Queen Victoria is perhaps best known for her strict standards of personal morality which identified the period of her reign. After all, it was during the Victorian era, which was named after her, that society was expected to show sexual restraint, low tolerance to crime and a strict social code of conduct. However, it was also under her rule that Britain underwent a great industrial expansion and economic progress. To the outside world, Queen Victoria appeared as a grim and foreboding ruler. But in her personal life she could be quite the opposite. Here, below is a list of ten most amazing facts about Queen Victoria. Have a look!

Top Ten Facts about Queen Victoria

10. Her Proposal to Prince Albert

On 15th of October in 1839, Queen Victoria proposed to her first cousin, Prince Albert. Later in her diary she wrote “we embraced each other over and over again, and he was so kind, so affectionate… I really felt it was the happiest brightest moment in my life.” They got married in 1840 and had a happy married life. Indeed, when Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria never fully recovered and fell into deep mourning for years to come.

9. Block of cheese as a Wedding Gift

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, she received a giant cheddar wheel as a wedding gift. The block of cheese weighed over 500 kilograms and was made from the milk of 750 cows. The queen accepted the present. However, the farmers that made the cheese then asked if it could be exhibited. Queen Victoria agreed, but after the exhibition she simply refused to take the cheese back.

8. Her fear of Bishops

It is widely believed that Queen Victoria had an irrational fear of bishops. Apparently when she was a little girl, she was scared of their wigs, and in consequence, scared of the people under the wigs. However, she managed to partly get over this unusual phobia after the Bishop of Salisbury allowed her to play with his badge of Chancellor of the Order of the Garter.

7. Seven Survived Assassinations

Queen Victoria’s life was threatened at least 7 times. The first attempted assassination took place in 1837, not long after she took the throne. It was carried out by a man who claimed to be the rightful son of George IV and the heir to the throne.

In most cases, the queen’s life was threatened by insane individuals or extremists. For example, in 1840, a man tried to shoot the Queen because he did not believe it fit to have England run by a woman and in 1872 and Irishman with a pistol tried to get her to sign a document that would free the Irish from the English (express.co.uk).

The last attempt on the queen’s life came in 1882. The shooter hated not only the queen but also the number four. He also believed that there were supernatural powers to de discovered in blue things.

6. Her Strained Relationship with her Children

Queen Victoria had nine children with Prince Albert. However, she hated being pregnant as it took away her powers as a queen. She also disliked breastfeeding and called it a disgusting practice. She was severe to her children and did not believe in affection.

Her relationship with her eldest son, Bertie (or Edward VII, as he became known later) was particularly difficult. Like many princes, he was educated at home with a tutor and did badly in lessons – his parents considered him a halfwit. When Bertie was 19, he trained in an army in Ireland and was found in bed with a prostitute. Prince Albert wrote his son a long, sad letter.

He later went to Cambridge to see his son where they took a walk in the rain. Prince Albert came back a sick man and died three weeks later. Queen Victoria blamed Bertie for the death of her husband for the rest of her life.

5. Spying on her Children

Queen Victoria’s insatiable and unquenchable need to be in control and power led to her employment of spies and informers to report on her children. When her eldest daughter married and moved to Germany, Queen Victoria wrote her every day and in a way, micromanaged her life.

When her son Bertie married the Danish princess Alexandra, the doctor on Queen Victoria’s command was forced to report on every minute detail of princess’ Alexandra’s state of health, including her menstrual cycle. Queen Victoria intended to keep her youngest daughter, Beatrice, unmarried. However, Beatrice rebelled and got engaged to a German prince.

Queen Victoria was so enraged she did not speak to Beatrice for six months and only agreed to the marriage on the condition that they live with her (BBC).

4. ‘The Grandmother of Europe’

Towards the end of her reign, Queen Victoria was nicknamed ‘the grandmother of Europe’. This was because most of her nine children married into royal European families, as did her grandchildren when they grew up.

Queen Victoria’s children married into the houses of Battenberg, Denmark, Prussia, Russia, Schleswig-Holstein and Waldeck. Some of her more notable grandchildren include Queen Sophie of Greece, German Emperor Wilhelm II and czarina Alix of Russia.

