Long before William and Kate there was another royal match that captured the hearts of the British public. This was Queen Victoria and her consort (who was also her cousin) Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg and Gotha in Germany. They were married in 1840 and it was a love match which was unusual in those days of arranged marriages. Victoria was so in love with Albert and believed that he was everything good, a wonderful husband and a perfect father to their nine children. But Victoria and Albert were only to have twenty one years of happiness before Albert died of a serious illness thought at the time to have been typhoid fever. Albert’s death had a great impact not only on Victoria but on the whole of Britain. Victoria spent much of the next few years in seclusion which might have been fine for an ordinary citizen but was not for a monarch. She spent huge amounts of the public’s money on numerous memorials to Albert and appeared so rarely in public that republican sentiments arose calling for the abolition of the monarchy. But Victoria weathered all those storms and kept the monarchy intact for her son who later became King Edward VII. Victoria was a widow for over half of her life and spent forty years in mourning for Albert. A sad end to a romantic love story.