tendre for them,” she once remarked, “til they have become a little human; an ugly baby is a very nasty object . . . and the prettiest is frightful when undressed . . . as long as they have their big body and little limbs and that terrible frog-like action.”
            Victoria displayed a particular enmity toward Prince Edward almost from the beginning. “The hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our Sovereigns to their Heirs Apparent seems thus early to be taking root,” Lord Grenville noted, while Lord Clarendon later said that the queen’s dislike of the Prince of Wales was “a positive monomania with her. She got quite excited while speaking of him, and it quite irritated her to see him in the room.”
            The young prince was gregarious and fun-loving—everything his mother forced herself not to be, and with her driving fear that he would grow up to be like her debauched Hanoverian uncles, the queen prescribed a torturously rigid upbringing that stifled the boy’s natural inclinations for enjoyment. His rebellion from the constraints imposed did little to endear him to his mama, who bombarded him with criticism and rarely missed an opportunity to register her disappointment in him. “I am in utter despair!” the queen wrote her daughter Vicky in 1858. “The systematic idleness, laziness—disregard of everything is enough to break one’s heart, and fills me with indignation!”
            On another occasion, Victoria spoke of “the sorrow and bitter disappointment and the awful anxiety for the future this causes us.” Even her son’s appearance seemed to annoy her. “Handsome I cannot think him,” she sniffed, “with that painfully small and narrow head, those immense features and total want of a chin.” It was an ironic critique coming from a woman who could very well have been describing herself and who at least admitted of Edward: “He is my caricature.”
            The chasm between mother and son widened considerably upon the death of Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, to whom she was fanatically devoted and for whose death she loudly blamed Edward. It was enough to make any son feel special. The prince had been caught in a youthful indiscretion with an actress, and the morally sensitive Albert was devastated by the scandal surrounding his son. Coincidentally, he died a short time later. Victoria could not be convinced that it was typhoid, not grief, that carried her beloved away. In her gloom, the queen declared that she could never look at Edward again “without a shudder.” With his typical good nature and kindness, however, the prince overlooked his mother’s cruel accusations and remained solicitous and devoted to her.
            During Victoria’s morbid, self-imposed seclusion that would last for decades, the crepe-draped queen remained determined to keep the Prince of Wales away from anything even remotely resembling responsibility. She was convinced, unjustly, of Edward’s inherent unworthiness. “What would happen if I were to die next winter!” she wrote her daughter. “One shudders to think of it: it is too awful a contemplation. . . . The greatest improvement I fear will never make him fit for his position.” On another occasion she confided, “I often pray he may never survive me, for I know not what would happen.” All important state papers were kept from the prince, providing zero training for his future role. Removing a key from his pocket, Edward’s little brother, Leopold, once said: “It is the Queen’s Cabinet key, which opens all the secret despatch boxes. . . . The Prince of Wales is not allowed to have one.”
            Warm-hearted as he was, Edward couldn’t help but resent how insignificant his mother made him feel. “I am not of the slightest use to the Queen,” he once complained. “Everything I say or suggest is pooh-poohed and my brothers and sisters are more listened to than I am.” The more the queen kept him away from responsibility, the more Edward turned to other idle distractions like gambling and womanizing. This only confirmed in Victoria’s mind how unworthy he really was.
            Never trusting his judgment, the queen even tried to control Edward’s private life long after he was married. Lord Stanley noted in 1863 that all London was gossiping about the “extraordinary way” in which the queen insisted on directing “the Prince and Princess of Wales in every detail of their lives. They may not dine out, except with previous approval. . . . In addition, a daily and minute report of what passes at Marlborough House [their London residence] has to be sent to Windsor.”
            Throughout it all, the prince handled the mistrust and disapproval with dignity and good humor, always remaining a respectful and dutiful son. After he inherited the throne in 1901 at age fifty-nine, King Edward VII would reign with distinction for nine years, proving his mother’s attitude toward him totally unfounded. He lent his name to a genteel era, and was nicknamed Edward the Peacemaker for his adroit efforts to keep Europe from war. He was a good king, his mother be damned.