Who was Queen Victoria's father?

Queen Victoria’s father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn. Edward Augustus was the fourth son of King George III and Queen Charlotte, and Victoria was his only child.

Prince Edward was born in 1767 and served in the British Army, eventually becoming a field marshal. He also held the post of Governor of Gibraltar and spent periods of his military career in North America and the Mediterranean. In 1818, he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widow who was closely connected to several European royal families.

Edward died of pneumonia on 23 January 1820, only a few months after Victoria’s birth and just six days before the death of his father, George III. Because Victoria’s uncles had no surviving legitimate children, she became heir to the throne and succeeded her uncle William IV in 1837. This is why Prince Edward, despite dying when his daughter was an infant, was central to the succession that produced Britain’s long-reigning Victorian monarch.