3. The Carrier of the “Royal Disease”

It is believed that Queen Victoria was the carrier of hemophilia B, which is also known as the “royal disease” because it affected the royal families of England, Germany, Russia and Spain in the 19th and 20th century. She passed this trait onto 3 of her 9 children. Her son Leopold, a delicate sickly child, was the first to suffer – he died from hemorrhage after a fall.

Queen Victoria’s daughters, Beatrice and Alice, passed the disease onto several of their children. After Queen Victoria, the disease was passed on for three generations before it completely disappeared.

2. Prolific Writer

Queen Victoria started her first diary in 1832. At the time, she was just thirteen years old. Her mother inspected her journals every day until Victoria became Queen. She kept a diary all throughout her life and her last entry was made just ten days before her death. Over the course of her life, she filled 121 journals and on average, wrote 2,000 words a day.

Before Queen Victoria died, she insisted that after her death, one of her children would go over her journals and censor anything that might be considered improper. Queen Victoria’s daughter Beatrice did exactly that. After her censorship, most of the original journals were destroyed.

1. First Sovereign to Rule from Buckingham Palace

Queen Victoria was the first monarch to rule from the Buckingham Palace (LINK 15). She took up residence in the palace in 1837. After her marriage to Prince Albert, the Buckingham Palace was used as a royal family home, a place for entertainment as well as a place for official business. However, after Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria neglected the Palace favoring other places such as the Windsor Castle, Balmoral Castle in Scotland or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

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In bygone days, before modern technology, people had to rely more on their imaginations to come up with entertaining pastimes. This often resulted in some very strange games, especially for children, during the Victorian Age and long before. Some of these games are silly, while others are a little disturbing, and versions of some are still played today.

Here are 10 of the weirdest children’s games from the Victorian era and earlier.

10 Funeral

Some children’s pastimes during this era were startlingly macabre, such as one make-believe game known as Funeral. As strange and disturbing as it may seem today, laying out a doll and performing a mock funeral, sometimes even burying the doll, was common in the 19th century and referred to by authors of the day.

One publication noted that Charles Dickens referenced such a game in his 1840 novel The Old Curiosity Shop. In the story, the protagonist, Nell, stumbles across a group of children in a graveyard “playing funeral” with a very realistic doll—their baby brother or sister.

Considering the high infant and child mortality rate in this era, it makes sense that end-of-life rituals would be reflected in children’s play. Not only did kids gather together pretending to mourn a loved one, but there were toys made for this purpose, including a tiny black coffin and a tiny black mourning dress.^[1]

9 Honey-Pots

There isn’t much to the 19th-century game Honey-Pots, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. One player rolls their body into a very tight ball, and another player has to lift the person and carry them as if they were a jar of honey being brought home from the market. Depending on the size of the player who’s impersonating the honey-pot and the one doing the lifting, this could be a challenging task. It was probably also uncomfortable being transported in this strange manner.^[2]

8 Apple and Candle

The Victorians liked games involving fire, like Ghostly Fire and the very popular Snap Dragon. Some of these were clearly hazardous, such as the Halloween game Apple and Candle, in which a stick was strung up horizontally with an apple attached to one end and a lit candle attached to the other. Participants would take their turn jumping up and using their teeth to try to snatch the apple from the quickly twirling stick.

However, as The Book of Days explains, “it very frequently happens that the candle comes round before they are aware, and scorches them in the face, or anoints them with grease.”^[3]

7 Knucklebones

The ancient game of Knucklebones is suspected of having originated in either ancient Egypt or Lydia and eventually made its way into Roman and Greek culture. The children’s version of the game involves simultaneously throwing five game pieces up in the air. As they fall, a player tries to catch as many as possible on the back of their hand. In another version, players try to throw one or two pieces at a time into a small hole in the ground or the opening of some small object.

The strangest thing about this pastime is that the actual knucklebones of goats and sheep were originally used as game pieces. Later, they were made of all sorts of different materials, including glass, wood, stone, and even bronze and gold. Games similar to Knucklebones are still played today, such as the children’s game, Jackstones.^[4]

6 Hot Cockles

One famous Victorian party game for children and adults, Hot Cockles, is possibly the most bizarre and violent, which may be why the memory of it has not been lost to history—except for maybe on an episode of Jackass.

