Edward Oxford tried to assassinate Queen Victoria when she was four months pregnant with her first child. She was enjoying an evening carriage ride with Prince Albert, as was their custom: the pair regularly travelled in an open phaeton without guards.  Oxford took advantage of this, and on 10 June he attempted to kill the queen. He fired both of his pistols in quick succession, but the horses reared up at the sound of the shots and took off at high speed, carrying the queen’s carriage away from her would-be assassin. 

At 6am on 20 June 1837, Victoria was roused from her sleep and told that her uncle, King William IV, had passed away while he was sleeping. The news came as a shock, but the young queen reacted very calmly. However, her governess had prepared smelling salts, in case Victoria was overcome by the events that were happening around her.She met with her privy council for the first time just a few hours later. Owing to her diminutive stature (she was only 4ft 11), she was reportedly seated on a raised platform so that her ministers could see her. 

Victoria’s mother and her advisor, John Conway, imposed a strict set of regulations upon young Victoria. Known as the ‘Kensington System’, Victoria had to live by a stifling set of rules that severely restricted her freedoms.

Victoria was famously close to some of her prime ministers – particularly Lord Melbourne, whom she even sent personal letters to regarding her feelings towards the Russian heir Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich (later Tsar Alexander II), and Benjamin Disraeli – but others received a far less enthusiastic response from the monarch.William Gladstone certainly fell into the latter camp, with the queen cuttingly describing him as a “half-crazy and in many ways ridiculous, wild and incomprehensible old fanatic”.

Abdul Karim, along with some other Indian servants, arrived at Windsor Castle in June 1887. Abdul became Victoria’s Munshi (teacher) and taught the monarch Hindustani and Urdu for 13 years. The pair became very close: Victoria even kept a photograph of him in her dressing room.

Victoria was an object of fascination for many, but ‘The Boy Jones’ certainly took his admiration of the queen too far. Between 1838 and 1841, the stalker – whose real name was Thomas Edward Jones – broke into Buckingham Palace several times, hiding under the queen’s sofa, eating potatoes in the picture gallery and reportedly even rolling on the royal bed. He was eventually caught and sent to Brazil.

Over the course of her 21-year marriage to Albert, Victoria produced nine children. Many of her sons and daughters were married into various European monarchies to help build Britain’s influence abroad and cement international alliances. Her 42 grandchildren were spread all across Europe, in the royal families of Germany, Russia, Greece, Romania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Spain. Accordingly, Victoria was known as “the grandmother of Europe”.

Prince Albert unexpectedly passed away at the age of 42, and his death rocked the monarchy and sent Victoria into a spiral of despair. Although it was at first expected that the queen would adhere to the usual two years of conventional mourning, it quickly became clear that her retreat from the public view and her intense sorrow would continue well beyond this period. For the rest of her life, she only wore black clothes, and she continued to mourn Albert until her own death in 1901.

Queen Victoria died at the age of 81 on 22 January 1901. After her body had been prepared, her family – including the royal dukes, the kaiser and the new king, Edward VII – were summoned to lift her body into her coffin.With this solemn duty complete, Victoria’s family duly left. Her staff were then able to carry out the queen’s secret instructions, which were never to be revealed to her children. Her personal servant John Brown’s mother’s wedding ring was placed on her finger, and a photograph of him, a lock of his hair and his handkerchief were clandestinely placed beside her.The queen was buried beside her beloved Prince Albert on 4 February 1901 in a mausoleum at Frogmore.