Queen Victoria Could be a Jerk at Times
Queen Victoria was an excessively prim and proper monarch, after whom the excessively prim and proper Victorian era was named. She was also a bit of a jerk at times. Take her attitude towards British looting and plundering of other countries. Nowadays, the British Museum faces a global pressure campaign to restore cultural and historical artifacts seized in the days of the British Empire. In her lifetime, however, Queen Victoria saw nothing improper about that. Her Majesty neither knew nor cared for modern sensibilities about such things.
For example, in the Second Opium War (1856 – 1860), British and French forces plundered, then destroyed and burned to the ground, China’s imperial Summer Palace complex. Among the loot seized and presented to Victoria was a small Pekinese dog – a breed previously unknown in Britain – that had belonged to the Chinese empress or one of the imperial ladies. Unlike the British Museum today, Victoria neither pretended not to know, nor acted deliberately obtuse about how she got that bit of loot. Indeed, she rejoiced in the fact that the cute little pooch was looted, and so named it “Looty”. Queen Victoria was many things, but PC wasn’t one of them.
