‘Victoria’ Season 3: “A Show of Unity” Recap

Previously on Victoria: Tension lingers between the queen and her husband, as Albert insists that his wife’s obsessive need for love and adoration from her subjects is borderline psychotic, while Victoria argues that he just doesn’t understand what it means to be a monarch. A cholera outbreak strikes London, resulting in the death of many people – including Nancy Skerrett Francatelli, who goes from finding out she’s pregnant on the eve of her husband’s restaurant opening to dead in the space of an act break. Yikes. (Need more details? Our full recap of "Foreign Bodies" is here.)

After the tragedy of last week’s installment, Victoria pulls up stakes and sends everyone off to Ireland following an assassination attempt that convinces the queen she must work to mend the frayed relationship between the crown and its Irish subjects. Much like Season 2’s “Entente Cordiale,” a new location makes for the best episode of the season – but not because this installment is a particularly lighthearted romp. No, instead, “A Show of Unity” uses the introduction of Lord Palmerston’s – quite frankly, amazing – wife, Emily, to present three competing, conflicting and ultimately fascinating pictures of marriage.

Now, if anyone had told me during the first episode of this season that Lord Henry Palmerston would somehow become one of Season 3’s most fascinating characters, I would have been skeptical at best, and probably outright laughed. Yet, here we are, four episodes later, and Palmerston has not only become an entertaining ally of Victoria’s, but one of the most interesting folks on the show in his own right.