Queen Victoria's Children

This first episode focuses on Victoria's tempestuous relationship with Prince Albert, their attempts to engineer the upbringing of their children and to save the monarchy by projecting a modern image of the royal family.

This episode concentrates on Victoria's relationship with her daughters. It looks at how, after Albert's death, Victoria clung to and bullied them and arranged their marriages. In response the princesses fought back, becoming independent women determined to find love and fresh purpose. From sculpture to medicine, the daughters became champions of women for a new era.

This final episode focuses on Victoria's relationship with her sons and how, after Albert's death, they struggled to live up to his model of purity. It explores Victoria's difficult relationship with her eldest son Bertie, whom she blamed for Albert's death, believing his sexual indiscretions to have fatally weakened her husband. It also examines her relationship with her son Leopold, the physically weak but spirited haemophiliac who put up the most determined effort to break free from his mother's control. Ultimately, the idea of monarchy based on purity is put to the test as the philandering Bertie comes to the throne.