Time for another glimpse into the soapy royal world of Victoria! Before you dig in to our recap of the eighth episode of the season, “The Luxury of Conscience,” you can catch up on previous recaps here!

Victoria, Albert, and Vicky are enjoying some family time when they’re suddenly interrupted by Albert’s favorite person, Uncle/Father Leopold. Victoria, who wears a brooch at the neck of her gown and a glittering hair comb, is shocked to see him.

Leopold offers Albert a belated birthday present: a miniature portrait to go along with the one of his mother. This one either features Leopold or Mr. Bean. Jury’s still out. Anyway, Albert storms off, and Victoria lets Leopold know that Albert’s told her everything about his paternal revelations.

Over at the Houses of Parliament, Peel’s getting lambasted by other MPs about the Corn Laws. He goes to the palace to tell Vic and Al that he’s going to repeal the laws, which artificially elevated the price of grain products in the UK to protect industries from foreign competition. He tells them that a repeal is going to be unpopular with many in his party. (It was.) His only hope: the support of the Duke of Wellington over in the House of Lords. (This storyline puts us around the end of 1845.)

Peel’s right about the unpopularity of the repeal plan. He presides over a contentious cabinet meeting, with Lord Stanley (then the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies) loudly voicing his opposition. Several minsters walk out of the meeting. But the Duke of Wellington signals his approval of the repeal.

Meanwhile, back at the palace, Victoria (who wears a cameo pinned to her bodice) and Lehzen argue with Albert over whether the windows in the nursery should be left open.

And Ernst (who still has syphilis) and Harriet (who is still in mourning) canoodle in the gardens — until they’re interrupted by Uncle Leopold.

Peel presents his repeal plan in parliament, and the room gets very testy. Members of his own party call on their fellow Tories to resist Peel’s “betrayal.” Victoria and Albert aren’t worried, though — Albert even says that he believes Peel will still be PM in five years’ time. (Spoiler: he wasn’t.) Albert even returns a few scenes later to cheer him on.

Lord Alfred catches Fictional Wilhelmina reading the Bible — more specifically, the story of the love between David and Jonathan. Ahem.

But Lord Alfred has to run, because he has a dinner date with Drummond, who has decided to break off his engagement. Lord Alfred thinks that’s a silly decision, because every successful politician needs a wife — no matter what happened between them in Scotland.

The next day, Victoria notices that Vicky’s not feeling well, but Lehzen doesn’t think it’s time to send for the doctor. They decide to take the princess for a drive in the fresh air instead.

Meanwhile, Albert indulges his mad botanist tendencies, until Uncle/Father Leopold drops in. He wants to apologize for saying the things he did in Coburg. Albert’s having none of it.

Charlotte Buccleuch reads Drummond’s engagement announcement in the newspaper. She approves of a future politician marrying a rich woman.

We’ve got brooches all around as everyone discusses the match. Harriet appears to be in half-mourning, and look — I see a baby ferronniere emerging!

Ernst is on a marital mission of his own. He stops by his doctor again, who tells him that the mercury treatment has worked. As long as his symptoms don’t show up again, he should feel free to propose to any woman he likes. Ernst is clearly pleased. (I won’t get into the silliness of this storyline again. Ugh.)

Wellington stops by for tea with Victoria, who is frustrated about the fracturing Tory party. Since she can’t intervene politically, she asks him to advocate on her behalf, urging the party to get in line behind Peel and the repeal plan. He gently tells her that Peel’s going to be brought down, no matter the outcome of the repeal, and there isn’t much he can do about it.

Albert reads to Vicky, who is still under the weather. He’s worried that she has a fever, but Lehzen insists it’s a “healthy glow” from being outside. Victoria sides with her old governess, much to Albert’s dismay.

Victoria is equally dismayed when Albert announces that he’s going to parliament to listen to the repeal debates. She’s worried that people will perceive Albert’s presence on Peel’s side as a statement of her own political beliefs. We get a good view of her carved brooch as she fumes. Albert goes anyway, and the other MPs point him out in the gallery. Not good.

