The Warrior Queen: Reflections on Victoria and Her World
Author(s)
Arnstein, Walter L.
Abstract
Queen Victoria’s biographers have downplayed her role in military affairs and have increasingly explored a private persona at the expense of a public one. Military spectacle was an integral part of Victoria’s reign: from shortly after her accession when in uniform she first reviewed her troops to her military funeral. Moreover, she exercised royal authority during peacetime and in the major conflicts of her reign, especially the Crimean and Boer wars. The queen guarded her military prerogatives and exercised influence over the army and navy through her ministers and blood ties to prominent officers. Victoria’s attention to the military, especially the army, subtly undermines prevalent interpretations of Victorian gender roles and the queen herself as a typical representation of 19th-century bourgeois womanhood.
