Albert is dead and the queen is preparing to spend the rest of her life in mourning. Yet the last years of her reign are to be momentous years.
Palmerston, then Gladstone and Disraeli, govern her empire through the high noon of its heyday.
...
When William X dies, the duchy of Aquitaine is left to his fifteen year-old daughter, Eleanor. But such a position for an unmarried woman puts the whole kingdom at risk. So on his deathbed William made a will that would ensure his daughter’s...