When Albert gets home, Vicky is even more feverish, and he’s ticked. Lehzen still doesn’t want to send for a doctor. Victoria finally decides to side with her husband on this one, but when Lehzen takes Vicky out of the room, the two of them fight bitterly over Lehzen, parliament, and just about everything else. Albert delivers an ultimatum: either Lehzen goes, or he does.

The doctor explains that poor little Vicky is quite ill indeed, and he won’t say whether being in a chilly room could have affected her health. All they can do is wait and hope that the fever breaks. Victoria is distraught.

Fresh off his syphilis check-up, Ernst grabs Harriet and smooches her, right there in the middle of the palace. Okay. Uncle Leopold, whose only job in this episode is interrupting people, catches them. As Harriet flees, Leopold tells Ernst that he really should marry Princess Gertrude von Mecklenburg-Strelitz. (Fictional.) Fat chance, says Ernst.

Later in the episode, Ernst is all geared up to propose to Harriet — and then his rash returns. So much for that.

Harriet, who has thrown off her widow’s weeds for the occasion, is left very confused.

And in the nursery, Vicky isn’t getting any better. Victoria and Albert set aside their differences at her bedside. Thankfully, after much agonized waiting, the princess’s fever breaks. (Princess Vicky really did suffer a serious illness in 1842, after which Lehzen was dismissed. The show fails to depict another scapegoat in the matter: the doctor, who initially gave an incorrect diagnosis.)

Drummond finds Peel burning the midnight oil in his office. He cautions him to be careful amid all of the political turmoil, asking him to remember Spencer Perceval. (He was the only British prime minster ever to have been assassinated. It happened in 1812 in the lobby of the House of Commons.) That’s some pretty heavy-handed foreshadowing coming from Drummond, show.

Things are going well for Drummond. Alfred invites him to a do-over of their dinner date, and then the repeal of the Corn Laws passes. But then, disaster strikes. A disgruntled man tries to assassinate Peel, but Drummond jumps in front of the bullet and dies.

This really did happen — sort of. A deranged man named Daniel M’Naghten shot Drummond in January 1843 after mistaking him for Peel. He died five days later.

Victoria and Albert share the good news about Vicky’s recovery with Peel and Wellington, who inform them about the passage of the repeal bill — and the death of Drummond. Wellington tells Victoria that the man who shot Drummond was a farmer who thought the repeal bill would be the end of his livelihood. (This is a fictional touch. The man who murdered the real Edward Drummond was a Scottish woodworker, and the incident was totally unrelated to the repeal of the Corn Laws.)

Charlotte is the one who shares the news with Alfred. She reveals that she knew what Drummond and Alfred meant to each other.

Peel visits Victoria to let her know that he’ll soon be offering his resignation. (His resignation took place in July 1846, more than three years after Drummond’s death.)

Another member of the circle is on the way out, too. Victoria reluctantly tells Lehzen that it’s time for her to go back to Germany. (As I said above, this happened in 1842.)

We finally get a glimpse of Drummond’s fiancee at his funeral.

Wilhelmina comforts Lord Alfred on their way out of the service.

Lehzen heads out of the palace for good.

And we get one more interruption from Uncle/Father/Grandpapa Leopold — this time, with a pony. (Who in the world is running Belgium?!?)

Time for more twisted history and costume jewels in this week’s Victoria recap! Before you read my take on episode seven, “The King Over the Water,” you can catch up on all our previous recaps here.

Victoria and Albert are out for a pleasant drive — until Albert spots a man with a gun.

The royals head back to the palace, but the alleged gunman is nowhere to be found. Victoria, wearing a cameo, thinks they should go back out, so that the man will try once more and can be caught.

Albert thinks the plan is ludicrous, but Peel goes along with it, so Albert brings out his latest invention: a parasol lined with chain mail, to help keep Victoria safe.

The plan works, the would-be assassin is caught, and everybody’s fine. This scene is roughly based on an incident involving the royal carriage, a pistol, and John William Bean, the son of a Clerkenwell jeweler. The “attempt” happened in Green Park in July 1842. As one of the servants points out in the show, Bean claimed that his pistol wasn’t loaded, and he just wanted to be arrested, because he was bored with English life and wanted to be transported to Australia.

