A Darkened Earth
This chapter shows how the destruction of Victoria’s household through the deaths of her mother and husband in 1861 tested her faith, prompting an anguished search for spiritual and material sources of consolation. While this alarmed her friends and advisers, it also created a new template for popular attitudes to the throne, as preachers encouraged their congregations to feel emotional community with the mourning Queen. Victoria’s insistence that she had a religious obligation to pile up ever more baroque monuments to her husband’s virtues, ranging from the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore and the Albert Memorial Chapel to a series of pious memoirs, eventually generated resistance and scepticism. Nonethelessas later chapters will show, her widowhood became an enduring symbol of her soft power, which allowed preachers to wax eloquent on her lonely suffering.