Talk:Queen Victoria

Question for the Wikipedia Gestapo

Immediately after the sentence stating that Victoria became Queen upon the death of her uncle, William IV, I inserted the following,

"There was concern, however, that Queen Adelaide, the widow of King William IV, might be pregnant. Therefore, Victoria was proclaimed Queen only conditionally, 'saving the rights of any issue of his late Majesty King William the Fourth which may be borne of his late Majesty's Consort.'"

I included a source for my insertion, http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/19509/pages/1581, which is the Proclamation of Accession, as published in the London Gazette on June 20, 1837.

I think it is fascinating to contemplate that, if Queen Adelaide had been pregnant, her child, if born alive, male or female, would have displaced Victoria from the throne, and I imagined it would be helpful and informative to include that in the article.

Yet, later in the same day, someone reverted it, with the cryptic comment, "Do not analyze, synthesize, interpret, or evaluate material found in a primary source yourself." So, mein Fuhrers of the Wikipedia Gestapo, I have a question for you. How does someone write an article without analyzing, synthesizing, interpreting, or evaluating material from the sources that are consulted? Is the "new style" of Wikipedia writing to be simply a list of sources, without any comment at all?

Lately, I have noticed that the roving Wikipedia editors seem to have a narrow minded view of what is "correct" and do not tolerate any sort of new information, particularly on certain subjects. Why is this so? And what was wrong with adding the sentence I attempted to add. I quoted a historical source in support of it.

John Paul Parks (talk) 04:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 30 September 2012

Edit line: "The following day, she participated in a procession that, in the words of Mark Twain, "stretched to the limit of sight in both directions" and attended a thanksgiving service in Westminster Abbey.[169]" to remove 'in the words of Mark Twain, "stretched to the limit of sight in both directions"'.

Twain did not attend the Golden Jubilee, he was in Hartford, CONN at the time. Ref:http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/search?category=letters;style=mtp;facet-direction=outgoing;facet-written=1880::1887;identifier=UCCL02662;rmode=details for a letter written by him that day from Hartford.

The cited Twain reference is a direct quote from Twain’s “Queen Victoria’s Jubilee”, which describes the 1897 Diamond Jubilee. The line can be found in The Complete Essays Of Mark Twain by Charles Neider , page 197.

This is one of those "global cannonical errors" propagated around the web without checking. Have contacted the Roya Family's web editor about the error on http://www.royal.gov.uk/HMTheQueen/TheQueenandspecialanniversaries/HistoryofJubilees/QueenVictoria.aspx and awaiting reply, but the facts are clear on this: they've mis-applied the quote and it's been copied everywhere.

Offlogic (talk) 18:33, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Removed. DrKiernan (talk) 18:52, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Physical appearance?

This is merely a suggestion, and not an imposition. I've noticed that the article doesn't give a good description of how she looked. At the very end it says that she "was physically unprepossessing—she was stout, dowdy and no more than five feet tall". Was she brown-haired? Blonde? What about her eyes? I wonder if the physical description shouldn't be somewhere around her early adulthood? It could say something like "Victoria was blonde and had blue eyes, was five feet tall and was regarded as beautiful" (I'm guessing here). And the above mentioned piece could be easily changed to "was physically unprepossessing but she succeeded in projecting a grand image". Just a thought. --Lecen (talk) 12:18, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit request

I can't edit the article but HM Queen Victoria also bore additional titles as the Male line Grand Daughter of the King of Hanover. Her titles didn't dissapear upon her accession nor the seperation of the crowns. Can someone please add to her titles

As the male-line granddaughter of a King of Hanover, Queen Victoria also bore the titles of Princess of Hanover and Duchess of Brunswick and Lunenburg from birth until death. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlfraley (talk • contribs) 07:18, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that this is of sufficient relevance. She doesn't seem to have ever used those titles, and they don't seem to be mentioned in biographies of her. Template:Hanoverian princesses is included in the article, but I think expansion on the point, even if sourced, would be undue weight. We don't mention Lord of Mann, Duke of Normandy and Duke of Lancaster for the same reason. She may or may not have been entitled to those titles, or she may never have used them because they were subsumed by her more important titles. In the absence of evidence that she used them frequently, I see no reason to put them in. DrKiernan (talk) 08:23, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

So you just cherry pick what you want in their? The titles where hers as well as her cousins of Cambridge. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlfraley (talk • contribs) 11:09, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

As a male line grandchild, Queen Victoria held from birth until her death the titles as Princess of Hanover, Duchess of Brunswick and Lüneberg Carlfraley (talk) 11:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)carlfraley Carlfraley (talk) 11:06, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Here is one source to back it up ^ a b c d Greg Taylor, Nicholas Economou (2006). The Constitution of Victoria. Federation Press. pp. 72–74. ISBN 978-1-86287-612-5. OCLC 81948853. Carlfraley (talk) 11:23, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

The book says nothing of the sort: [1]. DrKiernan (talk) 11:34, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

I copied the wrong link, however I'm awaiting a response from the Garter King of Arms office so hopefully that will suffice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlfraley (talk • contribs) 11:59, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Danish singer claims to be the great-grandchild of Queen Victoria

A Danish singer participating in the Eurovision Song Contest, Emmelie de Forest (whose original family name is Engtröm), alleges that she is the great-grandchild of Queen Victoria (even branding herself as the "barefoot royal" on her website and using "Victoria's great-grandchild" as her main PR strategy[2]) a claim that was also uncritically reported by the Danish tabloid press a few months ago[3]. The claim is based on

1. the unverified claim by her and/or her father that her father, Swede Ingvar Engström (1938-2010), who a couple of years before his death in 2010, adopted the surname "de Forest", was an out-of-wedlock son of one Maurice Arnold de Forest, the Jewish son of an American circus artist who converted to Catholicism
2. who in turn is alleged by Emmeline to be the son of King Edward VII by a Habsburg princess(!).

The story is dismissed as a pure fabrication by Marlene A. Eilers Koenig, author of Queen Victoria's Descendants, who should be familiar to those who work on the subject of Victoria's relatives. According to Eilers Koenig, nobody except the Engström family has made this claim of descent from Victoria, not even Maurice de Forest's verifiable and legitimate descendants, and according to her, "it is entirely possible that Ingvar [Engström] concocted the story as an embellishment to his own birth."

It would be helpful if editors knowledgeable about the genealogy of the British Royal Family and Queen Victoria in particular would pay attention to the article Emmelie de Forest and allegations of descent from Queen Victoria that may be inserted into it by uncritical fans. Many Wikipedia articles in other languages reported outright as an undisputed fact that she was Victoria's great-grandchild, and such false pretenses are likely to appear in newspapers during the contest. Vinson wese (talk) 15:07, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 May 2013

i want to add link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(servant) to the word used for "john brown" 117.197.18.197 (talk) 23:59, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

 Already done - The first instance of "John Brown" in this article is already wikilinked as you request. This occurs in the third paragraph of the Widowhood section. Typically only the first mention within an article is linked. Is there another particularly important spot in the article you feel should be linked up? --ElHef (Meep?) 00:08, 26 May 2013 (UTC)