A player kneels down, blindfolded, and places their head in the lap of a seated person, then waits for the other guests to take turns kicking them from behind. The objective is for the player to “guess who has just kicked them.” In another version of the game, the blindfolded player would guess the identity of the person who has just slapped them.^[5]

5 Ring Around the Rosie

Everyone’s familiar with the cute childhood game Ring Around the Rosie, which is still popular today. This activity started long before the Victorian era and involves kids holding hands as they dance around in a circle, singing the words to this old nursery rhyme. However, the lyrics may be rooted in a tragic chapter of history. There is a widespread belief that the words describe symptoms of the bubonic plague.

The first line, “Ring around the Rosie,” could easily refer to the bright red rash visible on infected people. The line “Pocket full of posies” could be included because the flower was considered a good luck charm that was thought to guard against the contraction of the virus. Posies were also “sometimes used to overpower the stench of dead bodies.”

The line “Atischoo, atischoo,” is meant to sound like sneezes, so that also fits in with the theory. But children in some places instead say “Ashes, ashes,” which could be a reference to the frequent cremations that were done during the plague. Sadly, the phrase “We all fall down” might symbolize death, as the plague, of course, had a very high fatality rate.^[6]

4 The Bellman

There are many variations on the 2,000-year-old game we know today as Blind Man’s Bluff, in which a player is blindfolded and spun around before chasing after other players who are calling out to them. One version known as The Bellman is a reverse of the standard game. All the players are blindfolded except one, who rings a bell. When the blindfolded players hear the bell, they run in the direction the sound came from, trying to catch the person who rang it.

This is one of many games played in the Victorian Era and earlier that could be somewhat dangerous. As History Collection points out: “It’s very likely that the blindfolded kids collided into one another, and possibly ended up getting a concussion.” ^[7]

3 Ball of Wool

It’s hard to imagine being so bored that it would seem like fun to try to blow a ball of wool off the opposite side of a table, but maybe that’s because we’re not in the Victorian Age. Yes, this was a game. The challenging part was trying to get the ball of wool past the person on the other side, who was supposed to block it from going over the edge. In another version, a player would use their breath to keep a feather in the air for as long as possible.

Imagine trying to entertain children with this game at your next family gathering.^[8]

2 Predictions of Future Husbands

During the Victorian era, there were a number of games that revolved around girls trying to glean information about their future husbands. These were especially popular during Halloween parties. One such game involved the pouring of melted lead through a key into a bowl of water and analyzing the shapes for hints of their future husband’s occupation.

In another game, a girl was supposed to eat an apple by candlelight while looking into a mirror and hopefully see the reflection of her intended standing behind her.

Three Luggies called for a girl to be blindfolded, so common in this era, and have three turns at placing her left hand in one of three bowls to determine what kind of husband she would get, but it only counted if her hand was in the same bowl at least twice. If she dipped her hand in a bowl of water, she was destined to wed a bachelor. A bowl of milk meant she would marry a widower, but if the bowl was empty, it meant spinsterhood, a frightening prospect in the 1800s. No wonder they played it on Halloween.

There was also a version of this game for males, but the bowl that meant the young man would marry a widow contained fowl water instead of milk.^[9]

1 Marriage Games

A marriage-themed game might sound goofy today, but since Victorians, in general, seemed to be so preoccupied with who was going to marry whom, it makes sense that there would be a party game based on the topic. These games tended to be geared toward teenagers and young adults. Marriages and Divorces almost sounds like the predecessor to speed dating and has been compared to it. However, the old-fashioned parlor game may have actually been a more effective matchmaking technique. In Marriages and Divorces, all the girls would line up on one side of the room while the boys would line up on the other side. Whoever you happened to be standing across from was your partner. Each player had to write a “character sketch,” including their flaws and their good points.

As if this game wasn’t awkward and embarrassing enough, each participant was required to read these descriptions aloud in front of the group. Depending on how well a couple hit it off, they would either ask the game’s judge to be “married” or “divorced.” However, it was up to the judge to decide if they were compatible enough. In the event that a couple asked to be divorced, despite the judge’s opinion that they were suitable, there was a penalty. The two players had to pay a forfeit.

In a different version of the game, just called Marriages, everyone would name a famous person, alive or dead, or a fictional character. The male participants, assuming the role of one of these celebrities, would propose to a female player, who would either accept or reject the proposal. However, if she declined, she was obligated to explain why. After everyone was matched up, the males had to explain why their character proposed to the female player. This game could be a way to explore romantic attitudes in mixed company but with a less personal and direct approach than Marriages and Divorces.^[10]