The Young Victoria begins in 1837, when Victoria (Emily Blunt) is seventeen. She is heir to the throne of her uncle, King William IV (Jim Broadbent), and so is protected to an extraordinary degree. She is not allowed to sleep in a bedroom on her own, but must sleep in her mother’s room. She is not allowed to walk up or down stairs without holding an adult’s hand. And she is not allowed friends.
Little wonder that she says, 'A palace can also be a prison.' ‘I dreamt of the time when I would be free.' she reflects. 'I prayed for strength to meet my destiny.’
These are two important themes which shape the next few years of her life. She knows she faces a life of duty, but she wants the freedom to be herself in the midst of it, making her own choices and living by her own values.
Few of us have lives which are so constrained, but freedom is nevertheless a deep longing within every human heart. Many people in our apparently free society feel a lack of freedom, whether through being trapped in an unpleasant work environment, or because of the weight of others’ demands of us, or because of fear. So while our contexts have little similarity with Victoria’s, we instinctively recognise her feeling of being confined and longing to break free.
At the same time, western culture also suffers from the exact opposite problem. After decades of pursuing liberty, we find that society contains significant numbers of people who see freedom as an absolute state, with no limits on what we can do or say or be. Victoria may have prayed for freedom, but she would never have dreamt of it in these terms, since she was so aware of her responsibilities. The integrated human life needs both of these in balance.
The king is nearing the end of his life, but he is desperate to stay alive until Victoria is eighteen and able to take the crown. The alternative is a regency, which is precisely what Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), wants. The Duchess is dominated by the Comtroller of her household, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), and they try to force the young princess to sign a regency order, allowing her mother to reign until the princess was twenty-five. Conroy, of course, would be the power behind the throne.
