Alice Reid

Sleeping Beauty tile panel, designed by Edward Burne-Jones for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. Earthenware. England, 1860s. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Famous examples suggest that people married at very young ages in the European past. Shakespeare’s Juliet was ‘not [yet] fourteen’ and Romeo probably not much older. Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, was either 12 or 14 when she married Edmund Tudor, and gave birth to Henry not much more than a year later. The marriage age for British nobles increased over time, but members of the royal family were still marrying fairly young in the 19th century. Both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were 20 when they married in 1840, and Victoria’s eldest son, the future King Edward VII, and his bride Princess Alexandra of Denmark, were 21 and 18 respectively when they married in 1863. Such examples encourage people to think that young ages at marriage must have been the norm. 

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