Disclaimer: I do not own any of the historical characters in Victoria nor do I own the TV series which was written by Daisy Goodwin. Any lines from the show are also not mine and are just borrowed from Daisy Goodwin and ITV Victoria.
For ease of information the multiple lives of Victoria and Lord M go as follows:
1819-1901 (Victoria) – 1908-1990 (second life) – 1991-1991 (third life) – 1995 to present (fourth life)
1779-1848 (Lord M) – 1860-1898 (second life) – 1900-1940 (third life) – 1945-1949 (fourth life) – 1970 to present (fifth life)
They are not exactly soulmates. Or perhaps they are.
It really just depends on your definition.
In their first life she is Queen Victoria and he is William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne.
~/~/~/~
It is not that they cannot love others.
Victoria loves Prince Albert passionately and devotedly for the entirety of their marriage (tragically cut short). William adores his wife Caroline and though their affection does not survive the tumultuous years of their marriage he always retains a spark of that first love for her.
So they can love others. They do love others. But there is always a small part of their hearts that those others never touch, a part that only ever seems alive when they are together.
~/~/~/~
It is not that they cannot live without one another.
Victoria's grief over Albert's death is far more obvious than her grief over the death of her first Prime Minister. She has, after all, been married to Albert for over twenty years while Lord M was her Prime Minister for just four years.
William never has to mourn Victoria's death, but he mourns her loss, the absence of her sparkling presence in his life once he ceases his tenure as Prime Minister. It is illness that kills him, though, and if his end comes a little too soon because of the heartbreak of losing the company of the one person who can still make him truly smile, then it must still be said that it only hastened and did not cause.
So one can live without the other. He survives her absence and she survives his death. But they both lose a piece of themselves that they will never get back.
~/~/~/~
It is not that there are marks or words to show them a soulmate truth.
Soulmarks of some sort, first words scrawled across your body … these things do not exist in their world. There is no definite way to know, no formula for compatibility. Love cannot be broken down like that, not really.
They know, though. There are no words or symbols but there is the way they fit, the way they orient each other, a thousand little things that show their connection.
So it is not there on their skin but it is there nonetheless in words and actions and feelings.
~/~/~/~
It is not that they can feel each other's emotions or share thoughts.
Sometimes Victoria spends hours puzzling over one of his expressions, ponders for days whether she is reading too much into what he says or does. And William, well for so long he does not trust that she cares as much as she says she does, and he never quite realises just how strong her feelings are (because however much Albert replaces him the truth is that she never forgets her Lord M).
But they know each other well. They can have a conversation with only their expressions. She knows how to make him laugh and he can calm her temper in a way no one else can.
So there are misunderstandings and arguments, confusion and differences. However, in the end, they know each other beyond the superficial … they know each other's hearts.
(and when they come to tell her of his death, the truth is that deep down she already knows).
In his second life he is a baronet and though he has an interest in politics he does not pursue it, preferring to bury himself in his library instead.
His life is uneventful. He never marries – he has an odd sense of tiredness whenever he thinks of women, a wariness he cannot quite explain.
Except when it comes to his monarch. He has had a deep respect and esteem for Queen Victoria for as long as he can remember.
He never meets her, the Queen he so admires. He dies before she does, on a rainy afternoon in 1898 when he is just thirty eight years old.
The Queen feels very upset that day and she can never figure out why.
His third life begins just eight years before her second one does.
He is the younger son of an earl and she is the daughter of a duke.
They move in the same social circles and come to know each other very well due to the friendship between their families.
He is charmed by her and she is fascinated by him.
She teaches him to play the piano and rolls her eyes playfully when he insists on playing nothing but Mozart. He tells her stories about all the places he has visited (because her mama never wants to let her go anywhere) and helps her persuade her father to allow her to visit her aunt in Bath without her mama's stifling presence.
When she is sixteen she wants to marry him, wants it more than she has wanted anything else in her life. But he is a younger son and she is expected to make a match with the heir to a great estate. At first she rebels against it, makes plans to confess to the man she truly loves and insist that she does not care that she will not have a great house and fine dresses as long as she has him.
But before she gets the chance he sets off for a grand tour abroad after a farewell where their usual affection is stifled by the foreboding presence of her parents.
He writes frequently but it is not the same as having him there, her ally in all things, her very best friend.
Her parents parade suitors in front of her and though she tells herself that she does not want any of them she finds after a while that there is one she quite likes. The dreams of before are fading and she remembers that she is still unaware of whether her feelings are even requited. Besides, it does not seem like he plans on returning any time soon and she knows he would not want her to lose a chance of happiness.
So she marries another man, the heir to a duke even richer than her papa. Mama is delighted beyond measure and her whole family congratulates her.
He writes his own best wishes, his fervent hopes for a felicitous marriage.
(she will never know what it cost him to write such a cheerful letter).
She has a very happy marriage, adores her husband and the three children that she bears in the following years.
He marries too, a few years after she does, and he seems from his letters (less frequent now they are both married but treasured nonetheless) to love his wife. They have one daughter who is obviously the joy of his life, perhaps even more so than his wife, but when she dies of illness at only seven years old he never quite recovers.
There are no more letters then. The next she hears of him is information of his death from a mutual friend a few years later.
She tells everyone she has a headache and spends the day in her room crying.
They have not seen each other in person for almost ten years but that doesn't matter, does not make the grief any less pressing.
She lives another half a century. They are good years, full of delight and adventures and love, surrounded by children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.
But she still misses him.
His fourth life and her third one are short.
Too short.
He has a wonderful family and is very much loved. There is much grief when illness takes him just after his fourth birthday.
She lives barely a day but her parents never forget her, not even when other children follow.
By some strange twist of fate, and despite the decades between their deaths, when she is buried it is in a grave right next to his.
It is 2016 when he, in his fifth life, meets her, in her fourth life.
He is forty-six years old and she is twenty-one.
He teaches Politics at Cambridge. She has just completed a Fine Art degree at Oxford and is now in the process of searching for a job and avoiding her mother's attempts to match-make.
They have the same names now as they did in their first lives. She is Victoria and he is William.
They are introduced by a mutual friend and there is an immediate connection, an undeniable spark.
"Have we met before?" she asks him, "you seem very familiar."
He shakes his head, "I don't think so," he tells her, but there is some uncertainty in his voice.
"Perhaps once upon a dream," she suggests.
They laugh together but they also both think there may be something in her words, absurd as it seems.
They don't really know each other yet, but they will soon enough.
He'll go with her to all the operas she enjoys even though he really prefers Mozart. She will read books on botany so she can understand when he talks to her about flowers. He'll make history and politics interesting for her, while she will remind him of what it is to really live rather than just existing.
There will be gossip about the age difference, about the skeletons in his past and her family's controlling tendencies. She has a temper and he can be too noble sometimes. It won't always be easy.
But it will be worth it.
Because he will look at her like she's everything and she'll return that look. He will be the one person who always believes in her and she will be the one to remind him of his worth and help him shake away his demons.
Maybe they will be together in their next lives or maybe they won't.
Right now it doesn't matter. For in these lives (his fifth, her fourth) everything aligns.
And they feel it, in their hearts and deep in their very bones.
Love and compatibility and completeness and adoration.
They've had happy endings separately before. Now they finally get to experience one together.