Free We Two: Victoria and Albert by Gillian Gill Page A

officer, her counselor, her confidant, and her political agent in dealings with King, court, and parliament.
    Cynical men of the world like the Duke of Wellington were sure that Conroy was the duchess’s lover. They were probably wrong, but Conroy had a familiar way of dealing with her that the Court of St. James’s observed with shock and distaste, so violently did it flout every rule of royal etiquette. According to Conroy’s biographer Katherine Hudson, Conroy lived in a convenient fantasy world in which he and his family were royal too. Against all the evidence, Conroy believed that his wife, Elizabeth Fisher Conroy, wasan illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Kent. He was thus Princess Victoria’s brother-in-law, and his children were her nieces and nephews. He once mystified Victoria by saying that his daughters were as high as she.
    Leopold underestimated Conroy Busy and blinded by aristocratic disdain, he saw Conroy as his English agent and believed what Conroy told him. He failed to see how effectively Conroy was controlling the flow of information in and out of Kensington Palace, how thoroughly Conroy had taken control of the duchess’s affairs. Only gradually was it borne in upon the king of the Belgians that the lowly Conroy had ambitions that paralleled and might frustrate his own.
    Both exceptionally ambitious men who saw the child Victoria as a tool in their own advancement, Conroy and Leopold had much in common, but only Conroy understood this. As a result, Sir John was able to exploit the blind spot of a king who prided himself on his astuteness. It was only after Victoria became queen that King Leopold started referring to Conroy as a “Mephistopheles” and comparing his influence over the Duchess of Kent to “witchcraft.”
    People in England had no trouble figuring out Sir John Conroy. Great men like the Duke of Wellington, Lord Charles Greville, and Lord Melbourne wondered to each other how the Duchess of Kent could be deceived by such an obvious blackguard. But the duchess connived in her own deception. Victoire of Kent was a traditional man’s woman: sociable, pliant, not very bright, but convinced of her own importance. When she was put down, when her needs were not met, like a spoiled lapdog she showed her teeth. The more Conroy annoyed her English relatives, the more she liked him.
    The duchess had no desire to see her brother Leopold regent in England. She had enjoyed being regent in Germany in her first husband’s tiny realm, and she intended to be regent in England in the happy event that her daughter succeeded to the throne as a minor. As the years went by, as the dynastic odds for Victoria improved, as her own social and financial situations rose, the duchess became increasingly imperious. After her brother-in-law William came to the throne, she was livid when Prime Minister Wellington refused her demand for the status (and the income) of a dowager Princess of Wales. As Victoria edged closer to the throne, the duchess also became more and more envious, reminding her daughter that if the Duke of Kent had lived, she, not Victoria, would have been Queen of England after William IV’s death.
    The duchess liked Conroy, she was comfortable with him, and she viewed business, especially financial business, as a male preserve. Conroyseemed all efficiency to her, and, since he was her man, she assumed that his interests and ambitions dovetailed with her own. She tolerated Conroy’s presumption and paid no attention to his financial dealings. She and Conroy were, for at least eight years, an effective team.
    It is one of the oddities of history that Victoria Regina et Imperatrix (Queen and Empress), the woman who launched a dozen dynasties and put fear into the hearts of courtiers and children alike, spent her youth in thrall to a man who had no legal authority over her, a man who was neither nobleman nor kinsman—a man she loathed.

That Dismal Existence

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    HE FIRST YEARS AFTER THE DEATH