A Popular Queen Who Attracted Tons of Admirers
Celebrity stalkers are an unfortunate feature of today’s world, who plague the famous, and sometimes the infamous, alike. Such fame fiends are not a new phenomenon exclusive to the modern era. They have been around for some time, as Queen Victoria, were she still around, could attest. Britain was enamored by the young Victoria when she ascended the throne in 1837. Her two predecessors, her uncles, had been old, ineffectual, and corrupt, while their predecessor, the Mad King George III, had been, well… mad. So Victoria arrived as a breath of fresh air: a young, pretty, innocent, and clean new slate for her nation.
Admirers tossed letters into her carriage, and the bolder ones visited the palace with marriage proposals. As seen below, many of the he creepier ones became obsessed with the young queen, and turned stalker. They were helped by woeful security. Britain’s royal household bureaucracy was a mishmash of inefficiency, ineptness, and outright incompetence. When Victoria once asked a servant for a fire, she was told no can do. His job was to arrange and prepare the wood and coal for a fire. To light it was the responsibility of another department. In another example, cleaning palace windows was divided between two departments, one that cleaned the outside, and another for the inside.