Alexandrina Victoria Welf von Wettin, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, of the House of Hanover, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India
(Among Other Names)

At some point, everyone wants to know one thing about the dwindling number of Britain's royalty.

"Just what the heck are their last names?"

Well, that's no problem. The current "House of England" is Windsor. So that's their last name, right?

Weeeellllll, not quite. The official name of the Royal Family - at least the kids of Elizabeth and Phillip - is Mountbatten-Windsor with a proper upper crust British hyphenated last name. That was made official on February 8, 1960 in a royal proclamation and so that's pretty much that.

However, for the immediate family of Elizabeth's great-great-grandmother - who was dubbed Alexandrina Victoria when she was born on May 24, 1819 - their last name was not so clear cut. That's because the house of a royal or aristocratic family is not necessarily their surname. After all, Lord Broadarse of Seldom-on-Tyne may really be named Fats Smith. But if a queen is as prolific as Victoria - she had nine kids - eventually the descendants end up getting so diluted from royalty that they need a proper last name.

But when she became queen, Victoria didn't have to worry about any last names - at least for a while. She married off her kids to various other royal families of Europe. This was a long standing tradition based on the idea that if the kings of the various countries were married to queens from someplace else, all the countries would get along. After all, if the Germain Kaiser was the uncle of the King of England, then surely that would prevent any wars for centuries to come.

Fat chance, and yes, Kaiser Bill - that is Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht of Prussia - was indeed the uncle of George V, the King of England when war broke out in August 1914. And George was the cousin - and spitting image of - Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia until 1917. So the plan really worked, didn't it?

Actually, it did, pretty much. Before Victoria became queen, England had been involved in a number of World Wars. In 1754, they fought the French in the Seven Years War (also called the French and Indian War). Then starting in 1775 with the - ah - "troubles" at Lexington and Concord, England was fighting its own colonists and - yes - the French. Later, around 1803, a young whippersnapper named Napoleon Bonaparte decided to conquer the world and England found themselves fighting the armies of this Corsican and - yes, again - the French. This war kept going until 1815, four years before Victoria was born.

But during Victoria's reign from 1837 to 1901, the wars tended to be short and localized. Even the Crimean War - arguably a World War - lasted only 2½ years and was fought a long way off. Otherwise, England was mostly fighting indigenous people who thought that independence was a good idea.

And it can't be denied that Victoria and Albert marrying off their sons and daughters to various continental royal families played a big part in preserving what the Victorians called the Pax Britannica. Kaiser Bill's dad, Frederick, was married in 1858 to Vicky - Victoria's eldest - in London of all places, for crying out loud! But Bill was born in Berlin in a house on Unter Den Linden in 1859.

Bill, it seems, had no proper last name. The von Prußen you'll sometimes see tacked onto his various given names just means "of Prussia" in German. Bill's actual "house" name was Hohenzollern - which can be loosely translated as the "Fancy Place of Zollern". Zollern is a region of modern day Germany and the Hohen was tacked on in the Middle Ages.

It was only in the later part of Victoria's reign, when it was evident that having a last name for her increasing number of descendants might be prudent, did she ask the College of Heralds - a group of appointees who check into the backgrounds of people who want a coat of arms - to determine what her last name really was. Figuring out her last name was complicated when in 1840 she had married Albert. Albert was born in Schloss Rosenau in Germany. The actual country or district or region of whatever it is was Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This was his "house" name. But his house also fell under the House of Hanover which had been supplying English kings since George I.

In Germany George had not been anyone in particular, just a (ptui) lowly duke - he sure as heck wasn't a king. He remained pretty much German even after he became King of England, and he never learned to speak English. His son, George II, was also born in Germany and it wasn't until George #3 came along - the George best known to Americans - that England ended up with a real English born-and-bred monarch. George IV - there is a surprising lack of imagination in naming English kings - was also English born as have been all English monarchs since.

Albert in fact was Victoria's first cousin. Since he was of Hanoverian lineage, you might think he might become king. But he was too far removed from direct succession, so being king was out of the question. There was in fact quite a bit of resentment that Victoria going out of the country to pick her hubby. So Albert was dubbed the "Prince Consort" - which sounds like he and Victoria just hung out and dallied around together.

