Jenna Coleman: 'I'm not too pretty to play Queen Victoria'

Jenna Coleman as Queen Victoria in ITV's Victoria
Jenna Coleman as Queen Victoria in ITV's Victoria

Delicate-featured Jenna Coleman, star of ITV's historical drama Victoria, has hit out at  Twitter critics who claim that she is “too pretty" to play British monarch Queen Victoria – telling them to brush up on their history, and check out a few paintings of the monarch as a young woman.

Thanks to a number of famous photographs, familiar to school children across Britain, the traditional image of Victoria is of a stately, older widow, garbed in black (after the death of her husband Albert in 1861, the Queen insisted upon wearing mourning for the rest of her life).

Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In the image below, taken in 1897 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, there's almost something a little bit Miss Havisham-like about her profile (perhaps it's the veil?) as she gazes away from the camera, hands clasped in her lap. 

An official portrait of Queen Victoria (1819 - 1901) on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, after a reign of sixty years
An official portrait of Queen Victoria (1819 - 1901) on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, after a reign of sixty years Credit: Getty Images

But Coleman says portraits show that the younger monarch was a beautiful woman – with a vivacious personality to match.

Jenna Coleman
Jenna Coleman Credit:  Clara Molden

"I want to say 'Google young Victoria'. Portraits are subjective, the eye of the beholder perhaps, but you want people to look a bit further than that,” the actress and Doctor Who star told Nick Grimshaw, during his Radio One breakfast show, when asked about the audience objections.

"In some portraits she looks very young and exuberant and others are not as flattering. When she gets older they perhaps become less flattering."

A young Queen Victoria, painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter in 1842
A young Queen Victoria, painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter in 1842 Credit: Bridgeman

It's also clear that the young Victoria was capable of strong passions, and of inspiring them in others.

An 1839 love letter, written by Prince Albert ahead of his marriage to the monarch, describes how the image of the young queen had "filled his soul".

“Dearest deeply loved Victoria”, he wrote (the original letter is in his native German). “I need not tell you that since we left, all my thoughts have been with you at Windsor, and that your image fills my whole soul. Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth."

 

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