Victoria and Albert

There are only five royal married couples ever I feel totally certain had great romances. Victoria and Albert are one of them.
Though Victoria constantly wrote, particularly in regard to her daughters, that marriage was a horrible thing, that was more about her dislike of babies (she had nine) than her husband. She also felt that her and Prince Albert were special and had a great and magical love that no one else would ever understand.

"I feel sure that no girl would go to the altar if she knew all."
"When I think of a merry, happy, free young girl - and look at the ailing, aching state a young wife generally is doomed to - which you can't deny is the penalty of marriage."
-Victoria on marriage

Victoria and Albert were first cousins. They were originally set up by their mutual uncle Leopold of Belgium, but after one meeting when they were in their late teens, they fell in love. Or at least Victoria did, Albert's feelings may have taken longer to develop. At eighteen Victoria had become Queen, so she was the one who had a propose to him because she outranked him. He immediately accepted.

"His purity was too great, his aspiration too high for this poor, miserable world! His great soul is now only enjoying that for which it was worthy!"
"None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of SUCH a Father who has not his equal in this world -- so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don't be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal."
-Victoria on Albert

Victoria quickly became pregnant after their wedding. They would have nine children total. I was on a few weeks ago about her feelings towards "unfortunate Leopold" but all of her children weren't exactly adored.

"An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful."
-Victoria on babies

Of her nine children, her second child and eldest son, Edward Albert, known as Bertie, was her least favorite.

"I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder"
-Victoria on Bertie

Bertie was a womanizer who drank and partied and generally acted unsuitably. Victoria also thought he was ugly. Which must have been some curse of fate, because as you can see from the above photo, his parents were the Brad and Angelina of their day.

"For a man to strike any women is most brutal, and I, as well as everyone else, think this far worse than any attempt to shoot, which, wicked as it is, is at least more comprehensible and more courageous."
-Victoria on domestic violence and why, if you're going to abuse your wife, you should do it with a gun

Prince Albert died at age forty-two, and Victoria totally lost it. She went into mourning and stayed there for the rest of her life. She became so reclusive that everyone was fed up with her and wanted to end the monarchy. Her son's womanizing with half the married actresses in London while his wife Alexandra looked the other way didn't help.

"I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous."
-Victoria on artists

Queen Victoria was to some extent brought out of her exile by John Brown, her Scottish manservant. Whether or not she ever got under his kilt is a subject of great debate. Victoria was not as much of a prude as people think when it came to sex. In face, attitudes toward sex in the era that bear her name weren't nearly as oppressive as everyone thinks. Certainly conservative by today's standards, but the upper classes still got into all kinds of trouble and weren't exactly secretive about it.

"The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them."
-Victoria on other people

Victoria wasn't exactly a liberal, though. She was kind of the opposite. But she was certainly a decent enough lady, particularly compared to her cousin Leopold II of Belgium.

"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights," with all its attendent horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and digusting of begins and would surely perish without male protection.I love peace and quiet, I hate politics and turmoil. We women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dilike these masculine occupations."
-Victoria on feminism

Here's a funny story: a royal hanger-on once was having dinner with Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and she described finding in the archives of Windsor Castle a document proving a secret marriage between Victoria and John Brown. When asked what she'd done with it, the Queen Mother told her dining companions she'd burned it, of course. Supposedly several people heard her tell this story, but it's not definitely true given both hangers-on and the late Queen Mother have never been known for their honestly.

P.S.
That quote on feminism was used on a men's rights website. With this commentary:

"How could she see today's reality from over 100 years in the past? I especially like the part about women becoming hateful, heathen and disgusting. You would have to be that way to hate men and abort your baby without reason."

Seriously, google it, it's totally for real!