Queen Victoria, that iconic prude, seems to have had a truly eye-blinking love life. A new TV drama series focusses on the 18 year old Victoria, newly enthroned and enraptured with Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, forty years her senior who mentored her until her marriage to Albert two years later. Her teenage diaries make it clear quite what a crush she had on Melbourne and she was taunted at one point publicly as ‘Mrs Melbourne’. He was described as a “man of easy virtue, indolent, living a life of fashionable gaiety, handsome, with a mellow voice, a cheerful temper and a cordial frankness of manner”. He was married to the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb who ran off with Byron and wrote a scandalous book about the affair.
Victoria was born 24 May 1819 4.15am London, had a dreadfully suffocated childhood under the iron grip of her ambitious mother from whom she escaped once crowned. She was a New Moon Gemini conjunct her Ascendant from the 12th; with successful Jupiter in Aquarius in her 10th; Mars and Venus both in passionate, upfront Aries; and a tricky, unstable Uranus Neptune in her 7th house of close relationships square a bleak Saturn Pluto in Pisces. More of a wild child than history has deemed her to be.
Melbourne was born 15 March 1779 and was a Sun Mercury in Pisces square Uranus, and trine Saturn Mars in Scorpio, so his laid-back charm hid a good deal of anger, hurt and quite a dark streak. His seductively charming Venus Pluto in Aquarius was conjunct Victoria’s Midheaven in her 10th, so he would be quite a dominant figure for her and more manipulative than she would understand. His Jupiter in Virgo and Neptune both fell in Victoria’s 5th house of fun so he’d undoubtedly be good at morale-boosting the ingenue Queen who had never really enjoyed life before.
But with his Pisces Sun conjunct her Saturn Pluto and square her Uranus Neptune, it was never designed to last.
Their relationship chart has an electric composite Venus Uranus conjunction which often turns up for instant attraction, which switches off as quickly as it came – not designed for the long haul. The composite Sun was square Saturn, a hint about the age gap and also the focus on work. Plus a composite Jupiter square Pluto which often starts with a sense of adventure but ends up in a struggle for the upper hand. When she married in 1840, tr Saturn had moved to square the composite Venus Uranus conjunction, as Victoria fell deliriously in love with her new husband. Though that was never the picture book romance she made it about to be.