Legitimacy of Queen Victoria

Speculation over the parentage of Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria

The parentage of Queen Victoria has been the subject of speculation. It has been suggested that her biological father was not Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. This suggestion has largely centred on the familial incidence of hereditary diseases and circumstantial evidence, and is not widely believed.

## Succession crisis

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Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales

Princess Charlotte of Wales was the only daughter of the Prince Regent (later King George IV). Her and her stillborn son's death in 1817 set off a race between the Prince Regent's brothers, the six surviving younger sons of King George III, to see who could father a legitimate heir. Some of the brothers had been previously involved in scandals. Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, the second in line to the throne, was amicably separated from his wife, Princess Frederica Charlotte of Prussia, who was already past childbearing age. The sixth son, Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, had contracted two marriages in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772 (as had the Prince Regent before his marriage to Charlotte's mother). Three brothers, the third, fourth and seventh in line to the throne, married in 1818: Prince William, Duke of Clarence; Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn; and Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. The fifth son, Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was already married but had no living children at the time.

The Duke of Clarence married Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. Though he had been able to father ten illegitimate children with Dorothea Jordan, an earlier mistress, none of his children by his wife survived childhood. The second daughter, Elizabeth, lived the longest, being born on 10 December 1820 and dying on 4 March 1821. The next son to produce an heir was the Duke of Cambridge, whose son George was born on 26 March 1819. He would be displaced two months later by the birth of a daughter to the Duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, his wife. Their first and only child was Princess Victoria. She was born on 24 May 1819, just three days before the son of the Duke of Cumberland, also called George.

Both George III and the Duke of Kent died in January 1820. The Prince Regent became George IV and Victoria was third in line to the throne after her uncles, the Duke of York and Duke of Clarence (the future William IV). She would ultimately take the throne as Queen Victoria in 1837.

A pedigree showing the succession of Victoria to the throne

## Controversy

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Sir John Conroy in an 1837 painting by Henry William Pickersgill

Rumours about Victoria's parentage centred on a controversial Irish soldier and adventurer called Sir John Conroy who was her mother's private secretary and the comptroller of her household. The Duchess of Kent was the same age as Conroy, whereas she was nineteen years younger than her husband; the court gossiped openly about their relationship. After the Duke's death, Conroy assumed a parental role towards Victoria that she bitterly resented. This caused a near permanent rift between Victoria and her mother, as well as between the Duchess and her brother-in-law, William IV. Conroy expected that when Victoria became queen he would be made her private secretary, but instead one of her first acts as monarch was to dismiss him from her household.

The belief that the Duchess and Conroy were lovers was widespread. When asked by Charles Greville whether he believed they were lovers, the Duke of Wellington replied that he "supposed so".[1] The Duke later recounted a story that when Victoria was young she had caught Conroy and the Duchess engaged in what were diplomatically called "some familiarities".[2][3] Wellington reported that she told Baroness Louise Lehzen, who told her close ally, Madame de Späth, who confronted the Duchess about her behaviour. According to Wellington, the Duchess of Kent was furious and promptly dismissed de Späth.[4] Victoria, when queen, appears to have disputed the story, stating that her mother's piety would have prevented any undue familiarity with Conroy.[5]

## Genetics

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A. N. Wilson suggested that Victoria's father could not have been the Duke of Kent for two reasons:

* The sudden appearance of hæmophilia in the descendants of Victoria. The illness did not exist in the royal family before.
* The supposed disappearance of porphyria from the descendants of Victoria. According to Wilson, the disease was prevalent in the royal family before Victoria but not afterwards.[6]

The argument was first proposed in (Potts and Potts, 1995).[7]

Both arguments can be countered. Since most hæmophilia is X-linked (most importantly, hæmophilia B, which is now known to be what Queen Victoria passed to her descendants), in order for a father to transmit the condition he must have it himself, but Conroy was healthy. Hæmophiliacs were unlikely to survive in the early nineteenth century due to the lack of effective treatments.[8] Indeed, life expectancy was 11 years or younger, even into the later half of the twentieth century,[9] and is still as low in developing countries.[10] Nor is there evidence of hæmophilia in either Conroy's ancestors or descendants, or any mention of any hæmophiliacs in any document associated with the Kents. It is likely that the mutation arose spontaneously because the Duke of Kent was 50 when Victoria was conceived; hæmophilia-causing mutations arise more frequently in the children of older fathers,[11][12][13][14] and spontaneous mutations account for about 30% of cases.[15]

