Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) was born on the 24 May 1819. Queen
Victoria was a strong queen. You can see her monument in front of the
Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 and
reigned until her death in 1901. She ruled for the longest period in the
English history, for 64 years. Victoria married a German, Prince
Albert, but he died at the age of 42 in 1861. That was a great tragedy
for Queen Victoria. She left London and never lived in the city where
she had been so happy with her husband and nine children (5 daughters
and 4 sons). But there are places in London that reminds us of their
love. One of them is the Royal Albert Hall - a very large concert hall
where the best musicians of the world perform classical music. In front
of the Albert Hall there is a monument to Prince Albert built by Queen
Victoria. Another place is the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) with
its rich collections of paintings and other works of art. The family
life of Queen Victoria touched people's hearts. But this is not only
reason why Queen Victoria became very popular. During her reign Britain
became a rich industrial country with a developed trade, an empire with a
lot of colonies.
Though Victoria ascended the throne at a time when the United
Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy in which the
king or queen held few political powers, she still served as a very
important symbolic figure of her time. The Victorian era represented the
height of the Industrial Revolution, a period of significant social,
economic, and technological progress in the United Kingdom. Victoria's
reign was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire; during this
period it reached its zenith, becoming the foremost global power of the
time.
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