June 20, 1837

Queen Victoria

Victoria accedes as Britain and Hanover separate their crowns

One death produced two sovereigns: an eighteen-year-old woman in Britain and her sixty-six-year-old uncle in Hanover.

Shortly after two in the morning

King William IV died shortly after 2 a.m. on 20 June 1837, and his eighteen-year-old niece Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland at that moment.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, and Lord Conyngham brought the news to Kensington Palace. She recorded that she met them alone, wearing her dressing gown.

At 11 a.m. she held her first council, in the palace's Red Saloon.

The clause in the proclamation

An Accession Council proclamation dated 20 June declared Alexandrina Victoria the lawful queen — while preserving the rights of any posthumous child William IV's widow might bear.

Queen Adelaide bore none.

Accession was automatic on William's death; the coronation the following year did not make Victoria queen.

Two crowns come apart

Hanover's succession rules excluded Victoria while an eligible male dynast survived, so William's brother Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, became King of Hanover.

That ended the personal union between the two crowns, which dated from 1714.

The Hanoverian rule is often called Salic law, though more precise accounts describe it as semi-Salic: a woman was excluded only while an eligible male dynast lived.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited

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