
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (26 August 1819-14 December 1861) was Prince Consort of the United Kingdom from 10 February 1840 to 14 December 1861 as the husband of Queen Victoria.
Biography[]

Albert at Queen Victoria's coronation ball
Franz August Karl Albert Emanuel von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born in Schloss Rosenau, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, German Confederation in 1819, the second son of Duke Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, the younger brother of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and the cousin of Queen Victoria. Albert and his brother were abandoned by their mother at the age of five, and they were educated privately at home and studied in Brussels.
In 1836, Albert's ambitious uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, intrigued to arrange a marriage between one of his two nephews with Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom to deepen Belgium's ties with the British and forestall a potential Dutch invasion. Prince Albert courted Victoria from 1837 to 1840, and the newly-crowned Queen proposed to Albert on 15 October 1839 and married him on 10 February 1840 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace. Parliament opposed Albert being granted the title of "King Consort" or being created a peer, as he came from an undistinguished minor state, Albert was a Lutheran (and a relative of Catholics) and not an Anglican, and anti-German sentiment was widespread in Parliament. Albert disliked the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne due to his attempts to influence Victoria's policies, and Albert was also rivals with the Queen's governess Louise Lehzen, who attempted to maintain her power over the Queen's household. Albert took on public roles such as President of the Society for the Extinction of Slavery, and he secured the support of the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel's Tory party for his philanthropic reforms (such as affordable housing for workers and poverty relief), while the laissez-faire Whigs opposed economic aid to the poor. Albert also supported moves to raise working ages and free up trade, attending debates on the Corn Laws in the House of Commons to give tacit support to Peel. Albert initially supported diplomacy between Russia and Ottoman Turkey before planning out the Crimean War, masterminding the strategy of laying siege of Sevastopol while starving Russia economically. Albert fell ill with typhoid fever in 1861, but he helped to prevent a war with the United States over the Trent Affair before dying of his illness.