Queen Victoria
From LGBT Archive
Queen Victoria (1819–1901) succeeded her uncle William IV as monarch of the United Kingdom in 1837, aged 18. As a woman she was unable to succeed to William's other title as King of Hanover. She was proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. Her reign of 63 years and 7 months is to date the longest of any British Monarch, but is likely to be overtaken by our present Queen in September 2015. In 1840 Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. She had nine children; they all married into other European royal families, with the exception of Princess Louise, who married the Marquess of Lorne. In 1861 Albert died of typhoid, and Victoria, heartbroken, largely retired from public life for much of the rest of her reign.
Her grandson, "Prince Eddy", may have been associated with the Cleveland Street scandal.
There is no foundation in the story that Victoria vetoed a law being passed against lesbian sex; such a law was actually proposed in 1921 (the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 1921) but never passed.