The fragmented royal lines of Germany was a result of a fragmented country which was really a collection of independent states, cities, counties, regions, and small countries - until at least the mid-1860's. Then the various principalities all formed a - quote - "confederation" - unquote. Of course, after World War I there was the short lived Weimar Republic serving as a more or less United Germany and from 1933 to 1945 Germany was a bit too united. Then for the next 45 years German was divvied up into East vs. West and finally pulled itself together in 1990.

So how does a a house or duchy or the place where you're born become a surname? Well, eventually the nobility and royals have enough kids and their kids have enough kids so the descendants have no hope of even been classed as "lesser" nobility, much less being a king or queen. Then the house names get pared on down, new names tacked on, or other changes made. Eventually the specific names apply to a small enough group of people to where they become the family name.

But the "mini-house" names also apply to the people who keep their royal titles and noble pretensions. So the various King George's of England, although still of the House of Hanover had a family name. They were the Welfs.

But remember Victoria married Albert and in keeping with the good Victorian wife - no pun intended - her family name was that of her husband. Well, eventually, the College of Heralds looked up Albert's family background and sorted through the various family connections. What they found - and what they told Victoria - was her last name was Wettin or von Wettin. For some reason Victoria didn't like the name and so took Albert's "house" name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha or the triply hyphenated version Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

So all went well until World War I when George V (yes, we're up to #5 now) and his country found themselves fighting his Uncle Bill who was the Kaiser of Germany. Suddenly a name like Saxe-Coburg-Gotha wasn't sitting too well with George's English subjects. So looking around for a proper English name, George picked out the name Windsor. That remains the name of the family in general - nieces, nephews, and cousins are all Windsors - although as we saw, Elizabeth and Phillip's kids have the name Mountbatten-Windsor.

We mentioned Victoria's real first name was Alexandrina (her family called her Drina), her official title was Princess Victoria of Kent. So that's why we call her "Victoria". When she was born it was accepted that a queen could rule even if there wasn't a king. But Victoria, like Albert, was pretty far removed from direct succession. But for a hundred years, all of the kings' direct heirs kept dying off (George III and George IV were not the first in line either). Then in 1830 Victoria's uncle - William - became king, but his two kids also died young.

So at age 11, Victoria suddenly found herself heir to the English throne. There was the proviso that her mom - also named Victoria and (in Victoria's opinion) a dour lady who wasn't much fun - would be the regent. That is, Victoria's mom would really be temporarily in charge should Victoria become queen before she was 18.

We've all seen the picture of Victoria being woken up in her pajamas by William Howley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Francis Conyngham, who was the Lord Chamberlain whatever the heck that is. We have Victoria's first hand account - she kept a daily journal - and later that day the Prime Minister, William Lamb, who had the title Lord Melbourne (note the "Lord" name isn't his last name), came by. Victoria liked him immediately and William more or less took it on himself to teach the young lady how to be the Queen.

William and Victoria saw each other almost daily and were comfortable enough to speak openly to each other. Victoria sometimes expressed jealousy when William would have dinner with some other lady. Naturally rumors started that Victoria and William were a little too close, and the less courteous began calling Victoria "Mrs. Melbourne". Victoria herself said she looked on William as a father (her own dad had died when she was less than a year old), and there's no reason to doubt her word.

William was certainly not just a sycophantic politician buttering up a monarch. William would sometimes chide Victoria because she didn't get enough exercise, and he told her she should walk more. But walking made her tired, she said. And rocks got into her shoes. William cautioned her about overeating and drinking too much of the sweet ale she liked. She should only eat when she was hungry, he said. Well, Victoria said, she was always hungry. So that means she should eat all the time. The back and forth went, well, back and forth.

They sometimes disagreed on other topics. Victoria thought that physical disciplining of children was wrong and degrading. But William remembered with fondness his own -ah - "sessions" with the headmaster at Eton, which he felt had a most wholesome influence on him and he tried to convince Victoria of the virtues of the practice. Victoria never agreed perhaps because of the rumors that William's fondness for firmness spilled over to his dealings with his lady friends. One of these ladies wrote to him from Italy saying she had seen a cabinet decorated with a picture of a man and woman slapping the onion and she almost bought it to send it to him.

