Victoria, episode 6 review: the 'papped' Queen is not amused, but is marriage on the rocks?
Is it possible, as Victoria (ITV) has been suggesting, that the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert might not have been as perfect a union as history would have us believe? The series has always portrayed Albert (Tom Hughes) as more uptight, self-regarding and uncompromising than the usual romantic portrayals – making Victoria’s famed infatuation with him hard to credit. But now it seems the bloom’s gone off entirely.
That was partly due, as this episode saw it, to the influence of Victoria’s half-sister Feodora (Kate Fleetwood), who here added profiteering from invitations to a royal ball to her long list of sins. That gave us a chance to revel in some sumptuous costumes and smartly choreographed gavottes and quadrilles. It also provided lusty palace footman Joseph (David Burnett) with opportunity for another class-defying rummage in Sophie, Duchess of Monmouth’s (Lily Travers) corsetry.
While that liaison must surely implode fairly soon, other matters dominated for now. Such as the queen being “papped” when intimate royal etchings of her family found their way into the Illustrated London News. And an absence of respect towards her in Albert’s design for a new coin only added to Victoria’s bad mood over his increasingly controlling behaviour regarding the children’s education. The sight of an enraged monarch dishing out a jaw-rattling slap to her husband was genuinely shocking.
Not that he didn’t have it coming. Taking Feodora’s advice and getting a phrenologist to pronounce on troubled heir to the throne, Bertie (Laurie Shepherd), was never going to work in Albert’s favour. Especially when the charlatan deemed the young prince was mentally weak amid not-so-veiled references to the madness of Victoria’s grandfather, George III. When Albert suggested that Victoria’s intellect might be “overdeveloped in the area of self-esteem” he was lucky to get away with just a slap, and not to be despatched to the Tower. By the time the credits rolled, this most idealised of royal marriages was looking very rocky indeed.
