Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy - Paul Thomas Murphy
Shooting Victoria: Madness, Mayhem, and the Rebirth of the British Monarchy - Paul Thomas Murphy
Non-Fiction
Pages: 688
Through her long reign Queen Victoria was the victim of seven 'assassination' attempts, all exhaustively documented in this excellent and engaging book. I use the term 'assassination' loosely, as in almost every case it was unlikely the perpetrators ever intended to kill her; a bullet was found in only one of the cases. In almost the cases the perpetrators were seeking fame and notoriety, or in one case actively looking to be imprisoned to escape misery and poverty. Victoria's reactions to these attempts demonstrate this, to some extent - she never truly feared her public or believed that any sane person could wish her harm.
Indeed, what is interesting, and what makes the British monarchy stand out in this period, is that all of Victoria's assailants were mentally unbalanced and were not using assassination to make some kind of political statement or usher in revolution. Whilst Russia's Tsar Alexander, Italy's King Umberto, America's Presidents Garfield and McKinley and Austria's Empress Elisabeth were all killed by sane men impelled by some kind of political motive, only one of Victoria's assailant was impelled by any kind of political reasoning, and this was by a seventeen-year-old boy with no real connection to the Fenian Movement, lost in the supposed grandeur of his family links with the Movement, who had never set foot in Ireland.
This is a fascinating look at a number of interconnected fields - the evolution of the McNaughton Rules for establishing insanity in criminal cases; the treatment and punishment of the criminally insane; and Victoria's reign and her success in harnessing the legitimacy of her rule to popular will, creating a bond between the monarch and the British people that has lasted to this day and is largely the reason the British monarchy has lasted where so many others have fallen.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 688
Through her long reign Queen Victoria was the victim of seven 'assassination' attempts, all exhaustively documented in this excellent and engaging book. I use the term 'assassination' loosely, as in almost every case it was unlikely the perpetrators ever intended to kill her; a bullet was found in only one of the cases. In almost the cases the perpetrators were seeking fame and notoriety, or in one case actively looking to be imprisoned to escape misery and poverty. Victoria's reactions to these attempts demonstrate this, to some extent - she never truly feared her public or believed that any sane person could wish her harm.
Indeed, what is interesting, and what makes the British monarchy stand out in this period, is that all of Victoria's assailants were mentally unbalanced and were not using assassination to make some kind of political statement or usher in revolution. Whilst Russia's Tsar Alexander, Italy's King Umberto, America's Presidents Garfield and McKinley and Austria's Empress Elisabeth were all killed by sane men impelled by some kind of political motive, only one of Victoria's assailant was impelled by any kind of political reasoning, and this was by a seventeen-year-old boy with no real connection to the Fenian Movement, lost in the supposed grandeur of his family links with the Movement, who had never set foot in Ireland.
This is a fascinating look at a number of interconnected fields - the evolution of the McNaughton Rules for establishing insanity in criminal cases; the treatment and punishment of the criminally insane; and Victoria's reign and her success in harnessing the legitimacy of her rule to popular will, creating a bond between the monarch and the British people that has lasted to this day and is largely the reason the British monarchy has lasted where so many others have fallen.