Victoria’s secrets

Daisy Goodwin, the writer, producer and creator of the TVNZ 1 Sunday night period drama Victoria, tells Kerry Harvey why people need to change their opinion of the British monarch.

Daisy Goodwin thinks people have got Queen Victoria all wrong. “It’s a myth,” she says of the general perception of a po-faced stuffy monarch. “I think she was – when she came to the throne – very spirited and, while not undignified, not perhaps as repressed as our current queen, Elizabeth.

“There was a lot of organised religion and maybe that’s what gives that impression, but Victoria and Albert themselves were not at all stuffy or prudish. Nine children, hello!”

Daisy, creator of the period drama

Victoria, says her fascination with the queen began when she had to write a paper about Victoria and the media when she was a history student at Cambridge University.

“I was told to read Victoria’s diaries and I thought, ‘Really, I have to read through Victoria’s diaries’ not thinking they’d be so interesting,” she says.

“I mean talking about Albert, they’d just got engaged and she says, ‘I can see my dearest Albert in his white cashmere breeches with nothing on underneath’ and you’d think, ‘Oh, goodness me. Queen Victoria. She likes a good-looking man.’ She’s quite saucy really.”

Daisy says from then on she was entranced by the young monarch.

“In her diaries, she’s very frank and funny and not at all the stuffy old queen that I was expecting.

“I found her really interesting – a woman who I liked much more than I expected.”

The series depicts the early years of the reign of Victoria (played by Jenna Coleman), from her accession to the throne at 18, to her intense friendship and infatuation with Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell), to her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert (Tom Hughes) and, finally, the birth of her first child.

A second season will follow the young queen’s struggles to combine

“Victoria and Albert themselves were not at all stuffy or prudish. Nine children, hello!” – Daisy Goodwin

the demands of the crown with her duties to her husband and children.

Daisy originally planned to write a book about the young queen’s early years but sidelined that idea to write the series. However, the book, also called Victoria (see p12 for a chance to win a copy), is now out and offers a much deeper insight into the relationship between the Queen and Lord Melbourne.

“Obviously, I’ve dramatised it, but I’ve read her diaries and they are without question a record of the most all-encompassing teenage crush. She’s absolutely obsessed with him,” Daisy says of the relationship that has, until now, received little attention.

“They spent every day together. He’s her private secretary ... When occasionally he goes and has dinner somewhere else, she’s absolutely furious and really jealous.

“It was definitely love on her side. It’s a teenage crush. It’s very romantic. It’s a different thing to what she feels for Albert, but I think it was a very important transitional relationship for her. Her first love.”

The book starts earlier than the series, chronicling the years before the young queen is crowned and explains Victoria’s anger about her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her confidant Sir John Conroy.

“They both really bully her. She’s practically under house arrest,” Daisy says.

“When she’s 15, she’s very ill and Conroy tries to get her to sign a paper that will basically give him power. Even though she’s very ill and very weak, she says, ‘No’ and I just thought that showed such strength of character.

“When she comes to the throne, she gets rid of Conroy, changes her name and just sort of creates herself in her own image. I think that shows what an incredibly strong sense of self Victoria had.”

Daisy is amazed it has taken so long for this story to come to light.

“It seems extraordinary to me because it’s such a fabulous story – a teenager who becomes the most powerful woman in the world overnight,” she says.

“I think it’s probably because the last years of her life – when she was a widow and always dressed in black – got really locked in people’s imagination so we think of her as Victoria the widow.

“But Victoria the young girl and Victoria the young wife is a fascinating story. It’s such a great love story – the relationship between her and Albert. And I think that we also forget although he was the love of her life, he wasn’t the only man she loved. She was a very passionate woman.”