'Victoria' Season 1: 'Young England' Recap

Previously on Victoria: The queen discovers – to absolutely no one’s surprise – that she’s pregnant. Everyone’s thrilled, although Victoria’s less than thrilled with the fact that everyone thinks her pregnancy should incapacitate her. She must name a regent, in case she should die herself, but a battle with Parliament looms when she picks Albert. Or at least it does until Sir Robert Peel – who’s now basically BFFs with Albert – decides to back the queen’s choice. Meanwhile, Albert very much wants the crown to embrace technology, particularly locomotives. (No, seriously, Albert is obsessed with trains.)  Victoria, for her part, finally allows Albert to have some input in governing, and puts him in charge of her “industry-related” stack of government paperwork.

This week is the Season 1 finale of Victoria. As with all good period dramas, it feels as though the season has positively flown by. (In case you were worried, the series will return for second season, and production is already under way.) And as finales go, it’s a pretty great one. This episode has a little bit of everything – romance, intrigue, childbirth, tension, and a happy ending. Even the squabbling servants end up making up. It’s a nice note to wrap the season up on.

It’s About That Time. Victoria, now hugely pregnant, is really ready for this whole pregnancy thing to be over. She can’t go riding, can’t have dancing, can’t really do anything except go out for drives in her carriage every day. And with the constant arrival of presents and people in advance of the birth, she’s just getting more and more stressed and anxious about what might happen. Her generally attitude would probably be helped if everyone around her could possibly stop Princess Charlotte and how tragic and awful her fate was. That’s probably not helping. At least Lehzen is doing her best to buck up the queen’s spirits.