With regard to porphyria, there is no genetic evidence that the royal family even had the disease, and its diagnosis in George III's case (and others) has been questioned.[16] Not all porphyria is passed down genetically, and even if the diagnosis of hereditary porphyria is correct, it may well have continued among descendants of Queen Victoria. Her daughter Victoria, Princess Royal, as well as her daughter, Charlotte of Prussia, are suspected to have suffered from it, as is another descendant of Queen Victoria's, Prince William of Gloucester.[17][18]

Concrete evidence on the origins of the hæmophilia disease and paternity of Victoria could be achieved with a DNA test of her or her parents' remains, but no such study has been sanctioned by the Royal Family.[19]

## Notes

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1. ^ Hibbert, Christopher (2001). Queen Victoria: A Personal History. Da Capo Press. p. 27\. ISBN 978-0-306-81085-5.
2. ^ Hibbert (2001), p. 27.
3. ^ Longford, Elizabeth (1965). Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed. New York: Pyramid Books. p. 118\. ASIN B001Q77XAQ.
4. ^ Williams, Kate (2010). Becoming Queen Victoria: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain's Greatest Monarch. Ballatine Books. p. 211\. ISBN 978-0-345-46195-7.
5. ^ Longford (1965), p. 119.
6. ^ Wilson, A. N. (2002). The Victorians. Hutchinson. p. 25\. ISBN 0-09-179421-8.
7. ^ Potts, D. M.; Potts, W. T. W. (1995). Queen Victoria's gene. Stroud: Alan Sutton. ISBN 978-0-7509-0868-9.
8. ^ Packard, Jerrold (1973). Victoria's Daughters. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 43–44.
9. ^ Agaliotis, Dimitrios P.; Zaiden, Robert A. & Ozturk, Saduman (24 November 2009). "Hemophilia Overview". EMedicine. webMD.
10. ^ Konkle, Barbara A.; Josephson, Neil C.; Nakaya Fletcher, Shelley M. & Thompson, Arthur R. (22 September 2011). Pagon, R.A.; Adam, M. P.; Bird, T. D.; et al. (eds.). "Hemophilia B". GeneReviews. Seattle: University of Washington. PMID 20301668.
11. ^ McKusick, Victor A. (1965). "The Royal Hemophilia". Scientific American. Vol. 213\. p. 91.
12. ^ Jones, Steve (1993). The Language of the Genes. London: HarperCollins. p. 69\. ISBN 0-00-255020-2.
13. ^ Jones, Steve (1996). In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny. London: HarperCollins. p. 270\. ISBN 0-00-255511-5.
14. ^ Ruston, Alan R. (2008). Royal Maladies: Inherited Diseases in the Royal Houses of Europe. Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford. pp. 31–32\. ISBN 978-1-4251-6810-0.
15. ^ "Hemophilia B (Factor IX)". National Hemophilia Foundation. 2006. Retrieved 20 June 2010.
16. ^ Peters, Timothy J.; Wilkinson, D. (2010). "King George III and Porphyria: A Clinical Re-Examination of the Historical Evidence". History of Psychiatry. Vol. 21, no. 1\. pp. 3–19\. doi:10.1177/0957154X09102616. PMID 21877427.
17. ^ Röhl, John C. G.; Warren, Martin & Hunt, David (1998). Purple Secret: Genes, "Madness" and the Royal Houses of Europe. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 0-593-04148-8.[page needed]
18. ^ Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. Abc-Clio. 5 May 2003. ISBN 9781851093557.
19. ^ Rappaport, Helen (2003). Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 195\. ISBN 978-1-85109-355-7.

## Further reading

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* Hudson, Katherine (1994). A Royal Conflict: Sir John Conroy & the Young Victoria. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 9780340607497.

