quarrels, had been early separated from her disreputable
  and eccentric mother, and handed over to the care of her disreputable and
  selfish father. When she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to the
  Prince of Orange; she, at first, acquiesced; but, s