Sometimes William's advice dealt with even more delicate topics and wasn't the best counsel. In 1839, one of the court ladies-in-waiting, Lady Flora Rawdon-Hastings - known as Scotty to her friends - had been changing in appearance. The unmarried Flora was getting a bit thick about the waist and this was first noticed shortly after she had accepted the invitation to return alone from Scotland with Sir John Conroy. We should point out that John was an assistant to Victoria's mom and there were rumors that John and the elder Victoria had a very close relationship. Not surprisingly, the younger Victoria did not like John at all, and she suspected that he and Flora had failed to maintain propriety while alone in the carriage. Tensions began to run high between Victoria and her mom.

For an unmarried lady with proof of poor virtue to remain employed by the royal household was unthinkable. Of course, Flora indignantly denied any impropriety and with only an expanding paunch as evidence - Victoria herself was starting to tub up - nothing could be proven. She asked William what was to be done.

Whatever the wildness in his private chambers, William always took a cautions approach in public life. Certainly, if something was urgent, he said, you should take immediate action. If not, just wait and see. So here, he said, just wait an see.

After a few more months, Flora's appearance was continuing to change for the worse. Although the tell-tale swelling was increasing, the rest of her was getting emaciated. She kept denying any misconduct and the Battle of the Mother and Daughter Victorias grew even more severe. The elder Victoria maintained that Flora was virtuous but seriously ill. But when the younger Victoria told William that some people (i. e., her mom) were saying Flora was sick, he snorted in derision, "Sick?"

A doctor was summoned, and he said he could only give a meaningful opinion if Flora would consent to a full examination - "without stays". Flora, though, refused, fueling speculation she had something to hide.

The truth is there was a lot of politics going on in the background. Flora's family was a bit on the conservative side - her dad had been an officer at the misnamed Battle of Bunker Hill during the American "troubles" - and were Tories. So they were opposed to William and his Whigs (sounds like a 1950's rock group doesn't it?). Naturally William was part of the anti-Flora faction.

But soon the whole country was weighing in on the subject, and the people tended to side with Flora. Letters began to appear in the papers asking why the Queen of England was not providing for one of her attendants who was seriously ill. Victoria's mom continued to defend Flora and the young Victoria began to complain of "having an enemy in the house".

Finally tired of enduring the sneers and leers of Victoria's friends (and Victoria), Flora consented to a medical examination. It was too late and Flora died in July 1839. A post-mortem found that Flora was indeed a completely virtuous lady who had died from a large tumor on her liver.

Suddenly Victoria was persona non grata in her own country. When she rode in her carriage, her subjects booed and jeered. When she guiltily attended Flora's funeral, some bystanders even threw rocks. William stayed on as prime minister with some difficulty and finally resigned for good in 1841.

We have to have some sympathy for William. He had had some troubles in his marriage which are not what you expect in a proper Victorian household. It seem his wife, Carrie, had learned of William's various girlfriends and figured what was good enough for the gander was good enough for the goose. So she began making whoopee with George Byron who was a lord and in this case used his last name as his title name. He is, of course, the famous Lord Byron, who lady Caroline said was "mad, bad, and dangerous to know".

But Caroline decided that just dallying with a young handsome swain wasn't enough payback, and she started writing novels which were thinly disguised tellings of her own romantic doings. Her novels became quite popular and eventually she and William separated, again something that wasn't that common among the proper people of the time.

With William no longer around to give her daily advice some of Vicctoria's less agreeable habits continued unabated. She was not only an ample eater, but she was a fast eater. She gobbled down her food and then expected the table to be cleared for the next course. If you hadn't finished the course, well, that was just tough tiddy. Some of her dinner guests barely had a chance to eat anything at all.

What surprised some of the visitors was the Queen's fondness for a tot. She particularly liked whiskey - Scotland, after all, was just a little ways off - and to the shock of William Gladstone, she would put a dash of her favorite single malt into her wine. She would even put it into her tea, for crying out loud! We hope this was not her morning cuppa. But in any case it was no surprise that Victoria continued to pudge up.

On the other hand, Victoria was not above preaching to others about their bad habits. Most of all that was smoking. Now such a complaint seems strange for the era that produced Sherlock Holmes, certainly one of the world's most famous, albeit fictitious, smokers. We read that Holmes always smoked strong shag tobacco and in one story he said that being deprived of tobacco was harder than not eating for three days.

