Queen Victoria's diaries are basically, 50 Shades Of HRH. Photo / Getty Images
Queen Victoria's diaries are basically, 50 Shades Of HRH. Photo / Getty Images
Let's all enjoy a quick history lesson, shall we.
During the Victorian era, piano legs were regularly covered up for modesty's sake due to their vaguely phallic nature.
Women were infamously told to, "Lie back and think of England" on their wedding nights. It was considered physically impossible for women to enjoy sex by the pre-eminent physicians of the day.
So, it would make sense that Queen Victoria, the beloved British monarch of the time, was equally chaste and demure, right? That she would spend her evenings buttoning herself up into ankle-length hessian underwear and averting her eyes every time one of her gardeners accidentally doused himself while watering?
Then, you'd be wrong, because Queen Victoria, who was born 200 years ago, was one hell of a raunchy lady. And we know because, she spent a considerable amount of time writing it all down in her diaries, the saucy bird.
In 1840, Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert. (Look, cousin-marrying was par for the course back then. Let's not focus too much on the incest here.)
Even before she said, "I do", she was very taken with the dashing Kraut, noting in her diary that she found him "excessively handsome".
Their wedding night, according to Victoria herself, did not disappoint.
"I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening! MY DEAREST, DEAR Albert sat on a footstool by my side, and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before. He clasped me in his arms, and we kissed each other again and again! Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!"
I think we can all read between the lines here. The newlyweds evidently got it onnnn and Victoria thoroughly enjoyed her first roll in the sheets. (Side note: What was Albert doing on the foot stool? And what's with royalty and employing pieces of gilt-edged furniture when they get down and dirty?)
A portrait depicting Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on their wedding day in 1854. Photo / Supplied
Another entry in Victoria's diaries reads: "We both went to bed; to lie by his side and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names of tenderness, I have never heard used to me before — was bliss beyond belief! Oh!"
On her 30th birthday she recorded: "This day was again welcomed in by the tender love and affection of my dearest Albert."
Other thirsty AF musings by Victoria include this spicy recollection: "My dear Albert came in today from the rain; he looked so handsome in his white cashmere britches, with nothing on underneath."
Basically, this is all equivalent to a nineteenth century version of 50 Shades of Grey for the sheer bawdiness of her jottings.
There is plenty of other historical evidence that confirms just how hot'n'heavy the Queen and her Prince Consort were for one another
To make sure that they could enjoy maximum privacy, the couple is said to have installed a special button in their bedroom at their huge holiday house on the Isle of Wight. The idea was they could lock the doors from bed so they would never be disturbed in flagrante delicto by a footman bearing a tea tray.
(There are persistent rumours that Albert was so well endowed that he had to wear a special ring around his "little Prince" so it could be pulled to the side and thus not bulge in an unseemly manner in his trousers. This may be where the "Prince Albert" comes from.)
According to Daisy Goodwin, who wrote the screenplay for the TV series Victoria, the Queen's doctor said her after she'd had her final child: "You know, ma'am, you shouldn't have any more children." She is reported to have fired back, "What, Doctor, no more fun in bed?"
Victoria's clear lust for her bloke extended beyond the bedroom and they routinely gave each other risque (for the time) gifts. For example, she bought him a quite erotic painting from artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter's which depicts a group of bare-breasted women preparing to bathe.
Albert, at one point, decided the perfect pressie for his Queen was to commission a marble statue of himself as a sensual Greek warrior. Later Victoria deemed it was so racy that she had it moved to a private part of her Isle of Wight home and had a more covered up version made, which is still in the Buckingham Palace collection.
Queen Victoria by Alexander Bassano, 1887. Photo / Supplied
Sadly, Victoria's sexual walkabout with Albert ended in 1861 when he popped his clogs and she was heartbroken to have lost her great love.
What she might have done to satiate her considerable libido after that point is a source of scholarly debate. (Academics are thirsty people too it would seem.) But the lack of a paramour and no need for that handy bedroom button might go a long way to explaining why Victoria always looked so miserable in portraits later in life.
