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Her Highness the Princess Victoria
image id: ps_prn_cd39_569

William Keenan (b. ca. 1810)
Her Highness the Princess Victoria
Stipple engraving
Philadelphia: E. Littell ..., n.d.
NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print Collection

Princess Victoria does not look like the sort of girl who would describe herself as “VERY VERY VERY VERY HORRIBLY NAUGHTY!!!!!” but she did, in 1832. She had absorbed a stern sense of discipline and asserted her power by firing her mother’s ambitious advisor, Sir John Conroy, as soon as she became queen in 1837. During her long reign, monarchical power diminished steadily, and Victoria took the middle-class virtues that her mother had imparted—conventionality, truthfulness, the wish to be good—and made them royal as well.

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