Chapter 2353 - 297: Victoria’s White-Horse Prince

I really like this Prince; he is so naturally cheerful and incredibly easy to get along with.

— Alexandrina Victoria "Victoria’s Diary"

Since Victoria ascended the throne in June 1837, perhaps because Great Britain Island had not welcomed a queen for so long, or perhaps her coming-of-age attracted the attention of all her subjects.

But regardless of the reason, the result is obvious: the nationwide Queen mania has yet to subside.

Various court magazines frequently praise her appearance, her precocious intelligence, her kind character, and her calm demeanor.

In short, in the year since her coronation, there wasn’t a single part of Victoria that Fleet Street hadn’t lauded.

And along with the news reports came a flurry of letters from the public.

Included among them, naturally, were passionate love letters and proposals, the senders being an endless stream of stalkers, admirers, and ambitious men coveting the position of King’s Consort. Their numbers were so great that Fleet Street jocosely dubbed them "The Queen’s Lovers."

Among "The Queen’s Lovers," none was more famous than Mr. John Good.

This gentleman believed he was destined to win the Queen’s favor.

As early as when Victoria was still residing in Kensington Palace, he began to trail her.

Even when Victoria vacationed in Ramsgate and Hastings, Mr. John Good, upon learning of this, spared no expense from his savings to follow his "future wife" there.

Back then, the Scotland Yard spies placed around Kensington Palace by Arthur frequently discovered Good loitering around the streets nearby, and he would even approach the guards at the palace gates to inquire about Victoria’s health and attempt to enter the palace to leave his name in the visitors’ book.

Initially, the Scotland Yard police treated him relatively gently, even paying for a carriage to take him away from Kensington.

However, the oblivious Good repeatedly found ways to return, hoping to catch a glimpse of Victoria. Whenever Victoria’s carriage left the palace gates, he would drive his own open carriage to follow behind. If the carriages stopped, he would seize the opportunity to jump off and attempt to converse with Victoria.

Faced with such a delusional patient, the Scotland Yard officers, unwilling to keep paying for his fare, eventually arrested Good on charges of harassing the Crown Prince. Yet, each time after his release, Good would reappear along Victoria’s route.

Finally, in November 1837, the exhausted officers took harsh action against the incorrigible Good, and instead of entering the holding cell at Scotland Yard, he was sent to Bethlem Hospital.

Of course, Mr. John Good was not the only sexually frustrated British gentleman.

Another overly enthusiastic admirer once boldly intruded into the Royal Chapel in broad daylight just to publicly declare his feelings to Victoria.

And there was Captain Tom Flower of the 15th Light Cavalry Regiment, who was arrested for attempting to sneak into the Queen’s opera box and later tried to infiltrate Kensington Palace during the inheritance ceremonies, ultimately leading to his being taken to the Tot Hill Reformatory.

When Victoria went out for a ride, being intercepted by well-planned admirers had become routine.

A man named Ned Hayward once intercepted Victoria in Hyde Park just to hand her a letter asking if she was willing to marry him.

And the man jokingly dubbed by Fleet Street as "The Queen’s Last Passionate Suitor," Mr. John Stockley, caused repeated disturbances last winter, being arrested on November 29 following an attempt to sneak into Windsor Castle.

More ridiculously, during his trial, Stockley claimed, "I am no different from any man seeking companionship, and Her Majesty the Queen happens to meet my standards for a partner."

Perhaps his sincerity moved the jury, leading the Magistrate to immediately shine the light on him, and sentencing him to three months of labor reform at the Tot Hill Reformatory for "continuous harassment" and "attempting illegal entry."

As Fleet Street started seriously discussing "who is most likely to become the Queen’s lover," the one who genuinely had a chance showed little interest in the opportunity at hand. At least so far, his coolness reached a point where the court gossip magazines suspected that Sir Arthur Hastings was possibly more concerned with those gentlemen he personally sent to the reformatory than Her Majesty the Queen herself.

If these infatuated gentlemen were the Queen’s suitors, then Sir Arthur Hastings was their natural nemesis.

Though these gentlemen often sighed over their three-month expressions, they didn’t realize that this treatment was already quite lenient.

After all, the first gentleman who attempted to cross this line has been in India for a long time now.

Unfortunately, although Sir Arthur knows that these gentlemen might not have meant to do so explicitly, who told you all to block the path of Sir’s progress?

Dare to block the progress of Sir Arthur Hastings...

You rascal, are you defying the entire police system of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland!

Sir Arthur Hastings stood in front of the polished floor-to-ceiling mirror in the Home Office, carefully straightening his collar.