I knew going into this that it was a work of non-fiction, which is generally not my forte, and I knew it would take me longer to get through because a lot of non-fiction becomes info dumps. This book was not an exception. It was very informative on the attempts on Victoria's life (too informative, to be honest) and explained how the British Monarchy that we know today, came to be.

I've been watching the Masterpiece show 'Victoria' and knew some of the info going into this book (the show is fairly accurate), but this included things like notes from her personal journals and letters to friends & family that give us better incite into what she was thinking and feeling.

It also gave a LOT of background on all of her attempted assassins along with almost complete court transcripts from the trial of each, which just REALLY wasn't needed and could have been drastically reduced in the amount of content included. I understand the need for the information, but most of that bore me to tears and after the first assassins trial, I barely scanned the others.

We find that with all the twists & turns that life & the world takes, that it is sort of amazing that a lot of what the British royal family does today all stems from things that began with Victoria's reign and that we see that a Queen can still be completely loved by her citizens even when they don't always like what they stand for.