But Peel is paranoid about the Queen’s safety, and now Victoria, Albert, and Harriet (who is just about drowning in widow’s weeds) have to bring a military escort with them everywhere they go in public.

Ernst, who is still inexplicably around, says that the soldiers remind him of being in Prussia.

He tracks down Harriet, who is drawing in the garden. (We get a good look at a diamond finger on her left hand as she draws.) He expresses condolences, but she’s having none of it. I still don’t know why the show didn’t invent fictional characters for these soapy story lines. Harriet’s husband didn’t die until 1861, and Ernst was off living with his wife in Coburg by 1842.

Meanwhile, Victoria wears pearls and chats with Lehzen about Sir Walter Scott and his Scottish novels. She’s always wanted to go to Scotland.

Inspired, she tracks down basically everyone in the palace, including Peel and Drummond, and announces that she’s busting out of the military-occupied place and heading to the Highlands.

In Scotland, the royal party is greeted at Blair Castle by their host, the Duke of Atholl. Victoria and Albert really did stay at Blair Castle in 1844, and Victoria was most impressed by the Atholl Highlanders, the Duke’s personal bodyguards. (This wasn’t her first visit to Scotland; she and Albert previously traveled to Edinburgh in 1842.)

The show is simplifying the Atholl ducal history a bit here. The man depicted in this episode is George Murray, 6th Duke of Atholl, but when he hosted Victoria in 1844, he was still Lord Glenlyon. George inherited the Atholl title from his childless, “mad” (in Victorian terminology) uncle, the 5th Duke, in 1846. By that time, George had been managing the family estates for almost a decade.

Victoria wears the replica sapphire tiara for dinner and entertainment. These are the royal faces when they realize that they’re about to be subjected to performative Scottish poetry recitation.

For once, the servants are having way more fun.

Everyone is rudely awakened the next morning by bagpipes. Albert can’t stand them. Victoria sort of likes them.

In fact, Victoria’s pretty much in love with everything about Scotland, especially their headgear and their spectacular natural scenery.

She even lets Albert teach her how to fly fish, which is apparently the Victorian equivalent of showing a girl how to shoot pool.

And then, she and Albert get lost. That’s honestly most of the plot of the episode. Everyone back at the castle, naturally, freaks out. People share blame. Search parties are deployed.

Victoria and Albert end up having to stay overnight in a cottage with an elderly Scottish couple. (They, of course, don’t reveal who they really are.) The wife is visibly annoyed with Victoria’s imperiousness, which is pretty funny, and she makes the Queen help with the dishes after they eat.

The next morning, when Vic ‘n Al still haven’t shown up, Drummond decides that they need to inform Peel.

But he doesn’t have to, because the Highlanders track them down and bring them back.

The news spreads quickly that they’ve been found. Alfred tells Drummond, and they have an emotionally-fraught hug. Ernst goes to tell Harriet, who is wearing a golden pendant with her mourning attire. She apologizes for telling him that he ruined her marriage while she was worried about the Queen.

And then a few scenes later, we see her reaching for his hand. Ugh, Harriet. He’s a sovereign foreign duke with syphilis, lady. BAD IDEA, even fictionally.

Later that night, when everyone gathers for a formal dinner, Alfred and Drummond sneak off to dance with the servants and canoodle by a lake.

Unfortunately, Wilhelmina has also snuck out of the castle in her dinner jewels, and she catches them smooching. (Again, these two people, who had a LOT to lose, would have kept their canoodling much more private. And then Wilhelmina apparently says nothing about what she saw, to them or to anyone else?)

Meanwhile, Victoria, wearing production-invented ruby jewels, tells Atholl that she wishes she didn’t have to go back to England. He reminds her that she’s Queen of the Scots, and they talk about Bonnie Prince Charlie and Jacobites and Culloden. (Maybe she should go find Claire Fraser’s stone circle while she’s in the area?)

