Wanted to bash out some #QuickFireThoughts on the first episode of ITV’s Victoria.  Given that speed is of the essence to keep it topical, I can’t promise this will be my finest literary endeavour.

It was good.

Purists (a camp that I loosely consider myself a member of) will be quick to point out the inaccuracies, and they’re not wrong.  The casting was clearly a victory of viewing figures over accuracy.  Yes, Lord Melbourne was an attractive man, but the countless girls currently going crazy over Rufus Sewell on Twitter might find themselves disappointed if they stepped back in time to 1837.  And of course, even as a young girl, Victoria never had the beauty of Jenna Coleman, but the thrust of the programme was good.

Here’s a few quick observations from me:

• There were some really nice touches that geeks will appreciate. I don’t know if Conroy specifically tried to encourage Victoria to adopt the name of ‘Elizabeth II’ but it was certainly something discussed in Parliament.
• I’m assuming – and Twitter agrees – that the ‘upstairs / downstairs’ dynamic was deliberately engineered to fill the void left by Downton Abbey last year. Does anyone know what, if anything, the ‘downstairs’ stories were based on?
• The Lady Flora sub-plot was quite powerful. It is important to show how potentially spiteful the young Queen could be.
• Baroness Lehzen was well cast. I liked the early acknowledgement that Victoria was totally constitutionally uneducated.

Of course the big thing that I – and other RoyalHistoryGeeks – will have struggled the most with was Victoria’s ‘attraction’ to Lord M.  Yes, she may have been infatuated and yes, he was dashing, but the relationship surely more closely resembled that of father/daughter.

In summary, the first episode was good and I’ll certainly tune in next week.  Was it totally historically accurate?  No, of course not.  Will it still aid people’s understanding of the history of the era?  Yes, I think it probably will.