The Young Victoria is a truly brilliant film set in 1836, just a year before the beginning of Queen Victoria’s long reign. The film focusses on Victoria (played by Emily Blunt) and the various different relationships she has with the people around her, i.e. her mother the Duchess, the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne and of course her future husband Albert (Rupert Friend). As stated previously, the film describes Victoria's life a year before her coronation, where we see the turbulent relationship between Victoria and her mother and advisor Sir John Conroy whose attempts to control Victoria are leading into the near future when she is Queen. The film continues into the early days of her reign and the troubles she faces as a young and inexperienced monarch in search for a suitable husband who could not only love her, but who wouldn’t try to control her and her country in her place. We see the blossoming of the love between Albert and Victoria from their first meeting and throughout their courtship that soon followed. Done so in an overly romantic and typical movie style, as some critics claim, the love between Victoria and Albert is clear and we soon see them marry. One of the many good features of this film is that it is a refreshing change in image towards Victoria, which we do not often see. With Queen Victoria we usually see the mournful overweight old woman that we know to be from the later years of her reign, and after Albert’s tragic death in 1861. In this film Queen Victoria is brought to life, shown to us as an optimistic young adult in love, struggling with the challenges of coming to terms with ruling a country at such a young age. Although the film has often been criticised for various historical inaccuracies and for over romanticising the life of Victoria, I still believe it to be a good way of reminding ourselves of her struggles in her early reign, and that once she was once a young woman and not always the bitter one she is mainly remembered for being. The film shows a new, more human side of Queen Victoria that viewers can relate to which is why I would thoroughly recommend this film to all, especially all history lovers and lovers of the Victorian period.
Image: https://www.movieguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/young_victoria_ver2.jpg
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