Speaking of many queens in British history, Queen Victoria must be a well-known one. During her reign, Britain successfully rode on the wind of the age of navigation and truly became the "Empire of the Sun Never Sets". In addition, the story of her and her husband, Prince Albert, and the story of arranged marriage becoming true love is also full of legend.
However, in 2011, a batch of dusty diaries was released, and the ambiguous past between the queen and the Indian male servant who was 44 years younger than herself came to light.
In fact, in order to cover up this relationship, the British royal family simply exhausted all kinds of methods - control, search, warning, but it forgot to destroy the diary of the male servant himself.
I have to say that it is really a good habit to write a diary.
In the context of official British propaganda, Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert can be called a model couple in arranged marriages - when they were young, they fell in love at first sight and had a good relationship after marriage, with an average of more than two years of birth, and four sons and five daughters in succession.
With the powerful power of Britain at that time, these children either married princesses or princes, and almost spread their DNA to the entire European royal family.
Queen Victoria thus earned the nickname "The Old Grandmother of Europe", and of course, hemophilia, a genetic disease that swept through the European royal family with the X chromosome, was another matter.
In any case, records show that Queen Victoria greatly admired her husband and supported his various political and cultural ideas while he was alive; he died young, and the Queen often chanted "if Albert was still alive, what would happen to him", and even wore only black for the rest of his life.
However, from the example of this Indian male servant, true love is true love, and lovers are lovers, and these two things do not conflict. After all, no matter how expensive she is, she is first and foremost a person with normal emotional needs.
The story begins in 1887, during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Queen's accession to the throne.
This year, the Queen was 68 years old, while Prince Albert had been dead for 26 years. Britain was not the island nation it is today, and by colonial means, it controlled vast lands on all continents, for example, queen Victoria was crowned empress of India in 1876.
This 50th anniversary celebration is actually an opportunity for the British Empire colonies to hold a congress. Since this is the case, India, of course, does not dare to be sloppy, and sends its own princes to London to "join in the grand event".
In order to make the Indian prince comfortable eating and living in London, the Queen ordered that two Indian male servants be recruited to serve the prince.
Abdul Karim, then 24, was given access to the British court. According to his own diary, he was originally a clerk in India's Central Prison, but on the recommendation of his superiors, he was hired to serve as a servant to an Indian prince.
Traces of the existence of these two Indian servants can also be found in Queen Victoria's diary: "One is Muhammad Bukshi, who looks very dark... The other was named Abdul Karim, and this man looked younger, taller, and healthier..."
The next development was somewhat unexpected, as mentioned above, the British temporarily hired these two Indian servants, originally to serve the Indian prince who had come to serve him.
In reality, however, the tall and young Karim not only brought curry food to the royal table, but the queen even learned Urdu from him, still learning subtle phrases such as "missing you" and "hugging me".
From the available information, it is difficult to speculate on what method Karim used to win the queen's favor, but it can be more or less speculated that 80% of this person is not only good at cooking, but also good at getting along with people and has a good emotional intelligence.
Just as the Queen was attracted to him, he wasted no time in submitting his resignation, claiming that it was too undignified to be a clerk and decided to go back to India...
The queen was very reluctant about this, and even wrote a letter to keep it, saying "because I like you to respect you", while also vigorously giving practical benefits, promoting Karim to "queen's teacher" and "court attendant", and then simply taking Karim's wife from India and building a house for them in the palace.
The "treatment" is in place, Karim naturally does not mention the matter of leaving, he accompanies the queen in life, staying for more than ten years.
The widowed queen is actually very lonely, although she has nine children, the relationship is not very good, and sometimes the parent-child relationship is even quite tense. In comparison, a "pure companion" like Karim is more of a pleasure for her, and she even takes him with her on occasions of overseas visits.
The queen has "courtiers" around her, and the royal family and ministers are obviously not very happy. Not only does it involve the risk of "scandal", but also because of his special position – Karim himself is a Muslim from India, who has repeatedly expressed his opinion to the Queen on the dispute between Hindus and Muslims, and hopes that the Queen will follow his advice and pressure the Governor of India.
This has stepped on the fringes of "interference in politics", and the British political arena has maintained a strong vigilance against it. In addition, in order to reward Karim for his "loyal service", the queen awarded him the "Order of the Indian Empire" and gave him a large area of land in India, but the queen never agreed to Karim's request to "want to be a knight".
When the Queen died, Karim's good days came to an abrupt end— the newly reigned King Edward VII did not need him to teach Urdu and had no interest in curry food.
The new king was quick to send people to supervise Karim, and the letters that the queen had corresponded with him were searched and destroyed. Even a few years later, when Karim's family was repatriated to India, Edward VII was still not very reassured, and sent agents to chase them down and destroy all the Queen's "souvenirs" they had at hand.
However, although the British royal family has exhausted its calculations, it never expected that Karim's own diary will be handed down. In 2011, the families of the claimed descendants of Karim published the diaries, and this wave of old peach incidents immediately caused an uproar.
Many have expressed dissatisfaction with this, as British historians have either avoided talking about people like Karim or portrayed him as a "little man climbing upwards."
But in fact, both of them are just taking what they need.