How long did Queen Victoria mourn Prince Albert?

Forty years - from Albert's death on 14 December 1861 until her own death on 22 January 1901. She wore nothing but black clothing until she died, kept several mourning pendants relating to Albert at her neck, and left Albert's bedroom at Windsor unaltered. This forty-year practice of mourning is without parallel in English royal history and shaped the whole Victorian mourning-jewellery system.

Which pieces of mourning jewellery did Queen Victoria own?

An extensive collection. The most important pieces survive in the Royal Collection (Windsor Castle): a Whitby jet mourning parure (brooch, necklace, bracelet, earrings) from the early 1860s; several mourning pendants containing locks of Albert's hair; a mourning ring with Albert's date of death, 14 December 1861; a large black enamel and gold locket with a miniature portrait of Albert; and numerous memorial pendants for children and grandchildren who had died.

How did Queen Victoria respond to other deaths in her family?

With intense mourning practices in each case. The death of her mother (16 March 1861, nine months before Albert) marked the last year of her life together with Albert. The deaths of her daughter Alice (1878) and her son Leopold (1884) set off new waves of mourning. The death of her grandson Albert Victor (1892) - her favourite grandson - was one of the heaviest blows of her final years. Each of these deaths led to commissions of mourning jewellery of its own, added to the ongoing system of mourning for Albert.

What effect did Queen Victoria's mourning have on the Victorian age?

A comprehensive one. Three central effects: culturally - royal mourning made mourning jewellery a social standard and set off a forty-year wave of middle-class imitation; economically - the mourning-jewellery industry (Whitby jet, vulcanite, black enamel and gold, mourning warehouses) arose largely in answer to the mass demand triggered by Queen Victoria's example; politically - Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life in mourning changed the English monarchy and paved the way towards a more representative, less politically active crown.

Queen Victoria (1819–1901)

Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901, became through her forty years of widow's mourning after the death of Prince Albert (1861) the central style-setting figure of the Victorian mourning-jewellery system - her personal practice of mourning shaped an entire age of European mourning culture.

Deutsch