Queen Victoria had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and
Royal visits to Manchester and Salford during the reign of Queen Victoria to hear all sides of political questions and to decide them on Utilitarian principles’. This practical, down-to-earth stereotype of the people of Manchester was, by the 1850s visible as the warehouse, representative of the town’s trading success, appeared and the advances of industry and technology, close to the heart of Prince Albert, were at the centre of the its achievements. In May 1857 Prince Albert arrived in Manchester, one month before the Queen, to open the Art Treasures Exhibition and also inaugurate one of the first portrait statues to be erected of Queen Victoria during her reign. The statue in