15 Pieces of History That Victoria Did Differently

Jenna Coleman as Victoria (Photo: (C) ITV Plc)

Jenna Coleman is Prettier Than Victoria (And a Little Bit Taller, Too)

Jenna Coleman’s performance as the young Queen Victoria is largely an excellent one. She deftly manages to balance the many competing elements of Victoria’s character.  She’s a teenage girl, navigating the world for the first time, free of her parents. She’s a young monarch, trying to figure out what it means to be queen. And she’s a woman, trying to rule a country in a man’s world. Victoria is a complex, complicated person. And Coleman, to her credit, manages to bring all that to bear on her performance.

However, Coleman really doesn’t look much like the former British monarch. She’s too good looking, for a start. Coleman’s delicate prettiness is a far cry from descriptions of the young queen. Victoria was referred to as a “short, vulgar-looking child” with bulging eyes, according to the Sunday Post. She also loved sweets, alcohol and snacking. And, as such, she tended to be a bit overweight more often than not. Portraits of the young Victoria show a lively, attractive young lady, however. Lest you think I’m painting her as some kind of awful Gorgon. But by the time she reached her later years, she has grown so fat that she had a fifty-inch waist.

Coleman’s also too tall. Yes, despite Coleman’s generally short stature, she’s still three inches taller than Victoria was. The queen was positively tiny, clocking in at just 4’11” tall.  Her height was a rather sensitive topic for the young Victoria. She faced a fair amount of mockery over this issue, even from her mother and Sir John Conroy.  (They really do sound like rather terrible people, yes?) She had to have a throne specially made to accommodate her, as she was too short for the one she inherited.