Princess Victoria Quotes in The Young Victoria (2009)

Princess Victoria: Do you ever feel like a chess piece yourself? In a game being played against your will.

Prince Albert: Do you?

Princess Victoria: Constantly. I see them leaning in and moving me around the board.

Prince Albert: The Duchess and Sir John?

Princess Victoria: Not just them. Uncle Leopold. The king. I'm sure half the politicians are ready to seize hold of my skirts and drag me from square to square.

Prince Albert: Then you had better master the rules of the game until you play it better than they can.

Princess Victoria: You don't recommend I find a husband to play it for me?

Prince Albert: I should find one to play it with you, not for you.

Princess Victoria: [to her mother] Oh, and if you think that I will ever forget that you stood by silent and watched him treat me thus, you are dreaming!

Princess Victoria: Now, I am quite married.

Sir John Conroy: You're too young! You've no experience. You're like a china doll, walking over a precipice...

Princess Victoria: Well then I must smash! For it's too late to mend my ways now.

Princess Victoria: Lord Melbourne says French doctors kill their patients. English ones just let them die.

[opening lines]

Princess Victoria: [voiceover] Some people are born more fortunate than others. Such was the case with me. But as a child I was convinced of quite the opposite. What little girl does not dream of growing up as a princess? But some palaces are not at all what you would think. Even a palace can be a prison. Mama never explained why she would have someone taste my food, why I couldn't attend school with other children or read popular books. When my father died, Mama and her advisor, Sir John Conroy, created rules. He said they were for my protection, and he called it The Kensington System. I could not sleep in a room without Mama, or even walk downstairs without holding the hand of an adult. I learned the reason for all this when I was eleven: my Uncle William was the King of England, yet he and his three brothers could boast only one living child. And that was me. Sir John's dream was that the King would die and there would be a regency where my mother would rule England and he would rule my mother. So I began to dream of the day when my life would change and I might be free. And I prayed for the strength to meet my destiny.

Prince Albert: For pity's sake, smile, woman. Anyone would think we had quarreled.

Princess Victoria: Don't talk to me.

Prince Albert: Victoria.

Princess Victoria: It's all right, Lehzen. Albert can take me up.

[to Albert]

Princess Victoria: You'll have to hold my hand. Mama insists. I hope you don't mind.

Prince Albert: Not in the least.

Princess Victoria: What did you want to say?

Prince Albert: Only that I understand more than you think of what your life is.

Princess Victoria: Do you?

Prince Albert: My childhood wasn't easy, either. I lost my mother when I was a boy.

Princess Victoria: I know. She died.

Prince Albert: No. That is, she did die. Eventually. But she was sent away long before that. There was some difficulty... It was all hushed up and no one talks of it now. But I know what it is to live alone, inside your head, while never giving a clue as to your real feelings.

Princess Victoria: Did Uncle Leopold ask you to tell me that?

Prince Albert: No. He actually told me never to mention it.

Princess Victoria: Well, how little he knows me.

Prince Albert: [pause] May I write to you?

[She smiles]