But Victoria lived through most of the 19th century. This was a time where the smoking habit underwent a massive evolution. In the early 1800's - when Victoria was born - smoking was not common among the upper crust. Instead, a well-set gentleman would snort snuff. Chewing tobacco was largely a practice of the vulgar Americans as Charles Dickens noted with disgust.

Victoria forbade smoking in her presence. That, though, was merely enforcing a custom. Even into the early 20th century well-bred men did not smoke in the presence of the ladies. Victoria's son-in-law, Christian, once asked if he could smoke, and she showed him to a room in the servants quarters.

Smoking among English women was virtually unknown in Victorian Times although a few naughty ladies might sneak off to have a smoke in secret. If you had a dinner party with women present, there was no smoking allowed. Only after dinner was completed would the men hie off to another room for a puff. Because the guests would not bring along their pipes - which would have been quite gauche - the host would usually offer cigars along with a glass of Port.

How many people actually smoked in the 19th century is something that's hard to determine as statistics only began to be collected in England in the 1940's. Frequency of smoking certainly changed with the decades and varied widely among the social and economic classes. A fairly recent analysis of skeletal remains from a London cemetery that was in use from 1843 to 1854 showed about 40 % of the men smoked pipes (as indicated by the tell-tale marks of the pipe stems on their teeth) and only about 3% of the ladies. These individuals, though were working class Londoners, not upper class nabobs, and we can be certain that none of the ladies in Victoria's household smoked unless they were like the naughty ladies we mentioned.

Although you have to be cautious of accepting fiction as a source of history - try to use Catch-22 to learn about the World War II Army Air Corps - novels are more reliable when you're looking at social customs. And if you go read the novels of guys and gals like (yawn) Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, and William Thackeray, smoking was taken for granted even as early as the 1840's. William himself was a dedicated cigar smoker although we know of one rich fat cat who preferred smoking with his servants who puffed their pipes. This gentleman's daughter, though, remarked how bad smoking made her dad smell.

Pipe smoking eventually became acceptable to the middle and upper classes possibly because of the appearance of the hookah. Imported from the Middle East and India, the hookah became favored by those who had held Her Majesty's Commission. Therefore hookah smoking became an acceptable pastime for a gentleman. So it was natural that men began to take to pipes - as did Sherlock - at least in the privacy of their studies. Smoking in the street - cigar or pipes - was the mark of the low born.

But smoking really began to take off in the 1850's after the Crimean war. That's when the soldiers brought back that Turkish innovation - the cigarette. Smoking was allowed in railroad cars by 1860 and by the 1870's most men smoked.

At first men mostly rolled their own, but in the 1880's with commercial production of cigarettes, smoking rates really shot up up. Oscar Wilde was an inveterate cigarette smoker and even carried a can of cigarettes around from room to room. Smoking continued to rise in the 20th century and after World War I, women were smoking in public with élan. By 1948, 85% of the adults in England smoked.

Amazingly - probably due to kids rebelling from the puffing parents - smoking dropped off in the 1960's and has continued to do so. As of this writing smoking in the UK and the US are under 20%. Victoria, if not being amused, would surely have been pleased.

Did Albert smoke? Evidence is he did and even established a smoking room at Osborne House, a royal getaway on the Isle of Wight. He apparently preferred cigars despite the shameless appropriation of his name and inaccurate image by an American tobacco company for their pipe crimp cut. The room was marked with an "A" rather than the ubiquitous "V & A" of other rooms.

Albert and Victoria's marriage was fairly long by the standards of the day and amazingly successful for royalty. We also have to admit that Albert was a pretty level-headed fellow and he was able to be a good advisor. When Victoria first became queen, her personal attendants - the "ladies-in-waiting" - were all of the Whig political party, as was her friend and prime Minister, William Lamb. So naturally Victoria leaned toward that party.

But in 1840 the Whigs suffered losses at the polls. Although they still held a slim majority, William tendered his resignation. The new Tory prime minister, Sir James Peel, recommended that Victoria as a show of impartiality appoint some Tory ladies to her personal staff. But Victoria, not understanding that James didn't mean replace them all, said no. So Sir James refused to form a new government, and William stayed on as Prime Minister.

