The Durbar Room, incongruously unrelated to Albert's Italian designs, was as exotic as the Pavilion. So, too, were the Indian servants and advisers who waited on the Queen at Osborne, proof of the fact that she was an Empress indeed. One of them Abdul Karim, the Munshi, who joined her in 1887 after her Golden Jubilee was an even more controversial figure in her life and that of the Court than John Brown had been. The Secretary of State for India persuaded her in 1895 that it would no longer be possible for him to send her secret despatches if she showed them to the Munshi.

Two years later the Diamond Jubilee proclaimed the world dominion of the Victorian monarchy. The choice of the word "Diamond" before Jubilee was significant, although it did not appeal to Victoria herself. The diamonds came from the Empire, from South Affica, in particular, and much of the thinking -- and feeling -- in 1897 was "imperial." So also were the processions. Among her much publicised acts the Queen pressed a button which "started a message that was telegraphed throughout the whole Empire". Much was made of the fact that she now had a quarter of a million Indian subjects. There was a special place too, however, for the "white dominions", the leaders of which were already pursuing their own political and constitutional paths: the rhetoric left this out:

"hail to Queen Victoria
In all her regalia
With one foot in Canada
And the other in Australia."

The size of the British Empire was now being stressed in 1897 as much as the longevity of the Queen.

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