NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The perfect companion to the PBS Masterpiece series  Victoria • A gripping account of Queen Victoria’s rise and early years in power from CNN’s official royal historian

“Kate Williams has perfected the art of historical biography. Her pacy writing is underpinned by the most impeccable scholarship.”—Alison Weir

In 1819, a girl was born to the fourth son of King George III. No one could have expected such an unassuming, overprotected girl to be an effective ruler—yet Queen Victoria would become one of the most powerful monarchs in history.

Writing with novelistic flair and historical precision, Kate Williams reveals a vibrant woman in the prime of her life, while chronicling the byzantine machinations that continued even after the crown was placed on her head. Upon hearing that she had inherited the throne, eighteen-year-old Victoria banished her overambitious mother from the room, a simple yet resolute move that would set the tone for her reign. The queen clashed constantly not only with her mother and her mother’s adviser, the Irish adventurer John Conroy, but with her ministers and even her beloved Prince Albert—all of whom attempted to seize control from her.

Williams lays bare the passions that swirled around the throne—the court secrets, the sexual repression, and the endless intrigue. The result is a grand tale of a woman whose destiny began long before she was born and whose legacy lives on.

Praise for Becoming Queen Victoria

“An informative, entertaining, gossipy tale.” —Publishers Weekly

“A great read . . . With lively writing, Ms. Williams [makes] the story fresh and appealing.” — The Washington Times

“Sparkling, engaging.” —Open Letters Monthly **

From Publishers Weekly

Williams tells the story of two royal women whose lives were intricately linked and who gave hope to the British people in a turbulent period when they were ruled by the boorish, hedonistic prince regent, later George IV. The first woman was Princess Charlotte, he daughter and only child of George IV and Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Charlotte was neglected by her self-centered parents. But during the chaotic era of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain invested its hope for a stable future and a principled ruler in the pretty, and politically liberal princess, But Charlotte's 1817 death following delivery of a stillborn infant led to a royal baby-making competition, resulting in the birth of Victoria, whom the British adored from infancy. A passionate, impulsive, fun-seeking girl, Victoria was bullied by a power-crazed mother and used by Charlotte's husband, Leopold, the ambitious Belgian king, who engineered Victoria's marriage to his nephew Albert. Despite some careless writing and editing, Independent British historian Williams's (England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton) latest is an informative, entertaining, gossipy tale of two beloved Hanoverian princesses, one of whom became England's longest-reigning monarch. 16 pages of color photos. (Aug.) 
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From Booklist

Becoming Queen Victoria is an oddly constructed but nevertheless instructive dual biography: half of it given over to the early life of Queen Victoria, the longest reigning British sovereign, while the other half is a cradle-to-grave life account of her first cousin, Princess Charlotte, the latter offered not so much as an entity in and of itself as much as an “explanation” of why Victoria inherited the throne in the first place. The author exhibits painterly talents in creating and shadowing carefully nuanced portraiture as she observes a difficult inheritance issue for the British throne in the declining years of the increasingly deranged George III: namely, the old king had no legitimate heirs in the second generation. His eldest son finally produced one: Princess Charlotte, a willful young woman repressed by her father until her marriage—but, unfortunately, she died in childbirth, raising the inheritance problem anew. A younger son hurriedly married, and his daughter, Princess Victoria, eventually succeeded to the throne, she herself having endured a repressed childhood at the hands of her self-aggrandizing mother. Two strong women whose lives are interestingly related here. --Brad Hooper