Back in London, Lehzen shows Victoria a book of her old drawings. Lehzen gets very emotional about Victoria being all grown up now, and Victoria assures her that neither of them are going anywhere. (Don’t bank on it, Lehzen.)

Harriet, who is also feeling pretty emotional, has a chat with Victoria about feeling hemmed in now that they’re back from Scotland.

Peel comes by to prep Victoria for the next day’s State Opening of Parliament, letting her know that there’s been a change in the way punishment is handed out to people who try to scare her by waving unloaded pistols in her direction.

Lehzen puts the production’s replica of the Diamond Diadem on Victoria’s head as she preps to go to parliament. She should not be allowed to be in charge of Diadem Placement.

When Victoria gets home, she ditches all the trappings of royalty as fast as she can.

Poor replica diadem, abandoned and alone while Vic ‘n Al play Scottish Cottage at the palace…

Time for a closer look at the jewels and the history behind episode six of this season of Victoria, “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” (You can catch up on our previous recaps here!)

We open in County Cork. Anglican priests discuss the increasing problems with local potato crops, but they see a silver lining: their churches are opening soup kitchens, and they’re feeding lots of hungry Catholics — but only if they agree to be baptized into the Anglican faith. One clergyman, Dr. Traill, is a little horrified at this baptisms-for-food scheme. He has seen the consequences of the crisis for everyday people.

Traill was a real person: he was the rector of the parish of Schull, and he was known for his efforts to help the hungry during the potato famine. (His descendants included the famous playwright J.M. Synge, as well as Daisy Goodwin, this show’s writer and creator.)

In England, Victoria and Albert attend church, where they hear a timely sermon about pestilence and plague.

They’re surprised when Ernst suddenly shows up again, because they thought they wouldn’t see him until “after the christening” — which means that nearly a year has passed since the last episode, and little Princess Alice has been born. (That happened in April 1843, and Alice was baptized in June.) Albert and Ernst have a private conversation, and Ernst reveals that he’s been in Baden-Baden for health reasons.

Ernst tries to make his illness sound like no big deal, but the servant who unpacks his bags discovers something unusual: a container of white powder marked “calomel.” This common Victorian medicine was often used to treat STDs, and those of you who’ve read these recaps for a while know that Ernst was suffering from one of those. Calomel fell out of favor as a medicine, though, because it’s really mercury chloride, and it causes mercury poisoning.

Victoria hears about candidates for the position of Archbishop of Dublin. Peel and the assistant secretary to the treasury, Charles Trevelyan, explain that there’s a lot of turmoil in the Irish Anglican church at the moment, including disputes over tithes. (Everyone was required to pay tithes to the state church, whether they were Anglican or not, which made Catholics unhappy, to put it mildly.)

Trevelyan steps in it by offering to explain more about Ireland to Victoria — when her child-rearing duties allow her the time. He should have just called her short, too. (The real Trevelyan was, well, awful. He bore much of the responsibility for the horrific government response, or lack thereof, to the potato famine. He literally thought that God starved the Irish on purpose as a moral punishment. Also, on another note, this was a really good moment of physical casting — this actor looks a lot like portraits of the real Trevelyan.)

Victoria gets curious about Ireland. (I really can’t stand how this show makes it seem like Victoria’s just learning about all of the problems in her empire, as if she doesn’t read government paperwork every day.) She asks the Duchess of Buccleuch about her estates in Ireland. Charlotte explains that she never visited, because there’s simply no society on that island, but her husband kept the land for sporting purposes.

Wearing a large brooch, and holding baby Alice, Victoria looks concerned.

Meanwhile, we get Peak Albert during an examination of the palace’s Roman-era sewer systems. Albert points out that their public sanitation is actually worse than it was during the Roman era. He wants to start working on the problem at home, constructing a new system at the palace that can be used as a model for future reform of London’s sewers.

