16 Times Victoria Made Us Wish History Didn’t Happen
By Lacy Baugher
Photo: ITV
British People Are So Obsessed with Duty
Victoria is hardly the first British period drama in which someone sacrifices his or her own happiness on the altar of duty. It’s kind of a thing. In a lot of stories like this, that person’s sacrifice is ultimately rewarded in the end. Here, not so much. Sure, we basically get lots of confirmation that Melbourne and Victoria had feelings for one another. But we also get roughly a thousand reminders that it’ll never come to anything, no matter how much we might want it to.
From the show’s first episode, everyone in Victoria reminds Melbourne that his time with the queen is fleeting. He can’t stay Prime Minister forever. Eventually, Victoria will marry someone. And then she’ll look to her husband for advice and comfort instead of to him. Melbourne listens to the (many) people telling him this stuff on the regular and doesn’t punch any of them in the face. He just smiles and nods and agrees with them, because he actually thinks they’re right. It’s his duty to stand aside for history, for England, for a future for Victoria that doesn’t include him
The possibility of the two really being together officially was always remote. Practically impossible, probably. It would break all precedent for a queen to marry a subject. Not to mention Melbourne’s position as a politician would have made that remotest of possibilities even more unlikely.
The best they could have ever hoped for was something similar to their much-discussed Queen Elizabeth/Earl of Leicester arrangement. One in which Victoria never married and the two of them remained life-long companions. They could never openly acknowledge any kind of relationship, no matter what their personal inclinations might be. That would doubtless be a hard road to walk for anyone, let alone for an eighteen-year old girl. So Melbourne, like so many period drama romantic heroes before him, embraces his duty and gets out of her way. (And Rufus Sewell is so great at conveying how both necessary and personally painful Melbourne clearly considers this act to be.)