But William's tenure didn't last long and in 1841, Sir James and his Tories won a majority in Parliament. It was a given that the leader of the majority party was to be Prime Minister, but Victoria still didn't want to boot out her ladies. But then Albert said if she only replaced three of the ladies with Tories - not all twenty-five = and that would be enough for James. Victoria agreed and things more or less worked out. We do, though, wonder how the three Tory replacements got along with the 22 Whig incumbents.

The backlash regarding Lady Flora Hastings wasn't the only trouble Victoria had with her subjects. On three occasions Victoria was physically accosted and once a bystander fired a pistol at her. In all cases it was recognized the perpetrators were not in their right minds and were treated relatively leniently. These incidents and the way Victoria and Albert handled themselves increased their standing with the citizens although we can't say they were really popular.

Then when Albert died in 1861, Victoria went into seclusion that lasted a decade. People soon began to wonder - as some do today - what the heck do they need a queen for? After all, if all if the taxes are used to support a queen who just sits around in a castle and eats too much and too fast and pust whiskey into her tea, couldn't the money be put to better use? Soon an an anti-monarchical movement grew up that preached that having a monarchy was crazy.

But what about Victoria's other famous moniker, that is, Victoria Brown? Well, one of her assistants was a Scotsman named John Brown. Like many Scotsmen he was of a congenial and easy going nature and Victoria liked him personally. Soon after Albert's death she began to rely on John both as a companion and and advisor. Naturally outsiders always hate insiders and when it was learned that John and Victoria shared adjacent rooms the discourteous began to refer to Victoria as "Mrs. Brown".

In fact, given today's far from rigorous journalistic standards you read it's been - quote - "proven" - unquote - that there was a secret marriage. Of course, in our more lascivious age we'd ask "Why bother?" But Victoria was after all a proper - well, a proper Victorian lady - and you only got on with your husband. So a secret marriage would be a way out for her to take additional recreation and still live by the proper English mores. But the marriage stories are almost certainly bogus.

It wasn't until around 1871 that the the new prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, tactfully advised the 52 year old queen about the dangers to the monarchy if she didn't come out of seclusion and start acting like a queen. That meant presiding over the opening of parliament and getting out more in her carriage. Victoria followed Benjamin's advice, and by the time of her Golden Jubilee in 1877 and especially by her Diamond Jubilee in 1887, she had become one the most popular monarchs in English history.

As the turn of the century approached, Victoria even began to host celebrity events. In 1899, a young cellist named Pablo Casals played a concert for her at the Crystal Palace in London. With assistance - she had trouble getting around - the octagenarian queen rose and personally thanked the young man. As we know, Pablo did well in his profession, playing for President Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 and later - 1961 - for John Kennedy.

Victoria died on January 22, 1901 and so she squeaked into the new century by three weeks. She had reigned for over 63 years and her son Edward - by now it was #7 - took over. Edward managed a scant 9 years although he probably could have lived longer had he not been such a tub. Edward never really took the job that seriously and enjoyed himself, certainly a lot more than his mom did.

References

Queen Victoria: A Personal History, Christopher Hibbert, Harper-Collins, 2000

Majesty - Elizabeth II and The House Of Windsor, Robert Lacey, Harcourt, 1977.

Popular Errors Explained, Stewart McCartney, Random House UK, 2010.

Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion, Helen Rappaport, ABC-CLIO, 2003.

"Queen Victoria: The Day the People Vented Their Fury", The Telegraph, Karolyn Shindler, March 3, 2009

Daily Life in Victorian England, Sally Mitchell, Greenwood Press, 1996.

"Smoking and Health in London's East End in the First Half of the 19th Century", Don Walker and Michael Henderson, Post-Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2010.

"How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died", Paul Clayton1 and Judith Rowbotham, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 1235 - 1253, 2009.

Lord Melbourne, Leslie Mitchell, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Smoking in British Popular Culture 1800-2000: Perfect Pleasures, Matthew Hilton, Manchester University Press, 2000.

"The Adventure of the Dying Detective", Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow, John Murray, 1917.

Cannabis in Medical Practice: A Legal, Historical and Pharmacological Overview of the Therapeutic Use of Marijuana, Mary Lynn Mathre, McFarland, 1997.