16 Times Victoria Made Us Wish History Didn’t Happen
By Lacy Baugher
Photo: ITV
All That Constant Staring
Victoria is a British period drama, so there are certain rules for romantic relationships. Everyone is sort of awkward about it when they’re interested in someone. People talk around the issue. Or they just never mention their attraction at all. British people apparently love suffering silently. And there’s an awful lot of staring, generally with varying degrees of longing or pain. Oh, and pretty much no one gets to kiss ever except on very special occasions like weddings. Or maybe someone nearly or actually dying.
Since Victoria and Melbourne are separated by duty, public opinion and the fact that she outranks him by an order of magnitude, they’re not really supposed to be feeling anything romantic toward each other at all. And they’re certainly not allowed to talk about their feelings (or even openly acknowledge them) much. So instead, they spend a lot of time just looking at each other.
Sometimes it’s kind of angsty. Sometimes it’s kind of adorable. Occasionally the two of them do that thing where it seems as though they have conversations without actually saying anything. And sometimes the staring is so blatant that it makes other people uncomfortable Like that time Melbourne accompanied Victoria on a royal visit to the opera, and people who were on the other side of the room were taken aback by how they looked at each other. It’s rather torturously wonderful, if you’re into that kind of thing.
They’re kind of like every trope from every Jane Austen movie you’ve ever seen all smushed together into an intense mini-package. And since we’re already guaranteed to not get a happy ending, we have to basically revel in every tortured moment they share.(But it’s hard not to want to see this kind of emotional suffering rewarded in the end.)