Engraving of Prince Albert in 1849

On 14 December 1861, exactly 150 years ago today, Prince Albert died of typhoid fever.

Queen Victoria wrote of his death:

‘Sir James was very hopeful; he had seen much worse cases. But the breathing was the alarming thing – so rapid, I think 60 respirations in a minute…I bent over him and said to him ‘Es ist Kleines Frauchen’ (it is your little wife) and he bowed his head; I asked him if he would give me ‘ein Kuss’ (a kiss) and he did so. He seemed half dozing, quite quiet…I left the room for a moment and sat down on the floor in utter despair. Attempts at consolation from others only made me worse…Alice told me to come in…and I took his dear left hand which was already cold, though the breathing was quite gentle and I knelt down by him…Alice was on the other side, Bertie and Lenchen…kneeling at the foot of the bed…Two or three long but perfectly gentle breaths were drawn, the hand clasping mind and…all, all was over.’

Victoria had always kept a personal journal – and had written extremely detailed accounts of her activities every day since she was 13 years old. However, she was so distraught after Albert’s death that she could not even write – her 1861 journal ends on 14th December.

This is one of the moments in Queen Victoria’s life that we will be exploring in our forthcoming exhibition at Kensington Palace, Victoria Revealed, from 26 March 2012.

The meeting

Legendarily, his first words on seeing his own mail-order bride, Caroline of Brunswick, for the first time were ‘Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy’. Her response was to complain that ‘he wasn’t so fat in his portrait’.

The ceremony and wedding night

Married on 8 April 1795, George was too drunk to walk up the aisle unaided, appeared to attempt an escape during the service, mumbled his vows – and sobbed when no objections were raised. The wedding night was similarly disastrous – he spent much of it unconscious in the fire grate on the opposite side of the room from his new wife. Nonetheless, the marital bed was occupied at least once, but the couple formally separated after the birth of their child, Princess Charlotte, nine months later in 1796.

The marriage

Their marriage was – very publicly and scandalously – awful: amongst many other indignities, he forbade her from attending his Coronation in 1821 and tried to introduce a new bill (the Pains and Penalties Bill) in order to divorce her. The truth was that he had already secretly married his love, Maria Fitzherbert on 15 December 1785 at her house in Park Street, Mayfair. This wedding was, however, illegal: his father George III had not given his consent and Maria was Catholic, twice widowed and a commoner. He had only agreed to marry his cousin Caroline on Parliament’s promise to clear his enormous debts, nearly £50 million in today’s money.

What can history teach us about Kate Middleton’s choice of wedding dress?

In this video, our senior curator Dr Joanna Marschner reveals the style and symbolism of two centuries of royal wedding dresses. Each of these dresses, part of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection looked after by us at Kensington Palace, say something fascinating about attitudes to royal marriage, about the the state of the nation – and about the personality of the brides who wore them. From Princess Charlotte’s silver gown of 1826, through Queen Victoria’s iconic white silk dress, through to Princess Margaret’s Norman Hartnell designed couture gown.

In Joanna’s own words: “We can see from earlier royal wedding dresses that all royal brides have looked to the gifts that their generation, their era, can provide for them. For some royal brides it has been a wealth of arts and craft skills that have been available in the country. In other instances it has been fashion that has been a way of empathising with their community and the generation of which they are a part. In more recent years we have had the rise of the couturier. 2011 is a very different world to that of earlier royal brides, but one which provides many, many opportunities for creating a lovely thing.”

This silk and gilt cone of rice confetti, with the initials ‘VE’ adorning the side, belonged to a bridesmaid of Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg (known as Princess Ena) when she married King Alfonso XIII of Spain on 31 May 1906 in Madrid.

The confetti is still inside, as tragedy struck the wedding procession when Anarchist Mateu Morral threw a bomb at the royal carriage from a balcony and a guard riding alongside the new bride and groom was killed.

Princess Ena was Queen Victoria’s granddaughter and daughter to Princess Beatrice who resided at Kensington Palace, where Ena herself lived for a short while before her wedding.

The confetti cone is now part of the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection, cared for by us at Kensington Palace.

The Marie biscuit was created by an English bakery Peek Freans in London in 1874 to commemorate the marriage of the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s son.

It is believed that Battenberg Cake was created to commemorate the wedding of Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, to German Prince Louis of Battenberg in 1884. The four quarter sections of the cake represent the four German Princes of the day: Louis, Alexander, Henry and Francis Joseph.

The first married couple to feature on English coins were Queen Mary I and Philip of Spain (above, top left).  In view of their equal status to the throne they are shown facing each other.  When joint monarchs King William III and Queen Mary II (above, top right).  were invited to take the throne in 1688, William got precedence over Mary and his face is before hers, despite Mary having being the heir to the throne!  A commemorative coin was made for Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1980 (above, bottom left) and the trend looks set to continue for William and Kate (above, bottom right), although they are given equal status on the coin as befits a modern couple.

This was the ‘golden age’ of Georgian satire, with caricaturists such as James Gillray and George Cruikshank at their most influential. They took full advantage of public’s curiosity in, and jokes and rumours surrounding, royal weddings of the period to produce works such as the following:

James Gillray’s ‘The Bridal Night’, published in May 1797, depicts the marriage of Charlotte Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of George III, to Frederick Duke of Wurttemberg.  Dubbed the “Bellygerant” and described by Napoleon, “that God had put him on earth to see how far skin could stretch…”, Gillray depicts Frederick as quite unfeasibly fat, and cheekily represents the wedding night with a cherub sat atop an elephant.

Charles Williams’ ‘Throwing the Stocking’, published in April 1816,  shows Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV, on her wedding night in her bed, throwing her stocking to the four old maid aunts (the daughters of George III).  Her husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, is impatiently peeping round the door. The caricature contrasts her marriage of ‘love’ with her aunts, kept unmarried first by their father, then by their mother to buffer her from their father in his ‘madness’. Kew Palace became renowned for being home to these sisters, unmarried against their will.

A Couple of Humbugs, 1818, has a happier ending, It shows Princess Elizabeth, the third daughter of George III, gazing adoringly at her unprepossessing husband, the larger and older Prince Frederick of Hesse-Homburg. This ‘adoration’ may not have been due to the love-match of the wedding, but more to do with the marriage being an escape from Kew Palace for the princess. Already 48 at the time of their wedding, she moved permanently to Germany, becoming the Landgravine of Hesse-Homburg, free from the confines of the British court.

These prints are currently on display at Kew Palace, the home of King George III, as part of an exhibition to mark the 250th anniversary year of his coronation. The exhibition features a collection of rarely-seen Georgian royal caricatures, including numerous satirical portrayals of George III himself, united for the first time with personal objects belonging to the victims of their ‘humour’. The prints have been loaned to Kew Palace for the exhibition by Lord Baker of Dorking. Further details about the exhibition can ebe found at www.hrp.org.uk/KewPalace