Victoria, Queen

Cultural  

1. A British queen of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During her reign, Britain reached new heights in industrial and colonial power and diplomatic influence. Victoria became queen at the age of eighteen and soon married Prince Albert, who proved an enormous support to her; after his early death, she remained in official mourning until her own death forty years later. Victoria was known for her impartiality toward the two leading political parties of Britain, the Liberals and the Conservatives, which both produced extraordinary leaders during her reign (see Benjamin Disraeli and William Ewart Gladstone). She was also known for establishing strict standards of personal morality. (See Victorian period.)

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The term Victorian today sometimes recalls Queen Victoria's stands on personal moral issues and may suggest prudery or a moral self-satisfaction.

Queen Victoria's children and grandchildren married into many of the other royal families of Europe. Tragically, many of them passed on the disease hemophilia. Victoria carried the disease in her genes, and one of her sons died from it. The hemophiliac son of Nicholas II, the czar of Russia, was descended from Victoria. (See Grigori Rasputin.)

Example Sentences

That was paired with an amethyst and diamond necklace gifted by a former Duchess of Kent to Queen Victoria and then passed to Queen Mary.

From BBC • Apr. 28, 2026

Becky also used her experience working in the burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead to help develop a service at her local hospital in Sierra Leone.

From BBC • Apr. 14, 2026

Like Queen Victoria, Zadie Smith and many others, she had concluded that posterity would be better served without her full diary than with it.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 6, 2026

In the lavish memorial erected by his grieving widow, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert is golden, but few world leaders are permanently gilded, and certainly not before their deaths.

From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 1, 2026

The necklace she often wore—a large coin with Queen Victoria set in silver on one side—would brush across my forehead as she bent down.

From "Ugly" by Robert Hoge