The crown on this figure is nine centimetres across and it exists because of a problem nobody had solved before. After Albert died in 1861 Victoria would not wear the Imperial State Crown again — it was heavy and uncomfortable, and, more to the point, it was impossible to wear on top of a widow's cap, which she had no intention of taking off. A sovereign, however, is expected to be seen crowned; that is not a matter of taste but very nearly a matter of constitution. So in March 1870 Garrard & Co made her a second crown built to the only specification that mattered: small enough to sit on lace. It is 9 cm across and 10 cm high, weighs 160 grams, and carries 1,162 brilliant and 138 rose-cut diamonds — 132 carats in all — every stone of which was taken off one of her own necklaces. She first wore it in public at the State Opening of Parliament on 9 February 1871, and often wore it without its arches, as a plain circlet. It went onto her coffin at Osborne House in 1901. Alexandra and Mary of Teck wore it now and then; George VI eventually deposited it in the Jewel House at the Tower of London, where you can still see it. It is the smallest crown in the regalia and easily the most personal — a piece of state jewellery whose entire design brief was one woman's refusal to stop mourning.

She is in the black she wore for forty years, with a deep lace flounce to the skirt, the white cap beneath the little crown, a folded fan held in both hands, and the pale blue riband and breast star of the Garter. The last words of the title come from the other end of her life: the Royal Titles Act received royal assent on 27 April 1876, she accepted the style of Empress of India on 1 May, and she was proclaimed at the first Delhi Durbar on 1 January 1877 — though Disraeli had to talk her down from the grander "Empress of Great Britain, Ireland, and India" she had wanted, and she never in her life set foot in India. The first of those emperors to go there was her grandson. In this collection she stands naturally with Winston Churchill, who was born in her reign and soldiered in it as a young man before any of the rest of his life happened, and with the other English sovereign on the shelf, Henry VIII. If you want a sense of how long the reign ran, put Theodore Roosevelt, Cuba 1898 beside her: she was already twenty years on the throne before he was born, and still on it when he charged up that hill.

Model: 10224 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set