Just eighteen when she succeeded her uncle, William IV, she became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland in 1837. On 28 June 1838 she was crowned at Westminster and one of her first acts was to distance herself from her mother and her mother's advisor, Sir John Conroy. 
Soon it became obvious that she had a clear grasp of constitutional principles and the scope of her own prerogatives. Maintaining constant correspondence with her uncle and mentor, King Leopold I of Belgium, she was devoted to her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. In 1839 when Melbourne's government fell and Victoria refused to dismiss the current ladies of the bedchamber, Peel resigned and Melbourne returned until 1841, becoming both prime minister and trusted friend to Victoria. 
When her two Saxe-Coburg cousins came to England, she fell in love with the younger, Prince Albert. Married in 1840, nine children were produced with all surviving. In the early years of her reign she was strongly influenced by her husband with whom she lived and worked in 
the closest harmony. Consequently, on Albert's death when she was in her early forties, she was so grief-stricken that she withdrew from all public life which made her temporarily unpopular. 
However, Disraeli then achieved having her acknowledged as Empress of India and this returned her to her subject's favour. Both experienced and shrewd, her political flair brought a powerful 
influence to bear on the conduct of foreign affairs. This, in turn, was made easier through the marriage alliances of some of her children into foreign dynasties. 
Although she preferred ministers with conservative principles, such as Melbourne and Disraeli, rather than the more radical, such as Palmerston and Gladstone, in the long run Victoria's judgment of men and events was rarely to be faulted. Partly due to the influence of Prince Albert, she preferred Germany, which was probably the reason later for her son-and-heir's own preference for France. 
Even though she remained in seclusion for most of her life, she never allowed her heir "Bertie" any involvement in state affairs, and this was no doubt the cause of the numerous misadventures in which, sometimes not of his own doing, he was involved. Had Victoria been unpopular in her early years because of the sad affair of the unmarried lady-in-waiting Flora Hastings (whose flatulence from stomach-cancer made her suspect of being pregnant), Bertie became entangled in divorce-cases and gambling scandals. Yet Victoria always stood by him. 
Although also fond of her grandson, the German Emperor Wilhelm II; she also considered that "fresh blood" to be needed in her family. Consequently she allowed the Battenberg-marriages for, first, a granddaughter and then her youngest daughter, Beatrice. Partly because of princely alliances being expensive, she had previously allowed her daughter Louise to marry the future Duke of Argyll, and then yet another granddaughter, also another Louise, to marry Alexander Duff whom she made Duke of Fife.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas