I thoroughly enjoyed this "Christmas with all of the relatives". We know how trying our family members can be, but imagine them all as truly entitled royalty!
I loved that Prince Albert wanted it to be special for the children, and tolerable for the invited family members. Victoria? Well... she's the queen, so... I do think they both had a great love for each other and the children.
My biggest "beef" is with Mrs Skerret's "inheritance" and how she deals with it. We're to assume the slaves are in America of course, because the English do love to beat up on America for "slavery". Anyway, so it's 1848. Mrs Skeeret, understandably, cannot in good conscience "sell" people, no matter how great it would be to have £10,000, so she tells the solicitor to "give them their freedom"!! Very noble, except.... At that time in America slavery was still legal and accepted in most of the colonies. So "freed" slaves had a limited amount of time to move far away from the slave-holder colony or be taken up and owned by another "master". Freed slaves would have no money, no jobs, (most) could not read or write, had no way of traveling to a safe colony, so turning them out to fend for themselves wouldn't have been a noble act.
Most would sell themselves back into slavery rather than starve to death. Slavery wouldn't be abolished until 1865. We'd have 17 years a bloody Civil War in the meantime.
So, Ms Daisy Goodwin may know her history of England very well, but I wish she'd given us better in this part of the story. Like, did she send them money to help them on their way to freedom? Or was it more turning them out on the streets to survive as best they can??
The way this was written, it feels like just another cheap shot at America, to allow the character be a "holier-than-thou" liberal, consequences be damned, because freedom and Americans bad.
I loved that Prince Albert wanted it to be special for the children, and tolerable for the invited family members. Victoria? Well... she's the queen, so... I do think they both had a great love for each other and the children.
My biggest "beef" is with Mrs Skerret's "inheritance" and how she deals with it. We're to assume the slaves are in America of course, because the English do love to beat up on America for "slavery". Anyway, so it's 1848. Mrs Skeeret, understandably, cannot in good conscience "sell" people, no matter how great it would be to have £10,000, so she tells the solicitor to "give them their freedom"!! Very noble, except.... At that time in America slavery was still legal and accepted in most of the colonies. So "freed" slaves had a limited amount of time to move far away from the slave-holder colony or be taken up and owned by another "master". Freed slaves would have no money, no jobs, (most) could not read or write, had no way of traveling to a safe colony, so turning them out to fend for themselves wouldn't have been a noble act.
Most would sell themselves back into slavery rather than starve to death. Slavery wouldn't be abolished until 1865. We'd have 17 years a bloody Civil War in the meantime.
So, Ms Daisy Goodwin may know her history of England very well, but I wish she'd given us better in this part of the story. Like, did she send them money to help them on their way to freedom? Or was it more turning them out on the streets to survive as best they can??
The way this was written, it feels like just another cheap shot at America, to allow the character be a "holier-than-thou" liberal, consequences be damned, because freedom and Americans bad.
