After the untimely death of Prince Albert, the queen and her nation were plunged into a state of grief so profound that this one event would dramatically alter the shape of the British monarchy. For Britain had not just lost a prince. During his twenty-one-year marriage to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert had increasingly performed the function of king in all but name. The outpouring of grief after Albert's death was so extreme, that its like would not be seen again until the death of Princess Diana 136 year later. Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs from the Royal Archives and other previously uncited sources, Helen Rappaport offers a new perspective on the crucial final months of the prince's life and the middle years of Queen Victoria's reign. She draws a portrait of a queen obsessed with her living husband and later with his place in history. It will also throw new lighton the true nature of the prince's chronic physical condition, overturning for good the 150-year-old myth that he died of typhoid fever.