Crabby, frugal and obsessed with sex… we've got Queen Victoria all wrong, says CHRISTOPHER WILSON

When told she would one day be queen, young Victoria declared, “I'll be good!”

But she wasn't, unless you consider being meddlesome, bad-tempered, and sexually obsessed as virtues.

She was many other things too; frugal was one of the better examples. As she rode in her carriage to her Golden Jubilee, she wore her second best hat, purchased from a mill in Windsor.

“Hard to imagine what occasion she had in mind to wear her smartest headgear,” her biographer chuckled.

The image we have of Queen Victoria today is of an all-powerful empress whose long reign was surpassed only by our own Queen Elizabeth.

The history books call Victoria the grandmother of Europe, and rightly say that Britain reached the heights of its greatness during her long reign.

At her death on January 22, 1901, a quarter of the world's population – which formed the British Empire – mourned.

Royal Navy ships, nose to tail, created a spectacular corridor across the Solent so that her funeral ship could return to the mainland from Osborne on the Isle of Wight. For a moment it seemed as if the earth stood still.

Under her 64-year rule, Britain had undergone remarkable changes, from the era of stagecoaches, highwaymen and public executions to an era that embraced the railways, the motor car and the advent of air travel.

The telegraph and then the telephone were both invented under her watch, and her country led the world in the advancement of technology.

Victoria began to characterize all these successes.

And yet there were seven attempts on her life, and the secrets she carried with her to the grave could have left a very different story than the official version.

Her daughter Princess Beatrice burned all her diaries – more than 120 volumes detailing the queen's every thought and action in the 64 years since she inherited the throne – shortly after her death.

What a story those diaries could tell! For while she loudly mourned the loss of her beloved Prince Albert – bearing the widow's weeds day in and day out, from his death in 1861 until her own departure forty years later – Victoria left behind secret instructions that upon her death a photograph of her Scottish ghillie John Brown should have been placed in her hand before the coffin was closed.

Was Brown her lover? Was her Indian servant Abdul Karim, known as 'The Munshi', also her lover?

We have no way of knowing, other than the educated guess that both men were probably intimate with her.

“She was tormented by unfulfilled desires,” explains biographer Giles St Aubyn, who describes her urges as “wild longings.”

But to the outside world, Victoria seemed the most narrow-minded woman to ever sit on a throne – the 'Victorian era' was all about decency, morality and monogamy.

She was born in the last days of the Regency – her grandfather was the 'mad' King George III – and when she was six months old, her uncle Prinny inherited the throne as George IV.

On George's death, when she was eleven, her next uncle, William IV, became king.

At that moment her governess placed a piece of paper in front of the young princess. Young Victoria stared at it and said slowly, “I see I'm closer to the throne than I thought.”

Then she burst into tears.

But they all agree that Victoria rose to the challenge when the time came to face her fate.

She distanced herself from her scheming mother, the Duchess of Kent, and began to wield the power that would bring the fear of God to the ten prime ministers who served during her long reign.

She interfered in the appointment of ministers, opposed women's rights and generally made herself a nuisance through her interference in the political process.

But as the years passed, politicians were forced to recognize that in a rapidly changing world, no one could match her experience.

The love of her life – even though there were others – was her brilliant cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

The marriage was mooted when Victoria was just two, but despite the outward appearance of an arranged marriage it was a resounding success, with polymath Albert bringing focus and structure to a monarchy in dire need of repair.

She wanted him to be called King Albert, but for once she didn't get her way: the government wouldn't allow it because he was a foreigner, so he settled for Prince Consort.

They had arguments – Albert was occasionally forced to lock himself in his study, such was her temper – but after his death she contemplated suicide. Her biographer suggests that she suffered a nervous breakdown, the effects of which would last for the next ten years.

So Victoria withdrew from public life, some said self-indulgently, sometimes spending up to five months at a time at Balmoral.

The best her subjects could hope for if they wanted to see their monarch was to wait for her daily carriage ride so they might catch a brief glimpse.

Like her rival in history, Queen Elizabeth II, she dutifully continued her work until the day of her death, signing state papers and inquiring about what was happening in the outside world.

During her lifetime and afterwards, Victoria became a legend, a synonym for the majesty and longevity of the British monarchy.

Until her great-great-granddaughter Lilibet came along and gently but magnificently placed her on stage.