WI: Queen Victoria assassinated?

SinghKing

Banned
Looking through historical records, it seems as though Queen Victoria was actually extraordinarily lucky not to be assassinated IOTL, given the repeated attempts in her life.

Between the first attempt on her life in 1840 and the last in 1882, Victoria refused to let her assailants cow her and opted to find her greatest security among her people. Though her decisions might seem to us dangerous, foolhardy even, and run counter to every tenet of royal security today, they ultimately served Victoria well, as she converted seven near-tragedies into triumphs. In the wake of each attempt on her life the public rose up to demonstrate its loyalty and affection.

Edward Oxford was the first: an unemployed barman who dreamt of a career as an Admiral in the Royal Navy. In June 1840, frustrated that the world did not recognise his greatness, he confronted Victoria and Albert on Constitution Hill, armed with two flashy duelling pistols. Victoria was four months pregnant with their first child. Had either of Oxford's shots killed the Queen, the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha lineage would have been erased; but he missed, and she rode on.

On May 30, 1842, John Francis came close to making Queen Victoria's reign five years rather than 64. Standing on Constitution Hill with a flintlock pistol, Francis waited for Victoria and Prince Albert to return from a carriage ride through London's parks.

It was his second attempt on the life of the monarch. Only the day before, he had pointed his pistol at the Queen's carriage, as she and Albert had made the short trip from Buckingham Palace to the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace. He had hesitated and fled, but three people, including Albert, had seen him. The police were now on the alert and so were Victoria and Albert: they boldly decided to ride this day in an attempt to flush him out.

Their plan worked, but not without a hitch. Half an hour before their return, PC William Trounce had spotted Francis but as the Queen's carriage rushed down the hill, Trounce was torn between his desire to show due respect to his monarch and his duty to protect her. He opted for loyalty, turned to face the carriage and salute- and was deafened as Francis fired at the Queen at close range.

Such was the lax state of royal security during Victoria's reign. A detail of the Metropolitan Police followed her wherever she went and her Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries added to that detail as a response to any threat but it was she who decided when and how she would travel.

The day Francis shot at her, the decision to ride was hers, as was the decision to ride the next day among a crowd of thousands clamouring to congratulate her.

John William Bean, an 18-year-old hunchbacked dwarf, was the third to attempt to kill the Queen, a little over a month after John Francis made his attempts. Depressed, he decided to end it all or at least change his miserable existence dramatically, by pointing a pistol at the Queen while she and Albert rode to church.

His attempt was the feeblest of all: the gun refused to fire. He was seized by a boy next to him but escaped, only to be caught later that evening when the police rounded up every hunchback and dwarf in the metropolis. Robert Peel, Victoria's Prime Minister, was mortified. When he rushed to the palace and saw the Queen, he reputedly burst into tears.

Peel and the public realised after this third attempt that the mania for taking potshots at the monarch was precipitated, not by animosity against Victoria or by any revolutionary political desire, but by the "diseased craving for notoriety," as the papers had it, that was held by a few antisocial boys who coveted the attention and glory that came with the charge of High Treason.

Peel passed an act that held their crime to be a high misdemeanour, punishable not by death but by imprisonment and whipping. The act may have worked too as the assaults stopped for a while. So Victoria likely never put to use the parasol lined with chain-mail designed for her. That curious fashion accessory now lies deep in the archives of the Museum of London.

William Hamilton, an unemployed bricklayer from Ireland, was the next to fire at the Queen. Again it was on Constitution Hill, on the day of the official celebration of her birthday in 1849. Although he was the fourth to stand just outside Buckingham Palace with a gun, his act was as much of a surprise to the Queen's protectors as his predecessors' were.

Hamilton also was tired of his life and saw imprisonment a likely improvement. He got his wish, pleading guilty under Peel's act and suffered seven years' penal servitude and at the prison colony at Gibraltar before disappearing into obscurity in Western Australia.

A year later, Victoria's fifth assailant, Robert Pate struck. He was the only one of the seven to harm the Queen. Well-known in London for his manic perambulations about Hyde Park, he interrupted one of these when he came upon the Queen's carriage inside the gates of her uncle's mansion on Piccadilly.

He pushed himself to the front of the crowd, knowing that when the Queen's carriage emerged, he would find himself inches from her, and slashed his cane down upon the royal forehead, blackening Victoria's eye and leaving a welt. Victoria had intended to go to the opera that night. When her ladies-inwaiting begged her to stay home, she replied, "Certainly not: if I do not go, it will be thought I am seriously hurt and people will be distressed and alarmed."

"But you are hurt, ma'am," her lady replied. "Then everyone shall see how little I mind it," the Queen said. Pate was sentenced to seven years' transportation.

Victoria's sixth assailant, Arthur O'Connor, was the grand-nephew of the Chartist politician Fergus O'Connor and he had an overwhelming desire to surpass his great-uncle in fame in one stroke.

