That bitter Wills v Harry fallout? It must run in the family! Queen Victoria fought a MOTHER FROM HELL (who imprisoned her daughter in Kensington and tried to seize the crown herself…)

The ongoing hostilities between brothers William and Harry are certainly not the first close family feud to plague the royal family.

For if Queen Victoria was angry with her eldest son, Bertie – the future Edward VII – for his wayward philandering, it was nothing compared to the anger reserved for her own mother, the Duchess of Kent.

The widow of the late Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III, the German-born Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, truly became a mother from hell, controlling her daughter’s every waking moment in an attempt to suppress the tension. slightest sign of independence.

Victoria at the age of two, with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, in an 1821 portrait

Sir John Conroy, played here by Mark Strong, wanted to establish a regency, which would mean that he and the Duchess of Kent would control the country, not Victoria.

As is widely recognized by historians, the Duchess and her close associate John Conroy were determined to establish a regency after the eventual death of King William IV, which meant that they, and not her daughter Victoria, would control the country.

Author Tom Quinn writes that King William IV correctly guessed that his sister-in-law, the Duchess, hoped he would die before Victoria reached the age of 18 and that the Duchess intended to rule herself.

‘Even more worrying was the fact that it was widely believed that… real power would lie with her advisor, the Irish aristocrat Sir John Conroy, a man who ruled the Duchess as she ruled Victoria.

‘Personal animosity resulted in the Duchess of Kent doing everything he could to keep Victoria as far away from her uncle William as possible.’

Victoria was kept away from almost everything and everyone, a virtual prisoner in Kensington Palace, without friends, and with every minute of her life watched by her mother and Conroy, who served as comptroller of the Kent household at the palace.

The regime, known as the ‘Kensington System’, was designed to keep Victoria dependent on her mother and free from the influence of her ‘evil’ uncles, George IV and his brother William IV and their well-documented womanizing.

Eventually, an invitation to dine in Windsor arrived that could not be avoided, Quinn explains: a lavish affair to celebrate the birthday of Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV.

William IV, Victoria’s uncle, was one of the so-called ‘Wicked Uncles’ – the sons of George III. Together with the Prince Regent, later George IV, William was headstrong, selfish and addicted to enormous indulgence

Victoria, played by Emily Blunt, became queen just weeks after turning 18 following the death of her uncle, William IV. And so a regency was averted

Miranda Richardson as Queen Victoria’s mother, Victoria, the German-born Duchess of Kent. One of the young queen’s first acts upon her accession was to move her bed from her mother’s bedroom

“The dinner enabled William to launch a direct, scathing and very public attack on the Duchess,” Quinn explains in his book Scandals of the Royal Palaces – An Intimate Memoir of Royals Behaving Badly.

In a speech listened to in stunned silence, he complained that she had taken herself into parts of Kensington Palace without permission and that his only remaining purpose in life was to live another year to fulfill the ambition of the ‘incompetent Duchess ‘ and thwart her. evil advisors’.

It turned out that William lived just long enough for his niece Victoria to become queen. He died June 20, 1837; Victoria had turned 18 a few weeks earlier.

One of her first acts upon joining was moving her bed from her mother’s bedroom. She banished Conroy from the property forever.

• Scandals of the Royal Palaces – An Intimate Memoir of Royals Behaving Badly by Tom Quinn is published by Biteback, price £20