Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

1819 – 1861 · Generation XXXIII · Prince Consort · House of Windsor

Portrait of Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819–1861). Prince Consort. Married Victoria in 1840. Architect of the Great Exhibition of 1851; Victoria wore mourning for him for the remaining forty years of her life. The second son of Duke Ernest III and Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, he was born at Schloss Rosenau near Coburg and studied at Bonn. Leopold, King of the Belgians, uncle to them both, promoted his match with his first cousin Victoria, who proposed in October 1839. Parliament, wary of a minor German prince, cut his allowance and refused him a peerage, and he was styled Prince Consort only from 1857. He took charge of the royal household and finances, bought Osborne, leased Balmoral and, as chancellor of Cambridge, widened its curriculum; the Exhibition’s surplus bought the South Kensington land for its museums and colleges. Already gravely ill in 1861, he softened the government’s demands in the Trent affair, helping to avert war with the United States. He died at Windsor that December, officially of typhoid, though a chronic illness may have been the true cause.

Place in the family

  • Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was a great-great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.
  • The archive records 57 of his descendants, across 7 generations.

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Line of descent: Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld → Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha → Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

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Parents

Partners

  • Married Queen Victoria (1819 – 1901) in 1840 — 9 children together

Children

Life

  • 1819 — Born
  • 1840 — Married Victoria
  • 1861 — Died

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