My Name Is Victoria
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
By turns thrilling, dramatic, and touching, this is the story of Queen Victoria's childhood as you've never heard it before. Miss V. Conroy is good at keeping secrets. She likes to sit as quiet as a mouse, neat and discreet. But when her father sends her to Kensington Palace to become the companion to Princess Victoria, Miss V soon finds that she can no longer remain in the shadows. Her father is Sir John Conroy, confidant and financial advisor to Victoria’s mother, and he has devised a strict set of rules for the young princess that he calls the Kensington System. It governs Princess Victoria's behavior and keeps her locked away from the world. Sir John says it's for the princess's safety, but Victoria herself is convinced that it's to keep her lonely and unhappy. Torn between loyalty to her father and her growing friendship with the willful and passionate princess, Miss V has a decision to make: continue in silence or speak out. In an engaging, immersive tale, Lucy Worsley spins one of England’s best-known periods into a fresh and surprising story that will delight both young readers of historical fiction and fans of the television show featuring Victoria.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This suspenseful, entertaining tale presents a view of the young Queen Victoria as seen through the eyes of Victoria Conroy, the shy, unobtrusive daughter of Sir John Conroy, advisor and keeper of the purse strings for Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent. Known to everybody as Miss V, she is brought to Kensington Palace at the age of 11 to serve as companion to the temperamental princess and, as she soon learns, to be the eyes and ears of her powerful, plotting father. As a bond grows between the girls, Miss V becomes ever more uneasy about her father's true motives and his role in the household. Is the "Kensington System," which prohibits the princess from having contact with the outside world, truly meant to protect her? Worlsey (Maid of the King's Court) is a curator for England's historic royal palaces, and she makes good use of her expertise and her imagination to bring historical figures to life and draw readers into the novel's mid-19th-century royal world. Miss V's seven-year tenure with Victoria is marked by suspicions, tensions, revelations, and unexpected alliances; the girls' physical similarity to each other develops alongside their friendship, making for a deliciously surprising and satisfying ending. Ages 12 up.