14. History’s Most Famous Queen Was Not Safe From Stalkers
Celebrity stalkers are an unfortunate feature of the modern era. Such fame fiends are not a new phenomenon, however: they have been around for some time, as Queen Victoria could attest if she was still around. Britain was enamored by the young Victoria when she ascended the throne. 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.
Admirers tossed letters into her carriage, the bolder ones visited the palace with marriage proposals, and the creepier ones dedicated themselves to the crime of stalking the young queen. Britain’s royal household bureaucracy was an inefficient, inept, and outright incompetent. 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, while a separate department was responsible for actually lighting it. In another example, cleaning palace windows was split between two departments, one for cleaning the outside, and another for the inside.