Queen Victoria

Today I found an interesting site on Queen Victoria - full of pictures of her, Prince Albert and their family in the 19th Century. I have included the site in the links section. Truly, it seems so amazing how the old Queen outlived virtually all her children! And her grandchildren included the Tsarina Alicky and Kaiser Wilhelm II !!! What seemed yucky was the fact that they ended up marrying immediate cousins (but then, it was a custom in Europe - did Hilter's parents - and Hitler himself - not do the same?).

Again, for the entire time that I browsed through the site, I was completely lost in the time - the mid 19th century. Under the aegis of this plumpy little lady, England managed to do what Alexander the Great or Napoleon, or Hitler and Stalin could not - conqueror regions across the globe and forge an Empire "where the sun never sets"... And perhaps the most remarkable thing about this empress was - she was such a great family woman too - just see the pictures of her with her children, her pages, her grand children and even her great-grand ones....well, she was also lucky to have such stalwarts as Gladstone, Disraeli, etc as Prime Ministers.

Also, I never knew she had a munim!!! Well, see the pictures for yourself. In one of the pictures, Queen Victoria has sketched maharajah Dhuleep Singh, the son of the legendary Ranjit Singh himself, dressing up her son Alfred. It was Maharajah Dhuleep Singh who had to surrender the Koh-i-noor, among a host of other jewels, to the Queen.

The British did a lot of good in India - and most of what we lost to Queen Victoria's England is what was natural - we do not ask Uzbekistan or Mongolia to return what Mahmud Ghaznavi or Taimur took away. We never asked Iran to return what Nadir Shah took away from us - then why do we expect England to return the Koh-i-noor and other jewels? History is witness to such arrant decadence demonstrated by our princes and maharajahs - was it not Mohammed Shah, the Mughal ruler who exchanged his turban with Nadir and thus parted with the Koh-i-noor? Guess I am sounding quite political now. Better stick to the subject..

Queen Victoria lived 1819 to 1901. I guess the one other guy whose pictures I have seen on the net, who outlived Queen Victoria was Theodor Mommsen - the great German Historian who got the 1903 Nobel. His Roemische Gesischte is supposed to be a classic - and its truly surprising that there is no English translation available - atleast not in India.

Well, well, well...give me a page of any History book and I would blabber away to glory...couldn't help it.