Their grandmother Augusta, Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield, had their futures planned when all three were still babies. Ernst would follow his father as reigning duke while Albert would marry Victoria, whose prospects were promising even then. Watching over Albert's cradle, Augusta described his birth to her daughter -three-month-old Victoria's mother - adding that Ernst 'runs like a weasel (at fourteen months), is teething and is as wicked as a little dragon … he is not pretty yet, apart from his wonderful, beautiful, black eyes.' 1 Albert as a child was more dormouse than dragon, frail and fair and prone to fall asleep if taxed beyond his small reserve of energy, yet he and Ernst were brought up like twins and both survived the experience, learning to depend on each other.

Victoria did not meet the brothers until they were in their teens, though she heard of them from her grandmother, mother and uncles. In the build-up to the Princes' first visit to England (an important step towards the Coburg marriage plan which her other uncle, King William IV, did his best to subvert), her sister Feodora praised Ernst for his honesty and good nature, Albert for his looks and intelligence. Feodora thought Ernst the nicer of the two, and teased Victoria to pass on her own opinion as soon as she had one. Circumstances had taught Victoria to keep her opinions to herself, but her private comments on the brothers echoed Feodora precisely: 'Albert is extremely good looking which Ernest certainly is not, but he has a most good natured, honest and intelligent countenance.'2

Temperamentally at this time Victoria was far more like Ernst, being lively and sociable with an immense appetite for dancing, gossip and late nights, while the pace of life in England made poor Albert physically ill. Even so, she reached a different conclusion from her sister. She loved both brothers from the start, but Albert was the favourite.

This first meeting happened in the spring of 1836, and in the months that followed their uncle, the King of the Belgians, took Albert in hand. Ernst entered military training, which almost certainly confirmed their differences in taste and character. By 1839, when they returned to England, Albert had blossomed into the picture of masculine virtue and beauty the young Queen found irresistible. Ernst, on the other hand, had become rather wild. He suffered the early symptoms of venereal disease while staying in England: in November Lady Lyttleton observed him at Windsor 'very thin and hollow-cheeked and pale, and no likeness to his brother, nor much beauty. But he has fine dark eyes and black hair, and light figure, and a great look of spirit and eagerness. There! I hear his voice in loud laughter as he walks on the terrace.'3

That laughter, and the defiant attitude behind it, would come to haunt the young couple. At first Albert urged his brother to marry quickly, without holding out for a grand alliance. 'Chains you will have to bear in any case, and it will certainly be good for you… The heavier and tighter they are, the better for you. A married couple must be chained to one another, be inseparable, and they must live only for one another.' 4This well-meant advice only earned Albert a sharp rebuke from his father and brother for presuming to counsel his elders. Around Christmas in 1840 he learned that Ernst was suffering a recurrence of the illness and his advice changed sharply: there should be no question of marriage, he said, until Ernst was fully recovered: 'if the worst should happen, you would deprive your wife of her health and honour…. For God's sake, do not trifle with matters which are so sacred.'5 He warned that continued promiscuity could leave his brother unable to father children - perhaps an accurate prediction, as time would show.

Next>