Queen Victoria

Victoria was the only child of the Duke of Kent, a son of King George III. Her father died when she was a baby, and she was raised strictly at Kensington Palace. She became queen in 1837 at eighteen. In 1840 she married her German cousin Prince Albert, who became her closest adviser; they had nine children, whose marriages linked her to most of the royal families of Europe, earning her the nickname grandmother of Europe. Albert helped organize the Great Exhibition of 1851, a showcase of industry and invention. When he died in 1861, Victoria was crushed and wore black for the rest of her life, withdrawing from public view for years. Her reign of almost sixty-four years saw railways, the telegraph, factories, growing cities, wider voting rights and the expansion of the British Empire, and in 1876 she was made Empress of India. Her golden and diamond jubilees in 1887 and 1897 were huge public celebrations. She died in 1901, then the longest-reigning British monarch.

Faith: A Protestant monarch of the United Kingdom who supported religious freedom in India. Source: Wikipedia