Victoria

              Victoria and Albert.  Where would their marriage be if it weren’t for Ernst?  I don’t know how many times this man has come to the rescue during times of strife in their marriage.  He does this, all while struggling with a love of his own.

                Queen Victoria (Jenna Coleman) has just had her first child, a child everyone demanded she have, especially if it had been a boy.  Which it wasn't.  You would think people would be happy now and let Victoria rule as she deems fit.  That is not at all the case.  While Victoria is perfectly ready to go back to work, everyone arounds her expects Victoria to stay away.  They believe she should take more time to recover from her pregnancy and spend time in the nursery.  In fact, if Victoria were to do that for the rest of her life, the men around her would be perfectly happy with the situation.  Her husband, Prince Albert (Tom Hughes), especially.  That’s because while Victoria is in confinement, Albert gets to be the one in control.  With her away, recuperating, Albert has been able to be part of strategy sessions and make decisions normally left up to Victoria.  It is a control he does not want to give up, which is why he keeps things from Victoria, and demands that others do so as well.  While there may be a bit of a hesitancy about keeping things from the queen, the people Albert is working with do happily agree.

                The funny thing is, that while Albert intentionally works to keep Victoria in the dark about matters of state, he has the hardest time figuring out why Victoria is upset with him.  Victoria knows what Albert and the other members of her circle are up to, yet it is his brother Ernst (David Oakes) who has to explain Victoria’s behavior to Albert.  Ernst lets Albert know that Victoria sees Albert’s concealing things as a desire to control.  Of course, Albert denies this is his reasoning for what he’s doing.  He claims he’s only concerned with Victoria’s well-being.  I find this explanation doubtful, yet Ernst confronting Albert with how his actions are perceived does make Albert change his ways.          

                At least it does for a while.  Then Albert gets involved in the mathematics scene.  One of the prominent people on that scene is a woman, Ada Lovelace (Emerald Fennell).  Having Albert in such close proximity to, and having such fascination in, another woman makes Victoria jealous.  It only makes matters worse when at a party, Albert, Ada, and Charles Babbage (Jo Stone-Fewings) (another mathematician), pretty much laugh at Victoria when she doesn’t understand their mathematical principles.  In distress over what may be happening to her marriage, Victoria turns to the one person she feels she can truly trust, Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell).

                Making sure Albert finds out where she is going in hopes of inciting some sort of reaction (of which Albert pretends he doesn’t care), Victoria goes to Lord Melbourne to seek marriage advice.  While Melbourne would not consider himself a marriage expert by any stretch of the imagination, he is able to help Victoria.  He helps her see that she must find a balance between being both the queen of England and Albert’s wife, because there will be times when she cannot be both.

                While struggling with her relationship with Albert, there are other duties and concerns for Victoria to attend to.  One is that Victoria must also figure out what she is going to do about Ireland.  Because of the potato famine, people in Ireland are starving.  Victoria wants to send aid, but the members of Parliament do not think that is a good idea.  They have to wonder what the poor people in England are going to say if their food is sent away.  This argument does not sway Victoria, and she questions her prime minister, Sir Robert Peel (Nigel Lindsay), about his conscience.  In fact, much of this second season was about Victoria trying to do the right thing while others disagreed with how she did it.  That’s when she wasn’t having children or dealing with Albert’s sulking, of course.

                I must say, Albert did a lot of sulking in this season.  But then, I think he did a lot of sulking in the last season, too.  Every time something did not go Albert’s way he would sulk.  Then Ernst (and sometimes even his Uncle Leopold (Alex Jennings)) would have to set him straight.  Inevitably, Victoria would find a way to compromise, making Albert happy again, for a while.

                Not that Victoria was perfect in these situations.  She would frequently try to exude her authority over others in order to control them and get her way.  These antics were done to Albert especially.  It did not help that Victoria was battling postpartum depression after giving birth to her second child (I believe she’d had three by the end of the season).  Then there was the conflict between Albert and the children’s caretaker, Baroness Lehzen (Daniela Holtz), the woman who raised Victoria.  On top of this was the great number of people who treated Victoria as though she could no longer do her job because she was now a mother.  With all this going on, it’s no wonder Victoria lost it at times.

                With so many people in the palace, it’s not just Victoria and Albert that have things going on in their lives.  At Victoria’s insistence, Chef Francatelli (Ferdinand Kingsley) returns to cook at the palace.  Still hurt from Miss Skerrett’s (Nell Hudson) rejection, Francatelli avoids her at first.  Then Miss Skerrett saves Francatelli from being fired, and things warm up between them until they reach the point where they let themselves truly fall in love.

                Since Miss Skerrett has now been promoted to the lead dresser, a new assistant dresser has been brought in.  Miss Cleary (Tilly Steele) is a Catholic, a fact she must keep a secret.  This becomes harder and harder to do as her family back in Ireland continues to struggle to survive.  Eventually, Victoria finds out about Miss Cleary’s religion and family.  It is with this situation that people truly start to  get to see the compassionate side of Victoria.

                Above stairs, more people are falling in love.  This time it’s between Sir Peel’s secretary, Edward Drummond (Leo Suter) and a member of Victoria’s household, Lord Alfred Paget (Jordan Waller).  As both Drummond and Paget are men, they must keep their attraction, and eventual relationship, a secret.  They aren’t very good at this though, because when one of them dies tragically, it is the Duchess of Buccleuch (Diana Rigg), Victoria’s new Mistress of the Robes, that tells the other man how he must behave at the funeral so as to not draw suspicion to his relationship with the deceased.

                Then there is poor Ernst (Ernest, depending on who is speaking).  He is madly in love with the former Mistress of the Robes, the Duchess of Sutherland (Margaret Clunie), but she goes back to her husband when she leaves her position in the palace.  Devastated at losing the woman he loves, Ernst becomes more like his father and takes sexual risks.  These risks lead him to become very sick.  Ernst undergoes treatments for his illness.  The treatments work so well that when the Duchess of Sutherland’s husband dies, Ernst believes he can finally be with the woman he loves.  Unfortunately, his symptoms come back.  To keep his love safe, Ernst decides he must push her away, even if it kills him to do it.

                Watching all that is going on is the great-niece of the Duchess of Buccleuch, Wilhelmina (Bebe Cave).  A quiet and shy young woman, Wilhelmina first falls for Ernst.  When Ernst very bluntly informs her of his womanizing ways, Wilhelmina turns her attention to Drummond and Paget.  I’m not sure which one Wilhelmina is truly interested in, but she is the one who watches the two men in a compromising situation and says nothing.  Despite what she sees, Wilhelmina does not lose interest in the men, and she befriends the one left behind when the other is killed, leading to her receiving a marriage proposal.

                I’ve covered a lot, while trying to keep some things vague so as to not ruin anything, and yet there is so much more I haven’t said.  There is one more thing I do want to say, though.  That is that Victoria is really lucky to have Miss Skerrett in her life.  Not only does she always know what Victoria needs when she needs it (like running off to find Albert when they find Victoria’s dog has died), but she helps guide Victoria to being a better person.  With a gentle hand, Miss Skerrett lets Victoria know how to do good things for other people, not just herself.  As nearly every other person simply tells Victoria what she should do, inciting her stubbornness, this gentle hand from Miss Skerrett is exactly what Victoria needs.