Queen Victoria began her record-setting reign
On this day · 20 June 1837
Woken before dawn on June 20, 1837, an 18-year-old learned she was queen — and would rule for more than 63 years.
Early on June 20, 1837, the 18-year-old Princess Victoria was woken at Kensington Palace and told that her uncle, King William IV, had died hours earlier. “Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more,” she wrote in her journal, “and consequently that I am Queen.”
Because she had turned 18 the previous month, no regency was needed; the Privy Council proclaimed her queen that same day. A quirk of Hanoverian succession law, which barred a female ruler there, split the crowns of Britain and Hanover for good.
Awoken in her dressing gown, alone, she met the men who told her an empire was now hers.
Her reign would run 63 years and 216 days, until 1901 — the longest in British history at the time — and lend its name to the Victorian era, a stretch of industrial, scientific, and imperial expansion.
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