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@regordane Otronto, and the birth of the neo-Gothic art movement, represented the foundations upon which much of the horrors of the era rested and relied upon. The focus on wealth and power and status, the acknowledging and simply accepting the realities of daily monstrousness, while protesting purity and claiming them as essential. Otronto, and the neo-Gothic perspective it gave birth to, normalized it all by claiming the weight of history and the distortions of power itself were an equal, if not greater, burden. Otronto was not the beginning of the Victorian era--it was the overture, in the way that the 80s culture of greed celebration ushered in our modern day of oligarchy (as the Victorian era truly began with the voices of Keats and Tennyson and Shelley).

And yes, Victoria came to the throne later, but the era as a whole bears her name because she was emblematic of its values and perspectives, not because she caused this-or-that. Victoria herself frankly did relatively little of note differently from her predecessor or successor; but she did these things loudly, forcefully, and in a way absolutely unapologetically typical of the era.