Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother resolute about meeting with her ministers alone. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina - Drina to her family - had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. To me, ma’am, you are every inch a Queen.” I have not known you long, but I observe in you a natural dignity that cannot be learnt. Lord Melbourne turned to look at Victoria. “They think I am still a little girl who is not capable of being a Queen.”
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