A win for Victoria?

When it comes to Queens of England there are two dominant forces at work - the Elizabeths and Victoria.  All three women have given their name to an age and come to define a generation.  Queen Victoria was so dominant that her name went from a mystery moniker to a top ten tag just through her influence.  Over 100 years since her death, will enough time have passed to make Victoria a contender for the Cambridge baby name?

I admit there's a little bit of cheating going on here because we've only ever had a Queen Regnant called Victoria - or did we?  In fact, Mary of Teck had quite a magnificent array of names, an octet in fact, and Mary was number two on the list.  Top of the tree was Victoria.  So, yes, Queen Mary was always known as Mary or May by her family and chose to reign under that name and she's already had a mention on the posting debating the merits of Mary but she was really a Victoria.  I think that means I can get away with this one!

 

Victoria

 

Victoria is such a popular name nowadays it's hard to believe that it was rarely used in England until about 200 years ago.  Now it's used for babies, towns, cities, whole chunks of countries and as such is one of the most spoken words in the Western world.   In fact when the little girl who would grow up to rule half the globe was born, her parents' choice of name was considered strange, foreign and a bit off.  

 

By the time Victoria was born, the Hanoverians had developed the habit of accumulating a long list of names for their babies.  It was rare to get to the font with less than four and some of the more out of control parents had six or seven names for the vicar to get through before the end of the christening.  The future queen had just two names and Victoria was definitely second on the list.  Her first name was actually Alexandrina, in honour of her godfather, Alexander I of Russia.  The came Victoria, after her mother.  And then Victoria senior had added on Georgina, Charlotte and Augusta.  But the Prince Regent, her brother in law and by then head of the family thanks to the illness of King George III, got rid of those before she could object and so the future Empress ended up with a rather unroyal name.

 

 

Queen Victoria at her coronation in 1838

 

And a very German one.  Her mother was a German princess who had married the fourth son of the reigning king, George III, just a year before as part of a spectacular royal wedding jamboree that happened so quickly the souvenir makers didn't have a hope of producing celebratory mugs. 

 

George III had had fifteen children and the first four were healthy boys.  They'd also had plenty of offspring but sadly only one legitimate child between them.  Even more sadly, that one legal heir, Charlotte, had died in childbirth in 1817.  Her parents, the Prince Regent and his wife Caroline, had hated one another from the moment they met and were too old to have more children.  Next on the list was Prince Frederick, Duke of York who also hated his wife so much that even if they had been of an age to keep producing there was little to no chance of it ever happening.  Then came William, Duke of Clarence who had had ten children but all with an actress who he hadn't married and then there was Edward who had had several long term relationships but no wife or legitimate children.

 

So William and Edward went off and married German princesses on the same day in 1818, just a few weeks after a younger brother - Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge had married as part of the great wedding race -  and set about making heirs to the throne.  William and his wife had two little girls, in 1819 and 1820, who both died very young.  Edward's only child with Victoria was the little girl they named after her mother.  On the day she arrived, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was fifth in line to the throne.  Her father died in 1820 and as his older brothers died childless, her way to the throne cleared.

 

 

Princess Victoria of Kent, aged four, when she was third in line to the throne

 

And of course once on the throne, she stayed there and witnessed an expansion of her kingdom that no one could have dreamed of.  OK, for a while she was just as well known for her deep mourning for her beloved husband, Prince Albert.  But ultimately, she's known more as a world power than as a widow.  Victoria ruled the Empire on which the sun never set.  As such, her name was given to hundreds of places all around the world in her honour and to hundreds of little girls.  Her reign saw an expansion of power and prestige for Great Britain that outshone anything that had gone before and made the country a world power of epic proportions.  It also saw massive social change and an explosion of literature and journalism that shone a light on issues such as poverty, women's rights and exploitation.  She was the first queen to celebrate a golden and diamond jubilee and she is still the longest reigning monarch in British history.

 

 

 

 

 

Queen Victoria towards the end of her 63 year reign

 

As well as ruling half the world, Victoria became the grandmother of Europe's royal families.  Her own eldest child was Victoria, later Empress of Germany.  Two of the Queen's four other daughters had Victoria as middle names.  And her son and heir, Edward, went one further with all his girls having Victoria somewhere among their many names.  Three of her younger children had a daughter called Victoria and as the children and grandchildren married into European royal families the old queen's name, as well as her genes, became a fixture in palaces across the continent.

 

 

Princess Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest child of Queen Victoria and later Empress of Germany

 

 

So it's surprising that there are hardly any Queens called Victoria in our history books.  Sweden got a Queen Victoria at the end of the 19th century.  And Spain's last queen before the civil war was Victoria Eugenie, known as Queen Ena, the daughter of Queen Victoria's youngest child, Beatrice.  But it's not well used by royalty nowadays.  The eldest daughter of King Juan Carlos of Spain called her little girl Victoria and the Duke and Duchess of York used it as a middle name for their second child, Eugenie.  But the most high profile bearer is the Crown Princess of Sweden who was also the first European princess to leapfrog a younger brother in the line of succession when the law was changed when they were both babies to ensure the crown passed to the monarch's eldest child, regardless of gender.

 

Princess Victoria of Sweden with her husband, Prince Daniel, and their daughter, Princess Estelle.  Will a Cambridge princess be another future Queen Victoria?  (photo, Frankie Fouganthin)

 

 

And perhaps that's the biggest thing in its favour when it comes to predicting a name for the royal baby. 

 

Victoria...the argument for...

• It's the name of one of England's greatest queens and baby Cambridge is descended from Queen Victoria through both Elizabeth II and Prince Philip so it would really be keeping things in the family
• It's still a popular name in the UK and wouldn't be seen as elitist
• It's the name of another princess who changed the rules for the girls - and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden is also hugely popular and does a great turn as a royal godmother (she counts three future monarchs among her godchildren)

And against...

 

• That does mean there will be a Queen called Victoria in Europe when baby Cambridge comes to reign
• Sometimes one person can so dominate a name that it's hard to shake them off and Queen Victoria is still such a dominant historical force it might be hard to put her to one side
• If you're going to name a royal baby after a great queen, might it be better to honour the child's great granny rather than their great, great, great, great, great grandmother?