Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled and Empire by Julia Baird

I’m not really sure how to review a biography, so I’ve decided to list what I’ve learned from it instead. I will say that I largely enjoyed reading this. There was a lot of politics that I sort of glazed over while reading, but the rest of engaging enough.

Women have ALWAYS had it bad in the reproductive education department. Some of the things doctors thought about womens reproductive health were shocking. Victoria herself would have been unaware of most contraceptive practices at the time.

The prudishness associated with the Victorian era were really more Albert’s things than Victoria’s.

Queen Victoria’s letter and diaries were extensively edited by her daughter and a pair of dudes. Our view of her is warped by this. Kind of reminds me of the Egyptian pharoahs and the amount of destruction they did to their records of those preceding them. The destruction of Victoria’s letters and diaries and such was done for different reasons, but the reminder is still there.

Florence Nightingale was a feminist on top of being a nurse. Not exactly surprising, but something that’s never taught in schools, at least not while I attended. Also, she was bedridden and continuing humanitarian work, like a boss.

The Crimean War. I have to admit, I first learned of The Crimean War via a Doctor Who episode (War of the Sontarans). Getting any sort of education on this period of European history in the US is apparently for either college courses or self-discovery.

I didn’t realize that Europe still wasn’t… solidified… into what we think of a Europe today in the 1800s. I had no idea how much the, uh, countries were much smaller and made up of other countries at the time. I guess I need to find a European History YouTube channel or something.

This passage had my eyes wide: “In 1864, the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts introduced official brothels for the military.” This was apparently because STIs were being blamed on the women and not the men. Just wow. And then: “In 1886 the Contagious Diseases Acts were finally repealed. They had been ludicrously ineffective: the rate of VD in the army was exactly the same it had been in 1865, unchanged by twenty years of the law.” Surprise, your bad medicine is bad medicine.

I was somewhat surprised to learn how into the military and wars Victoria was. I guess a general lack of education as to just how many wars went on in Europe during her reign is at the root of my surprise. I guess it also didn’t really occur to me as part of the imperialism thing… that stuff is just really sanitized unless you actually go to study it specifically. I don’t know, just didn’t picture Queen Victoria as very warlike.