"If I follow my conscience, I will destroy my party."
We knew it was coming; Victoria does the Irish Potato Famine, and it’s as devastating as you’d expect. This is not a normal episode, exactly; an unusual amount of time is devoted to the famine, and the character of Dr. Traill, a good man through whom we see both the unimaginable suffering and the equally unimaginable Malthusian bigotry that blames the “feckless” Irish poor for their own fate. It’s an outstanding piece of television, ending unusually with a caption telling us of Dr. Traill’s unfortunate fate.
Victoria herself cannot, of course, be seen to be anything other than deeply horrified, and much of the episode consists of her trying to persuade Sir Robert Peel to do something, which she finally seems to do- I suspect there’s a sprinkling of artistic licence here, but in opening the Pandora’s Box that is trade and tariffs, Peel will be scratching at the persistent itch that is the Corn Laws. I suspect they will loom large in the remaining episodes.
Elsewhere, we discover that Ernest has syphilis, and may have aff Fred his sexual partners, including the newly widowed Duchess of Sutherland. And kindly Albert makes a loo for the servants. But Ireland, of course, overshadows everything in what is an extraordinary episode.
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