In February 1872 he wrote up an edict for the Queen to sign: an order freeing the many Irish political prisoners then in British penitentiaries. His plan was to interrupt the scheduled Thanksgiving at St Paul's cathedral and, with edict in one hand and a rusty flintlock in the other, force the Queen to sign. He knew he would then die but wrote into the edict the command that he be treated as a brave political foe, shot by a firing squad rather than hanged like a common criminal.

He failed to get into the cathedral as police spotted him acting suspiciously there the night before and threw him out. Two days later he clambered over the fence at Buckingham Palace and came upon the Queen at the end of one of her carriage rides.

He thrust his pistol into Victoria's face but was quickly knocked to the ground by her faithful servant John Brown. Brown got a medal for his act, O'Connor only got imprisonment and the threat of a whipping, a threat that was later negotiated into exile in Australia.

The last attempt on Victoria's life was the most threatening. Roderick Maclean, the mentally disturbed scion of a wealthy family was wandering the south of England with a paranoid hatred of humanity and a fixation on the supernatural properties of the colour blue and the number four. In March 1882 he shifted his fixation to the Queen.

He bought a cheap revolver with four bullets in the chamber and confronted Victoria as she rode to Windsor Castle from the railway station. Although a number of police were in the station yard, the protocol for royal security was as woefully inadequate in 1882 as it had been in 1842: Victoria's protectors kept their eyes on her and not on the crowd, and Maclean was able to get off a shot.

As Maclean's trial (for high treason and not high misdemeanour, since he certainly shot at her) approached, it became clear that the man was insane and the Queen's government was more than willing to accept a verdict of acquittal on the grounds of insanity, which would put Maclean in Broadmoor for the rest of his life.

However, the Queen was not willing. Her security, she thought, depended upon her attackers being found guilty and given sure punishment, not acquittal and treatment. When Maclean was found not guilty Victoria was livid. He had shot at her: therefore he was guilty. If the law did not recognise this the law had to be changed. She ordered Prime Minister William Gladstone to change it and he did, seeing through an act that changed the insanity verdict from not guilty by reason of insanity to "Guilty, but insane". This curious verdict remained on the books until 1964.

Seven times, then, assailants seeking something more in their lives breached security and got through to the Queen. Every time, Victoria exploited her questionable protection in order to enhance her own prestige. In the game of shooting Victoria, the Queen always won.

So, WI one of these seven attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria had succeeded? And which of the would-be assassins' attempts would you be inclined to go with; whose successful assassination attempt would have had the greatest impact?
 
In June 1840, a pregnant Queen Victoria is out riding along Constitution Hill, when Edward Oxord, an unemployed 18 year old barman, steps out infront of the her and Prince Albert, firing two shots, killing Queen Victoria, before a doctor could help.

With Queen Victoria dead, this leads to King Ernest Augustus I of Hanover, who had been king for three years since gaining Hanover Kingdom after it, passes over, Queen Victoria, due to Salic Law, which barred women from the succession, applied in Hanover and none of his older brothers had legitimate male issue.

His son, George becomes the first blind, Prince of Wales, is twenty one and unmarried, so on 28 August 1840, the young Prince marries his eighteen year old cousin, Princess Augusta of Cambridge, daughter of his uncle, Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge.

This leads to the British Empire controlling a province in Germany, this would have the impact of forming a difficult Unification of Germany.
 
WI she were murdered after the birth of Princess Victoria and before birth of any of her sons.

Albert I guess gets to be an influentual regent
 

LordKalvert

Banned
WI she were murdered after the birth of Princess Victoria and before birth of any of her sons.

Albert I guess gets to be an influentual regent

Then I doubt that Princess Victoria is allowed to marry the Crown Prince of Prussia

An early assassination would change the dynasties of all of Europe- no Willie, no Empress Alexandra for example

A latter one where Edward still gets the throne but much earlier would mean Edward and Willie have many years to destroy Anglo-German relationships
 
Depends on who assassinated her. Having a republican assassinate her will have different consequences than having a socialist assassinate her, which will have different consequences than having a Roman Catholic assassinate her, or an Irish nationalist assassinate her, or a reactionary, etc...
 

SinghKing

Banned
Depends on who assassinated her. Having a republican assassinate her will have different consequences than having a socialist assassinate her, which will have different consequences than having a Roman Catholic assassinate her, or an Irish nationalist assassinate her, or a reactionary, etc...

