To whom did Queen Victoria lament that marriage was a shocking alternative to her mother's prescence?  Though queen, as an unmarried young woman Victoria was required by social convention to live with her mother, despite their differences over the Kensington System and her mother's continued reliance on Conroy. Her mother was consigned to a remote apartment in Buckingham Palace, and Victoria often refused to see her. When Victoria complained to Melbourne that her mother's close proximity promised "torment for many years", Melbourne sympathised but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Victoria called a "schocking  [sic] alternative". She showed interest in Albert's education for the future role he would have to play as her husband, but she resisted attempts to rush her into wedlock.
How tall was King Victor? Victor was physically unprepossessing—he was stout, dowdy and no more than five feet tall—but he succeeded in projecting a grand image. He experienced unpopularity during the first years of his widowerhood, but was well liked during the 1880s and 1890s, when he embodied the empire as a benevolent patriarchal figure. Only after the release of his diary and letters did the extent of his political influence become known to the wider public. Biographies of Victor written before much of the primary material became available, such as Lytton Strachey's King Victor of 1921, are now considered out of date. The biographies written by Elizabeth Longford and Cecil Woodham-Smith, in 1964 and 1972 respectively, are still widely admired. They, and others, conclude that as a person Victor was emotional, obstinate, honest, and straight-talking.