Victoria of the United Kingdom (Alexandrina Victoria Wettin, née Hanover) (1819-05-24 – 1901-01-22) was Queen of the United Kingdom from 20 June 1837, and Empress of India from 1876 until her death. Her reign lasted more than sixty-three years — longer than that of any other British monarch.

The reign of Victoria was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire and is called Victorian Era. Victoria was the last monarch of the House of Hanover; her successor belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

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• It seems to me a defect in our much famed constitution, to have to part with an admirable government like Lord Salisbury's for no question of any importance, or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.

• We are not amused.
  • This quotation is attributed to Victoria, with varying stories. One has her saying it after viewing a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's HMS Pinafore. Other stories describe it as a reaction to a groom-in-waiting of hers, the Hon. Alexander Grantham Yorke, either to a theatrical production he put on, or to a risqué joke he told to a German guest and which the Queen asked him to repeat after the guest laughed loudly. In this account, she was not using the royal "we" but speaking for the affronted ladies of the court. However, more recent documents suggest that the attribution of the quote to Victoria is in fact misguided, instead belonging to Queen Elizabeth I. http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a940415.html

• We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.
  • The Queen's response to reports that British Forces had failed a mission in the Boer War in South Africa.

• I will be good.
  • 11-year-old Victoria's spoken response in 1830 when her governess let her know that one day she would be Queen.

• Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfill my duty towards my country; I am very young, and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure, that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.
  • Response in her diary upon becoming Queen in 1837 at age 18.

• I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights," with all its attendant horrors... Were women to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.
  • Queen Victoria 1870 http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~ulrich/femhist/education.shtml