Something I came across while reading Queen Victoria's letters and journals. Firstly a bit of background. When Victoria came to the throne, the Whigs had held power since the Great Reform Act broadened the franchise. However in the next few elections the Tories under Sir Robert Peel gradually demolished the Whig lead until by 1839 Parliament was almost hung. Anyway a controversial issue had arisen: there was unrest in Jamaica and Lord Melbourne's Whig ministry wanted to suspend the Jamaican colonial assembly and impose direct rule from London until the crisis was over. However Peel and the Tories opposed this and Melbourne suffered a backbench rebellion. While the bill passed by five votes, Melbourne decided his position had become untenable and resigned, recommending the Queen ask Peel to form a Tory minority government. Victoria however disliked Peel and initially approached the Duke of Wellington instead to ask if he would head a Tory ministry. The Duke declined but pledged to serve as Foreign Secretary under Peel.
Victoria then turned to Peel, but there was considerable mistrust between the two and Peel (rightly to some extent) suspected the Queen had improper sympathies with the Whig party rather than being entirely impartial. As one of the conditions for forming a government, Peel wanted the Queen to replace the Royal Household, which was packed with Whigs whom Peel suspected of influencing the young queen. Victoria agreed to replace the Grooms and Equerries, who were members of the House of Lords and thus fell under the remit of Parliament, but refused on principle to replace her Ladies of the Bedchamber because constitutionally they came under royal rather than Parliamentary authority. Peel on the other hand claimed that the Ladies were a political appointment because, under the Melbourne ministry, the Ladies had been packed with appointees who were the wives and daughters of Whig cabinet ministers.
In OTL in the end Victoria held firm, Peel refused to form a government as he believed this indicated he did not hold the Queen's confidence, and Melbourne took over again until the Tories won the 1841 election convincingly and Peel became PM. However Victoria made a curious side comment to Melbourne in a letter at the time: due to Peel's refusal to concede her point that the Ladies, being disassociated with Parliament, were not a political appointment, Victoria commented "Does he propose to give them seats in Parliament?"
Now this was almost certainly sarcasm on Victoria's part but it did make me wonder if this might actually have been tried as a solution to the crisis. Give selected wives and daughters of Lords involved in the Cabinet seats in the House of Lords in their own right, thus making the Bedchamber political appointees subject to the authority of the Prime Minister. Of course if this was tried, at first it would only exist on paper as a compromise. However, a few years down the line I could see one of the ladies in question actually exercising her right to speak and vote in the House of Lords if a crisis arose, say a close vote, or if her husband had died and she wanted to vote in his stead (a circumstance which had already happened a few times in various British-derived assemblies, especially in colonial America).
Could have interesting consequences down the line, especially if this means female participation in politics is viewed as a conservative or top-down position--at the time even among the Chartists the vast majority rejected the idea of women voting and standing.