Queen Victoria was twenty-five, riding into the City in a coach drawn by eight cream-coloured horses. London had given her a grand welcome before. This time, she had her husband beside her.
Prince Albert saw her before the Portuguese ever did. He wrote home that there was something in her face, a kind of selflessness and trustful entreaty, that made a stranger want to offer her knightly protection. He was arranging her marriage at the time. She would be dead within two years of it.