Queen of spies

In early 1886, Lord Rosebery, the incoming foreign secretary, waited nervously to meet Queen Victoria. He was a liberal politician in his thirties; she had been on the throne for almost half a century. As the door swung open, Victoria – vastly experienced and unafraid to express her opinion – began lecturing him on exactly what his foreign policy should be. She “urged him not to bring too many matters before the cabinet, as nothing was decided there”. Instead, he should “discuss everything with me and Mr Gladstone”, the prime minister, privately. She told him that she “frequently had intelligence of a secret nature, which it would be useful and interesting for him to hear, and which came from a reliable source”.

Queen Victoria recorded this extraordinary conversation in her diaries. Recently digitised, these paint the monarch in a remarkable new light, revealing her role as royal spymaster. Over her long reign, Victoria developed an extensive royal intelligence network involving her relatives across Europe, from Prussia to Spain. She used this royal intelligence to help successive governments manoeuvre in the complex world of 19th-century European politics.

At least, she did so when it suited her. Whenever ministerial policies clashed with her own dynastic interests, she did not hesitate to use these sources to outmanoeuvre her own governments. Far from the dour figure she’s commonly portrayed as today, clad all in black and locked away at Windsor, Victoria was in fact an adept intelligence gatherer, a covert operator, an analyst and an intelligence consumer all rolled into one. She was the queen of spies.

Dark arts

Victoria was only 18 years old when she became queen in 1837, and had