Court ladies affair
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The so-called court ladies affair (also Bedchamber plot ) refers to the events in the court and the behavior of Queen Victoria in the wake of the Whigs' election defeat in May 1839. The affair cost Victoria some popular sympathy.
Due to the electoral defeat, the previous Prime Minister Lord Melbourne resigned and Robert Peel was charged with forming a government. The then 20-year-old Victoria had an unusually close relationship with her prime minister and for the first two years after her accession to the throne, she only consulted him on the selection of her ladies-in- waiting. This created the situation where all the ladies-in-waiting were wives or relatives of mostly leading Whigs. Peel, a Tory who had to form a minority government, demanded from the queen that the court should be occupied neutrally, which would have meant the dismissal of some ladies-in-waiting. Victoria, who saw her friends and close companions in her ladies-in-waiting, strictly refused this request, and her Peel was unsympathetic. When Peel refused to form a government under these circumstances, Lord Ashley, who later became Lord Shaftsbury, was offered the office of Prime Minister, but he too refused under these conditions. Eventually the Whigs remained in power with Lord Melbourne. In this so-called "court ladies affair", Victoria moved with her strict refusal in a constitutional gray area, which earned her a lot of criticism.
From a political point of view, the Whigs had little to gain and the Tories little to lose at this point . Peel was reluctant to run another minority government as he had done from 1834 to 1835, and if his position had been stronger at that point he would not have insisted on the changes in the Queen's household.
When a similar situation loomed again in 1841, the matter was settled without much ado, thanks to the diplomatic action of the Queen's husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha . Victoria herself judged her behavior in this situation 60 years later with the sentence: "It was a mistake".
The affair is also described in the 2009 film Young Victoria .
Individual evidence
literature
- Carolly Erickson: Queen Victoria. A biography . Piper, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-492-23286-8 .
- Jürgen Lotz: Victoria. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2000, ISBN 3-499-50627-0 .
- Herbert Tingsten: Queen Victoria and her time . Diederichs, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-424-01360-9 .
- Stanley Weintraub: Queen Victoria . Benziger Verlag, Solothurn / Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-545-34070-8 .
- Karl-Heinz Wocker : Queen Victoria. The story of an age . Heyne, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-453-55072-2 .