(gentle music)
- There's a lot of conflicting reports
about Victoria as a mother.
What I knew from afar, initially,
was that Victoria wasn't
the warmest of mothers.
But if you really delve
within her diaries,
you really see how maternal
she was, I suppose.
And that personally took me by surprise.
It's the pregnancies that she
resented, not the children.
I didn't spend all those
years in Kensington
shut up in a nursery,
only to be confined into another one.
She'd fought for 18
years to be independent
and I think this really
is the key to Victoria
and something that we mustn't ever forget
is that was that she was
controlled her entire life
and she only became free ironically,
on the day that she also became Queen.
So I think pregnancy for Victoria
and becoming a mother,
given her own dysfunctional relationship
with her mother is quite
conflicting for Victoria.
Oh she's clever.
Like her father.
But for Albert, it just comes a lot easier
whereas I think Victoria's kind of
fighting against assumptions
and peoples' judgments, I suppose.
But Albert, I think he is the father
who has it all, as well.
(baby cooing)
- Her expression, it's as if
she knows what I am thinking.
It's a real pleasure from Albert's side
and the fact that they have
something that they can share,
that's jointly theirs.
Because in their public life,
there is a disparency
between what duty they have
and what position that
they have to fulfill.
As parents, it's equal almost.
- (whispering) I expect she's dreaming
of her future husband,
the King of Prussia.
Albert's an amazing father,
took a great deal of care
over their health, their diet.
In quite a modern sense,
he was just a very, very present father.
- I went to Osborne House
and had a look around
and you can see the allotments
that Albert built for the nine children
and the wheelbarrows that were there
and the attention to detail that he took
with the approach to fatherhood.
And by all accounts, he
was hands-on with that.
That suggested to me someone
that took to it quite naturally.
- They spent a lot more
time with their children
than was usual of the
time, in their society.
The King destroyed all the
spinning wheels in the land.
- I think Albert falls
deeper in love with Victoria
through seeing her be
the mother that she is.
