Like I said in my first post, that's simply what I've heard before. Didn't know if it was true or not so that's part of the reason I made this thread in the first place. Anyway I never really understood why Queen Victoria couldn't appoint anyone she wanted as PM. Many continental, constitutional monarchs were easily able to do so even with universal suffrage, so why couldn't the same work in Britain? Was it because the British had a head-start in party politics when compared to the Continent or was it merely a monarch never risked it? As for appointing whomever you want from within the party in power, why couldn't that work? I mean there would be objections but in the mid 1800s that convention that the Party leader had to be PM has only just emerging. So in theory whomever was able to form a government should be PM, that man might not necessarily be the Party leader.
Because its about having the support of both monarch and parliament, as I explained, that makes being an appointed PM so difficult. As George III increasingly found, you either find someone who shares your views but struggles to get MPs to support him, or lump for someone with the power to build coalitions but who may not be as keen on your personal brand of politics as monarch.
I don't know as much about continental monarchies, but my feeling is that it ''worked'' [and in many cases it didn't] because either the monarchy already had more powers to begin with or some monarchs [like Nicholas II with Stolypin] were relatively keen to delegate power to a chief minister, allowing that man to wield power and influence on their behalf and thus form political patronage networks that garnered support.
Doing this with party politics is difficult - if as monarch you pick someone who isn't the established leader as PM, you snub the chosen leader and his power networks in the party. What incentive do they have to work with your hand-picked PM?
I would from looking at her childhood and the Kensington system. She was raised to be dependent on her mother and Sir Jon Conroy, something she rejected but ultimately became dependent first on Lord Melbourne and later Prince Albert. Victoria herself admitted her education was woefully lacking. Though I won't deny that in her middle and post Albert years she definitely became a great monarch, in the early years (say 1837-1850 or so) she was very much a cipher. And I wouldn't call their Liberal project all that successful; in fact I'd go so far as to call it a failure. It hinged totally on a liberal Germany, which never happened. I suppose you could give them some credit for Italy but that was more Palmerston and Russell.
I think you need to read a more recent biography of Victoria [and Albert] and think again about what you mean in terms of 'power' and 'education'. She took advice, of course, but wasn't merely a cypher or puppet as you claim. You need to look at a much wider definition of power than just directly shaping the course of government.
Also, I don't think its in any way fair to just dismiss their Liberal project as a failure. It was much more than a liberal Germany, for which they can't be blamed for the untimely death of Frederick III, but was about an inter-connected web of marital alliances that was supposed to maintain the concert of powers in Europe. The fact that a relative balance of power in Europe, much to the advantage of British foreign policy and commerce, was maintained between the 1850s and 1910s was by no means solely their doing, but they did have a major hand in shaping it.
I hadn't considered just how surprising the fall of the July Monarchy must have been. That would explain at least some of it but not all; Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium were all constitutional monarchies where the Sovereign has significant powers and three of the four never fell. But yeah 1848 was highly significant for Europe and many monarchs learned different lessons from it.
So ultimately a POD would need more than a monarch with a different personality and would instead need something farther back, like George III accession in 1760?
I don't know how the other monarchs felt at the time, but it really should not have been that shocking. Louis-Philippe had taken the throne in a revolution against his cousin; his legitimacy was always a bit dodgy for that. If it was OK to revolt against the sovereign in 1830, why not again?
Plus, the legitimists, republicans and Bonapartists all disliked him, there were numerous uprisings during his reign, and there were several assassination attempts.
That's basically what I was thinking. This was, what, the fourth regime change France had sense 1800? Saying that a fifth revolution in France was shocking seems a little disingenuous. Though I suppose it might have been a surprise for Victoria and Albert, who tended to be a bit ignorant, or perhaps naive would be a better word, when it came to
As
@Socrates has said, you are looking at this with far too much hindsight. It was very much a shocking event in 1848. Remember for Britons the earlier revolution of 1830 was seen as a natural 'evolution' or 'correction' - a shift from overly autocratic government to the sort of constitutional rule that British people largely felt was the normal state of affairs.
This from The Times of March 3rd 1848:
The event of last week spoke like an earthquake to the political confidence of all parties and classes of men. Both at London and at Paris the Stock Exchange witnessed an absolutely unprecedented fall.
As for calling Victoria and Albert ignorant and naive, I'm not even going to go there...