Victoria season 2 Christmas Special review: Victoria, Albert find themselves in the holiday season
Family has become a huge part of the series, whether it be the literal family or the Royal Family. There was a new addition to this family in the form of Sarah, a young girl from Africa who was brought up to the Palace as a gift. This whole situation was certainly strange, mostly because Victoria was already a mother and not everyone understood just what she say in her. Albert certainly didn’t want to treat her as a child, which led to one of the biggest confrontations of the hour between him and Victoria. Sarah overheard much of it and, in turn, seemingly disappeared.
As of that was not enough, in her search for Sarah Victoria saw Albert suffer a life or death situation after an ice-skating mishap. Were it not for the Queen being in the right place at the right time, he very well could have died. Perhaps in this moment the two really understood what Christmas was all about — setting aside problems and keeping the focus on each other.
In the aftermath of this moment Sarah was eventually found, and then on the other side of that Victoria decided that the best thing for her to do is to let her go to a place where she would be happier. Albert on some level was right about her — she was miserable there, and deserved an opportunity to be somewhere else where she could be surrounded by love and not as much Royal Family chaos.
The other challenge tonight was the struggle with the King of Hanover turning up and threatening to cause all sorts of upheaval at the palace. What followed was a power struggle, but once it started to see as though the King wasn’t going to get what he wanted, he then gave up the ghost and decided to join everyone at Christmas Dinner.
Oh, and how about this for a Christmas gift? Albert designed for her about as beautiful a tiara that you’re going to find. Also, Victoria gave Albert a painting of … herself. Given that he liked it, that doesn’t make it narcissistic right?
Other odds and ends
There were plenty of character storylines to address in this episode. Take, for example, Alfred deciding to propose to Wilhelmina. Truly, we miss Drummond as much as the next person; with that, the challenge with this relationship will be trying to find a way to win us over to the idea after becoming so attached elsewhere.
Also, the love story of Ernst and Harriet is about as sad as sad can be. They want to be together — yet, they cannot. Even when they had an opportunity to be together it still so managed that something got in the way.
CarterMatt Verdict
The Victoria season 2 Christmas Special probably could’ve saved a couple of subplots for the third season, but it did a good job touching on the false idealism that can come about every holiday season. For Albert, this came about in the form of him trying to design the perfect Christmas — he wanted to mirror his own childhood, while being blind to the fact that it wasn’t altogether great for him, either.
At the end of the episode, what the characters discovered is that they were better off not pretending that everything was perfect or that they were someone or somewhere else. They were who they were, and Victoria and Albert could easily be happy just as themselves. This was a far more intimate sort of story than some of the ones in season 2, but it proved to be equally effective.
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