* v
* t
* e

Queen Victoria

Queen of the United Kingdom (1837–1901), Empress of India (1876–1901)

Events|

* Coronation
* Honours
* Hackpen White Horse
* Wedding
* Wedding dress
* Golden Jubilee
* Honours
* Medal
* Police Medal
* Clock Tower, Weymouth
* Clock Tower, Brighton
* Bust
* Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition
* Diamond Jubilee
* Honours
* Medal
* Jubilee Diamond
* Jubilee Tower
* Cherries jubilee
* Recessional (poem)
* Cunningham Clock Tower
* Devonshire House Ball

Reign|

* Bedchamber crisis
* Prime ministers
* Edward Oxford
* The boy Jones
* Empress of India
* John William Bean
* Victorian era
* Victorian morality
* Visits to Manchester
* Foreign visits
* State visits received
* Death and state funeral
* Mausoleum

Family|

* Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (husband)
* Victoria, German Empress (daughter)
* Edward VII (son)
* Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine (daughter)
* Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (son)
* Helena, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (daughter)
* Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (daughter)
* Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (son)
* Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (son)
* Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg (daughter)
* Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (father)
* Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (mother)
* Feodora, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (half-sister)
* Carl, 3rd Prince of Leiningen (half-brother)
* Descendants
* Royal descendants

Early life|

* Kensington System
* John Conroy
* Victoire Conroy
* Louise Lehzen
* Lady Flora Hastings
* Charlotte Percy
* George Davys
* Legitimacy

Honours|

* Places
* Empire Day
* Royal Family Order
* Victoria Day
* Victoria Day (Scotland)
* Victoria Cross
* Victoria (plant)

Depictions|

| Film|

* Sixty Years a Queen (1913)
* Victoria in Dover (1936)
* Victoria the Great (1937)
* Sixty Glorious Years (1938)
* Victoria in Dover (1954)
* Mrs Brown (1997)
* The Young Victoria (2009)
* Victoria & Abdul (2017)
* The Black Prince (2017)
* Dolittle (2020)

|

Television|

* Happy and Glorious (1952)
* Victoria Regina (1961)
* The Young Victoria (1963)
* Victoria & Albert (2001)
* Looking for Victoria (2003)
* Royal Upstairs Downstairs (2011)
* Victoria (2016–2019)

Stage|

* Victoria and Merrie England (1897)
* Victoria Regina (1934)
* I and Albert (1972)

Statues and
memorials|

* List of statues
* London
* Memorial
* Square
* Statue
* Leeds
* St Helens
* Lancaster
* Bristol
* Weymouth
* Chester
* Reading
* Liverpool
* Birmingham
* Birkenhead
* Dundee
* Balmoral cairns
* Guernsey
* Isle of Man
* Valletta
* Gate
* Statue
* Winnipeg
* Montreal
* Square
* Statue
* Victoria, British Columbia
* Toronto
* Regina
* Bangalore
* Hong Kong
* Ahmedabad
* Kolkata
* Visakhapatnam
* Penang
* Sydney
* Building
* Square
* Statue
* Adelaide
* Brisbane
* Melbourne
* Christchurch

Portraits|

* Victoria, Duchess of Kent with Princess Victoria (1821)
* The First Council of Queen Victoria (1838)
* Queen Victoria Enthroned in the House of Lords (1838)
* Coronation Portrait (1838)
* The Coronation of Queen Victoria (1839)
* Queen Victoria Riding Out (1840)
* The Marriage of Queen Victoria (1842)
* Queen Victoria (1843)
* The Arrival of Queen Victoria at the Château d'Eu (1843)
* The Christening of the Prince of Wales (1845)
* The Opening of the Great Exhibition by Queen Victoria (1851–52)
* The Marriage of Victoria, Princess Royal (1860)
* The Marriage of the Prince of Wales (1863–65)

Poetry|

* "The Widow at Windsor" (1892)
* "Recessional" (1897)

Songs|

* Victoria
* Choral Songs

Stamps|

| British|

* Penny Black
* VR official
* Penny Blue
* Two Penny Blue
* Penny Red
* Embossed stamps
* Halfpenny Rose Red
* Three Halfpence Red
* Penny Venetian Red
* Penny Lilac
* Lilac and Green Issue
* Jubilee Issue

|

Colonial|

* Chalon head
* Canada 12d black
* Canada 2c Large Queen
* Ceylon Dull Rose
* India Inverted Head 4 annas
* Malta Halfpenny Yellow
* Mauritius "Post Office" stamps

Related|

* Osborne House
* Queen Victoria's journals
* John Brown
* Abdul Karim
* Pets
* Dash
* Diamond Crown
* Victoriana
* Victoria sponge

* ← William IV
* Edward VII →

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