Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Oh boy. It looks as though Queen Victoria (Jenna Coleman) might have finally met her match at the end of last night’s Victoria. Even though she’s spent tons of time so far mooning over the much older Lord Melbourne (Rufus Sewell), Victoria must finally settle down with an actual husband. The security of her reign depends upon her being able to produce an heir (and her ability to consolidate her power with a partner who will support, and not challenge, her position). Enter: Prince Albert (Tom Hughes).
I should perhaps rephrase that as “Enter: Prince Albert in a total dreamboat way.”
Victoria gives the character a dramatic introduction that fits his importance in the story. For an entire episode, he is teased out as “the nice, nerdy cousin” that Victoria’s elders want her to wind up with — and therefore he should be a total “Baxter,” aka the nice guy who always loses in romances. Historically, that’s precisely what Victoria thought of her cousin…until he visited England shortly after her coronation and turned out to have matured into a much more interesting man than she thought he’d be. SPOILER ALERT: Victoria marries Albert. If you didn’t know this, um, well, sorry. Pay attention in history more?
The real-life Prince Albert was an almost perfect royal husband. Okay, yes, he chafed for the first few years of his marriage. It was difficult for the policy nerd to find himself relegated to the sidelines while his young wife held all the power. But as the years went on, Albert proved himself to be a loyal and faithful husband. That would have been enough for some queens, but Albert was also a sage partner. He helped sponsor projects that would help secure Great Britain’s place as a truly modern power.
Up-and-coming actor Tom Hughes plays Albert in Victoria. Hughes is a classically trained actor — he graduated from RADA in 2008 — and made one of his first splashes in the BBC’s lavish Shakespeare series, The Hollow Crown. Since then, he’s also appeared in series like Dancing on the Edge and Silk. American audiences might best know him as Jimmy Kincade, the cad who leads Domhnall Gleeson’s sweet sister astray, in Richard Curtis’s time travel romance About Time. Albert is probably Hughes’s biggest role to date.
If you can’t wait to see more Victoria, PBS Passport subscribers can watch the whole season now. Click here for more information on the paid membership service.
