It is possible that in the future they will think less of me, marrying off your siblings as I have done, but we have seen the Americans break away and fall into ruin, and we cannot allow the same thing to happen to the Empire. Your own marriage to an Englishman is not better than theirs, it merely seeks to appease my generation. If you are as clever as I believe, you will find spouses for your own children in Hong Kong.

—Queen Victoria I,
in a letter to her daughter, Victoria II