In Ireland, things aren’t improving. Dr. Traill visits a home where a Catholic mother of five has died of starvation. Mrs. Traill isn’t as sympathetic to the Catholic plight; she remembers when the same Catholics protested tithing by trying to burn down the Traill home years ago. But Dr. Traill has had enough. Famine, he declares, has no denomination. The entire potato harvest has been ruined. (The blight arrived in Ireland at the end of 1845.)

Traill writes a letter about the conditions in Ireland, which is published in the newspaper. Victoria reads it and shares it with Peel and the odious Trevelyan, who blames everything on the Irish themselves. Peel reluctantly tells Victoria that it wouldn’t be “desirable” for the government to offer assistance. Trevelyan interrupts to explain that the population of Ireland has grown too much, and this is just nature’s way of handling that issue. Even seeing this in fictional form, more than a century and a half later, it’s hard to watch.

Victoria is visibly disgusted with both of them. She announces that she wants to go to Ireland herself. Peel is, predictably, against this, because he says that they can’t guarantee her safety.

Meanwhile, Ernst, under a pseudonym, has gone to an English doctor for another examination. He confirms it: Ernst has syphilis. He’s willing to fork over a lot of dough for a cure. The doctor prescribes another mercury-based cure, so Ernst is in for more poison. Good times.

Albert wants to talk about his sewage plans for the palace, while Victoria wants to talk about the horrific situation in Ireland. Albert wants her to trust that the government will do the right thing. (Don’t hold your breath, guys.)

And then Lord Alfred comes in with more distressing news: Harriet’s husband, the Duke of Sutherland, has died in a hunting accident. (Except not. The Duke of Sutherland didn’t die until 1861 — the same year that Prince Albert died. And he died at the age of 75 after suffering from an illness, not because of an accident. But, you know, this show is what it is — a soap opera trying to be a prestige historical drama.)

The next day, Ernst can’t hack it while exercising with Albert, who suggests that he should go back and live a healthy lifestyle in Germany. And marry a wife of Uncle Leopold’s choosing, Ernst retorts. (All together now: Ernst married Princess Alexandrine of Baden in May 1842!) Also, Albert tells Ernst that Harriet’s now a widow. Awfully inconvenient time to catch a social disease, Ernie.

Lord Alfred and Drummond bump into each other in the palace and have a hushed, tortured conversation about Ireland, the Queen, why women are so emotional (sure thing, dudes), and Drummond’s fiancee. They’re setting a wedding date. Drummond apologizes.

Sidenote: these two people are real; I’m not sure that their affection for each other was in line with their real orientations, but that’s not really a historical qualm of mine. Romances between people of the same sex were rarely part of public knowledge during this era, in part because men faced serious, terrifying criminal and social consequences for homosexual relationships during Victoria’s reign (and afterward, too). I am kind of surprised that the writers believe that these two men, both in prominent positions in government/at court, would have these kinds of conversations in a hallway in Buckingham Palace. It sort of undermines the real dangers that gay men faced during this time period, doesn’t it?

Anyway. Back in Ireland, Traill gets chewed out for the letter that ran in the Times. The bishop is ticked; he thinks the people (well, the Catholics, mostly) should be in charge of feeding themselves. Traill reminds him that a loaf of bread currently costs as much as an entire year’s rent. Angry Bishop tells Traill that he better like living in rural Ireland, because he’s never going to get a living back in Dublin if he keeps it up.

Peel is grilled in the House of Commons about the potato blight. He argues that he can’t give relief to Ireland. For one, it would make the Irish gentry angry. For another, then every working class person in the country would want some charity, too. At that point, they might as well repeal the Corn Laws, too. (Those laws artificially controlled the price of grain in Britain by making it prohibitively expensive to import foreign grain, whether the Brits produced enough to feed their own people — or not. Peel really did support the repeal of the laws, starting in early 1846.)

Ernst goes back to the doctor, who tells him that the visible signs of his condition are disappearing. Ernst hopes that means he’s been cured. But the doctor is still concerned. He asks if Ernst is married, and Ernst says he’s not (I won’t bother repeating myself AGAIN here). The doctor warns that an innocent party shouldn’t be exposed — and children who have congenital syphilis can be very badly affected, too.