That's why I'm asking what the likely consequences would be in each of these instances, and which would be the most interesting What If Scenario to explore:

A) The narcissistic, would-be Admiral, 18yr old Edward Oxford
(who cited Thiers’s History of the French Revolution as his inspiration, implying that he was a fervent Republican; after the attack, his lodgings were searched and a locked box was found containing a sword and scabbard, two pistol-bags, powder, a bullet-mould, five lead balls, some percussion caps, and the intricate rules and proceedings of an imaginary military society called "Young England"- not to be confused with the contemporary conservative political group of the same name, but how are the authorities supposed to know that without Oxford's testimony? And with the support for P.M. Lamb/ Lord Melbourne's Whig Party waning in comparison to the surging support for Robert Peel's Tories, with the Bedchamber Crisis only having taken place a year earlier...) on 10th June 1840;

B) The cabinet maker, 20yr old John Francis (whose motives remain largely unknown- no doubt, the next individual who attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria, only a month later, captured the public's attention far more), in late May 1842;

C) The unfortunately clumsy and hapless hunchback dwarf, 18yr old John William Bean (whose assassination attempt and brief escape provoked the authorities to round up every hunchback and dwarf in the whole of London. If he had actually succeeded in killing the queen, would the hunchbacks and dwarves have simply been rounded up, before being allowed to go on their way? Or, without Queen Victoria to identify the correct assailants, would they have all simply been executed instead, potentially ushering in the age of widespread eugenics policies?), in early July 1842;

D) William Hamilton, the unemployed bricklayer from the Irish village of Adare (among the many poor tenants cleared from his plot, evicted by his English Landlord, and driven to emigrate to Great Britain in search of work and food during the height of the Great Famine) in May 1849;

E) Robert Pate, the 31yr old 'dandified' retired Hussars officer, and a well-renowned vociferous reactionary anarchist from Speaker's Corner, in June 1850 (who would have been able to do so either with his bare hands or with a melee weapon);

F) Arthur O'Connor, the 17yr old grand-nephew of the Chartist politician Fergus O'Connor, and a fervent Irish Nationalist who wished to go further than his great-uncle had, willing to die for the cause of Ireland's freedom- after the failure of his original plan, which had been to interrupt the scheduled Thanksgiving at St Paul's cathedral and force the Queen to sign the edict which he'd written at gunpoint- an order to free all of the Irish political prisoners who were being held in British prison- knowing that he'd be killed, but also writing into the edict the command that he be treated as a brave political foe, shot by a firing squad rather than hanged like a common criminal. However, he was barred from entering the cathedral on the day, as police had spotted him acting suspiciously and thrown him out on the night before the event. He had also carried the edict with him on the day of his 'assassination attempt', and apparently attempted to follow through on his original plan- forcing Queen Victoria to sign the edict by holding her at gunpoint, but having to do so by mounting an ambush in the gardens of Buckingham Palace rather than publicly confronting her in St Paul's Cathedral- in February 1872;

G) The decidedly unhinged conspiracy theorist Roderick Maclean, whose cited motivation is possibly the most bizarre of all. He was a would-be poet, and after having written a poem in praise of the Queen in 1877- starting with “On your thrown you set and rule us all”, and going downhill from there- Maclean proudly sent it to Victoria. He never heard back from her (an aide had replied, noting that “The Queen never accepts manuscript poetry,” but Maclean had moved on to a different address before that letter arrived, and never received it.) The lack of response likely played upon his seething paranoia, and strengthened his hostility towards the Queen, eventually culminating in his attempt to kill her in March 1882 (getting off four shots with a revolver).
 

Yuelang

Banned
Depends on who assassinated her. Having a republican assassinate her will have different consequences than having a socialist assassinate her, which will have different consequences than having a Roman Catholic assassinate her, or an Irish nationalist assassinate her, or a reactionary, etc...

I vote for an American :cool:
bonus point if that was American diplomat or President :p
 
I vote for an American :cool:
bonus point if that was American diplomat or President :p

This maybe best to be performed in 1854, United States Minister to the United Kingdom, James Buchanan becomes angered by Queen Victoria's rudeness and shots her in a fit of anger.

Leading to the 1855 War, between the United States and the United Kingdom.

14 year old Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in now King Edward VII.
 

SinghKing

Banned
Bumping this thread. Which of the unsuccessful assassination attempts on her IOTL would be the most interesting to explore for an ATL in which it succeeds? A), B), C), D), E), F) or G)?

For instance, starting with option A) WI Edward Oxford, of his own imaginary 'Young England' society, succeeds in assassinating Queen Victoria in June 1840- the earliest of the lot. Could the unfortunate coincidence of his imaginary military society's name have potentially kicked off a witch-hunt, and have led to the imprisonment and/or execution of the members of the identically named 'Young England' political group, which had been formed only a couple of years prior on the playing fields of Eton and Cambridge by a splinter group of Tory Aristocrats- with its members including such important figures as George Smythe, Lord John Manners, Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, Richard Monckton Milnes and Henry Thomas Hope (Benjamin Disraeli would be the leader and by far the most famous member of the group IOTL, but having neither an aristocratic background nor an Eton or Cambridge education, he only got invited into the group in March 1842)? How profound an impact could this assassination, and the aftermath of it, have had on the course of history, both that of Great Britain and of the entire world?
 
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