In 1819, on this day Alexandrina Victoria (pictured) the only child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent was born at Kensington Palace. Fifth in the succession to the throne at the time of birth, her ascension as the last monarch of the House of Hanover was a historic accident caused by the premature death of Princess Charlotte of Wales, the only legitimate grandchild of George III.
This post is an article from the Good Old Willie thread.

Good Old Willie #2Her reign of sixty-three years and seven months was longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history. This "Victorian era" was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. And ultimately led to a period of intense international rivalry mirroring the earlier Elizabethean Era.

France began to re-emerge as a continental power during the middle of the nineteenth century. The hard-fought victories at Sedan and Metz crushed the formation of a German Empire in its infancy and created the prospect of France rising to undisputed master of continental Europe. If that insidious development was insufficiently menacing of itself, then the development of the Empire Français brought both countries colonial ambitions into direct conflict. The inevitable War was caused by an overseas flashpoint, the Fashoda Crisis which was a dispute over imperial territory in Eastern Africa.

Two years later, the Queen died aged eighty-one; but her successor - her sixty year old daughter - was terminally ill. The truncated six month reign of Queen Victoria II was due to a change of succession allowing the eldest child of either sex to ascend to the throne. Because by 1870 it was evident that an Anglo-German alliance was absolutely necessary in order to confront French hegemony.

In 1840 Victoria had married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Their nine children and twenty-six of their thirty-four grandchildren who survived childhood married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname "the grandmother of Europe". One of those grandchildren was Wilhelm, who would eventually serve for forty years as the second monarch of the House of Hohenzollern. "Good Old Willie" was welcomed by friendly crowds when he came to her death bed. Their desire for an iconic leader was borne out of a common recognition that Great Britain was entering a new era of great uncertainy and danger.