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Smothered by a neurotic mother, denied friendship and banned even from climbing stairs without adult supervision, her duty was to be seen and not heard. The child who endured this miserable fate? The future Queen Victoria, according to the author of a new biopic of Britain's longest reigning monarch.
Julian Fellowes, an Oscar winner for his screenplay of Gosford Park, spoke last week about his fascination with Victoria and how he intends to replace the image of her as an aloof, dowdy widow with that of a feisty, romantic teenager played by Emily Blunt, who made her name as Meryl Streep's highly strung assistant in The Devil Wears Prada.
The Young Victoria begins shooting in Britain next month and is produced by Graham King and Martin Scorsese, who won this year's best picture and best director Oscars respectively for their collaboration on The Departed.
The cast will include Miranda Richardson, who co-starred with 24-year-old Blunt in Gideon's Daughter, and Mark Strong, seen recently in the science fiction hit Sunshine, while the prize role of Prince Albert will be taken by Rupert Friend, who appeared in Pride and Prejudice and is dating its leading actress, Keira Knightley.
Set in the period from 1836 to 1840, the film starts with Victoria as a lonely, cosseted Princess dominated by her mother and weighed down by her royal destiny. By the end, she has become Queen, her character has flowered and she is married to the love of her life, Albert.
Fellowes, whose long acting career included the television series Monarch of the Glen, has written the script after collaborating with Sarah, Duchess of York, who first pitched the idea and was well placed to help with historical research.
He said it was a dream subject and admitted: "I thought, if someone else writes this film I'll have to kill myself."
Before her 63-year reign began, he said, Victoria had a "horrible childhood". Her father died before her first birthday, leaving her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to raise the sole heir.
"The Duchess can never have another child who is in line to the throne because her husband is dead," Fellowes said. "She's just got this one frail little squib that will be Queen if only she doesn't die. This created in her a kind of neurotic protectionism, a smothering childhood where Victoria could not have her own room and had to sleep on a little cot next to her mother's bed until she was 18.
"She wasn't able to go up or down stairs without holding an adult hand.
"She had almost no friends. William IV, as the Duke of Clarence, and his wife, Queen Adelaide, wanted to see as much of her as they could, but her mother wouldn't allow it. It was a terribly lonely childhood."
The death of William, however, changed everything. Victoria ascended to the throne and emerged from her mother's shadow. At the heart of the film is the love story of Victoria and Albert, the first cousin she married in 1840.
This happy and fulfilled chapter of her life is largely forgotten today, Fellowes added. "The Queen Victoria we know is the woman in black with the handkerchief on her head, depressed about being a widow. Very few people know about the girl and this is the other side of her that very few people know about: that she was young, that she loved dancing, that she loved music and that she was very romantic. She was madly in love; this wasn't an arranged marriage in that sense at all."
Emily Blunt said: "I couldn't help but be attracted to this remarkable, high-spirited, feisty girl ... she was a rebel.
"The script is exciting, as you see the public and private Victoria are very different, and you realise what a performance it was to be a Queen.
"She had such zest for life at a young age, would talk with such passion about the people she loved, opera, food! She can't have been that repressed ... She had nine kids!"
- Observer
