My Dearest Uncle: A Royal Correspondence
Joanna Richardson describes how, from the age of nine in 1828, Queen Victoria corresponded with her Uncle, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, King of the Belgians.
‘I am very angry with you, Uncle, for you I have never written to me once since you A went, and that is a long while.’ So Queen Victoria told her favourite uncle in her earliest surviving letter to him. It was written from Kensington Palace when she was nine years old. ‘My dearest Love,’ went the first of his extant letters to her, ‘though in a few days I hope to have the happiness of seeing you, still I wish... to tell you how delighted I shall be to embrace my dearest little child.’
Since her own father’s death, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg - the first King of the Belgians - had become Victoria’s father-figure. He was always affectionate, and he was always wise. In his letters to her, he assumed the tone of dignified love, of avuncular erudition, which somehow suited him best.
In 1832, when he sent her a birthday present, he already saw fit to remind her:
Time flies; it is now thirteen years that you came into the world of trouble; I therefore can hardly venture to call you any longer a little Princess.
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