(gentle music) - There's a lot of conflicting reports about Victoria as a mother.
What I knew from afar, initially, was that Victoria wasn't the warmest of mothers.
But if you really delve within her diaries, you really see how maternal she was, I suppose.
And that personally took me by surprise.
It's the pregnancies that she resented, not the children.
I didn't spend all those years in Kensington shut up in a nursery, only to be confined into another one.
She'd fought for 18 years to be independent and I think this really is the key to Victoria and something that we mustn't ever forget is that was that she was controlled her entire life and she only became free ironically, on the day that she also became Queen.
So I think pregnancy for Victoria and becoming a mother, given her own dysfunctional relationship with her mother is quite conflicting for Victoria.
Oh she's clever.
Like her father.
But for Albert, it just comes a lot easier whereas I think Victoria's kind of fighting against assumptions and peoples' judgments, I suppose.
But Albert, I think he is the father who has it all, as well.
(baby cooing) - Her expression, it's as if she knows what I am thinking.
It's a real pleasure from Albert's side and the fact that they have something that they can share, that's jointly theirs.
Because in their public life, there is a disparency between what duty they have and what position that they have to fulfill.
As parents, it's equal almost.
- (whispering) I expect she's dreaming of her future husband, the King of Prussia.
Albert's an amazing father, took a great deal of care over their health, their diet.
In quite a modern sense, he was just a very, very present father.
- I went to Osborne House and had a look around and you can see the allotments that Albert built for the nine children and the wheelbarrows that were there and the attention to detail that he took with the approach to fatherhood.
And by all accounts, he was hands-on with that.
That suggested to me someone that took to it quite naturally.
- They spent a lot more time with their children than was usual of the time, in their society.
The King destroyed all the spinning wheels in the land.
- I think Albert falls deeper in love with Victoria through seeing her be the mother that she is.
