Prince Albert Was The Man, Had It Going On.

I wondered about the term Victorian. I wonder why it is casually thrown around to mean “uptight” and “repressed.”  How true can this really be? Could Victoria, who was nicknamed The Grandmother of Europe have been such a constrict on the minds, hearts and behavior of her people? If so, why would they put up with it for so long?

To find my answers I turned not to a text book or a reliable biographer (too predictable) but to a BBC miniseries called Victoria and Albert. I know! How esoteric a title is that?

I don’t know what I expected. I think I expected to be bored.

Victoria’s young life was tightly controlled by a domineering mother and by her tentative role in the royal hierarchy.

OK, so far, I’m a little bored. But this is England’s Victorian Era. I hardly expected intrigues and affairs a la randy Charles II.

But then Victoria meets her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Basically, he’s German. She thinks he’s dull. And yeah, he does have that overly flouncy look that all men seemed to have in the 19^th Century. But he sort of grew on me. He’s polite, but has a low-level pissed-off-ed-ness that’s intriguing. He must have grown on Victoria too, because she married him. Actually, she proposed. I think because she outranked him.  Bummer. I’m not sure I could rise to that challenge. How Victorian of me. See? It doesn’t make sense. She’s 16 and she works up the nerve to propose to her foxy royal cousin. That’s not exactly uptight.

So they get married and get right down to business. Right away he realizes that he’s outranked in the household, in the family and in the kingdom. And this is a man who is no shrinking violet, no slouch in the brains department and has been raised in a seriously paternal culture. The whole second-in-command thing did not sit well with this guy.

He stalks down halls. He glowers. He lets off steam on symbolically virile black stallions. He raises his voice. He slams doors. He runs his hands through his hair distractedly.

I’m not bored anymore. No. Not at all.

He fires the domineering housekeeper (poor Diana Rigg). He installs himself as Mr. I-Run-The-Household-Man. With stereotypical German efficiency he gets that huge castle running like a VW. A restored one. Custom paint job. Like….mebee…1963 Bug. Forest Green.  (Sigh) Just like that.

He is not officially allowed to help Victoria run the country. Not yet, anyway. But she gets to the point where his influence holds swoon, er  sway. He’s a man of the people. Uncomfortably aware that the Royal Family’s reputation had disintegrated in the previous generations, he is determined to raise his family’s profile as an example to the common man.  He does all this in perfectly tailored royal outfits. Cutaway coats. Just…yeah.

I like this guy. This Albert is a simmering pot of righteous, royal He-Man. And he loves Christmas! He brought the first Christmas tree to Great Britain! Swoon! I’m not bored!

The Great Exhibition – that was Albert’s brainchild. Overhaul of the royal finances (those spendthrift royals!) – Albert again.  Modernization of university curricula – Albert! Did I mention Christmas trees? Albert. Albert. Albert.

When he dies at the age of 42, his wife goes into mourning for years. Get that: The Queen of England does not appear in public for years. She wears black for the rest of her life. For Albert. In honor of Albert.

This Queen? This marriage is the root of the throwaway term that has come to mean “repressed and uptight?” Please. We need to re-think this. Albert had it going on. He’s like a royal superhero but without the embarrassing outfit. More (and more accurate) research is needed to get to the root of this word and its misapplication. At the very least we need to add a term that acknowledges Albert’s hotness. Albertian. I like it. As in, My Albertian husband insists I not cook tonight and is instead taking me out for dinner a deux. Swoon indeed.

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