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Victoria was so desperate to please Albert that she put his needs above even her children’s.
Albert resented having less power than his royal wife, and complained to a friend that he was: “‘only the husband, and not the master in the house.”
He would gradually gain more power and try to influence British politics.
The revelations come in a an explosive new biography of world-famous monarch by Lucy Worsley OBE, 44, a British historian who presented the BBC TV series Nights at the Opera and British History’s Biggest Fibs.
Ms Worsley argues TV dramas such as Victoria, starring Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes, romanticise the story in a way which is not historically accurate.
She writes in the Daily Mail: “Victoria and Albert’s marriage is often portrayed as an idyllic love story, but in reality she lived in the shadow of his domineering personality.
“He encouraged her to believe that she was weak, inadequate and unable to cope without him.”
The monarch, who ruled during the height of the British empire from 1837 to 1901, initially conceded her royal responsibilities to Albert when she was pregnant with their first child.
He would never release his grip on the new authority he had acquired and convinced Victoria that having more children was her royal duty.
Victoria gave birth to nine children in total, which kept her in a position of dependency to Albert, who treated her like a child.
Before their marriage, his letters began ‘Beloved Victoria’. But afterwards, he addressed her as ‘Dear Child’ or ‘Dear Good, Little One’.
He could also be abusively cruel, and once told Victoria she had “starved” their daughter Vicky.
Albert said: “If she dies you will have it on your conscience.”
Victoria changed into a submissive person who deferred to Albert’s opinion.
When she was younger he courtiers had noted how independent and strong willed she was, but when Florence Nightingale met the queen 16 years after her marriage to Albert she called Victoria: “the least self-reliant person I have ever known”.
Victoria reflected on her own change by saying: “I suppose no one ever was so completely altered in every way.”
She would only go on to become the steely widow she is often portrayed as after Albert’s death, as she never remarried and resolved to rule alone.
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