Predictably, Harriet shortly returns to the palace, a spectral figure in black.

Victoria angrily reads Trevelyan’s book, The Irish Crisis. (It was published in 1848.) She decides to write to Traill, telling him how moved she was by his letter to the Times. She asks him to come to Buckingham Palace, so that they can talk about the crisis in person.

He arrives at the palace and describes the conditions in Ireland in stark detail for Victoria. He’s especially bothered by the fact that Irish grain is still being sent to England, when so many of the Irish people are absolutely starving. Albert arrives and asks Traill if the fact that the Irish rely so heavily on one crop isn’t part of the problem. Traill diplomatically replies that the laws that keep many Irish people from owning their own land has also kept them from innovating within their farming practices, because they’re forced to produce a reliable crop to pay their rents. Victoria wants to know how they can help. Traill says that she needs to convince the government to send relief, or the people in his parish will continue to die.

The effects of the famine are being felt by Victoria’s servants, too. Her assistant dresser, Miss Cleary, is Irish, and her family is being threatened with eviction and starvation. The palace chef gives her his expensive gold watch so that she can sell it and send more money to Ireland. Turns out Miss Cleary is from the same small parish as Dr. Traill, and he encourages her to help educate Victoria about the Irish people.

Cleary does just that, taking an opportunity to speak to Victoria about her family — and revealing that she’s a Catholic. Victoria doesn’t care about that, and she inquires about the rest of Cleary’s family. She reveals that it was too late to help her family avoid eviction, but that they’re using the money she sent to sail for America.

Back home in County Cork, Traill has decided that he’ll take an important step, turning his house into a soup kitchen. When his wife argues against the plan, he asks her to take their children and go stay with her mother. (Traill really did start a soup kitchen in his house during the famine.) Later, he also upsets the bishop when he invites a Catholic priest to a meeting.

But sadly, Traill isn’t long for this world. We see him serving food to hungry parishioners alongside a priest, but we also see him showing signs of illness himself. He died of typhus in 1847, during a major epidemic that happened right in the middle of the Great Famine.

Victoria talks to Peel, Drummond, and Trevelyan again about help for Ireland. Trevelyan is adamant that providing relief for the Irish will turn them into a “country of dependents.”

Victoria abruptly dismisses him, and she tells people that she will not stand by while the Irish die of hunger. This depiction is indeed basically in line with the real Victoria’s attitude toward charity for Ireland, but as always, reality is more complicated than fiction.

A.N. Wilson writes that there “was great unfairness in calling her ‘the Famine Queen,’ as the Irish did, since she was one of the greatest single contributors to famine relief, and she was criticized by the rest of Britain for encouraging others to do the same.” Julia Baird notes that Victoria also “published two letters urging the public to donate to Ireland; rationed bread in her household; ordered swaths of Irish poplin; and agreed to order that days of fasting be observed in support of the poor,” but adds that “she could have done much more for what had become an unpopular cause, and several of her public gestures were made at the insistence of” members of the government.

When Peel doesn’t immediately agree to provide relief, Victoria fairly drags him to the nursery, where baby Alice is squalling. She basically asks Peel if he’d feel comfortable if a baby like Alice starved, and she tells him that she can’t let any of the people of Ireland die from hunger, imploring him to act. But Peel is at a crossroads. He tells Victoria that following his conscience will lead to the destruction of his party. She begs him to follow his conscience.

Peel makes a case in parliament for famine relief, arguing that the country should always be prepared to handle a disaster. (Peel’s reaction to the famine was also much more complicated even than it’s presented here, as you might have expected.)

We end the episode on a particularly sad note, as Victoria learns of Traill’s death. Overall, I think the episode did a decent job of detailing some of the real-life issues surrounding the famine, but I wish the crisis were given more than one episode’s worth of attention. Condensing a crisis that unfolded over years into one episode makes it seem like an isolated thing. It wasn’t — the events depicted here happened over a lengthy period of time, and I wish we’d seen them woven throughout the season rather than just spotlighted here. At least it was covered at all, I guess?