Elizabeth is about to become Britain’s longest-reigning queen. Here’s how she’s changed monarchy

On 24 September 1896 Queen Victoria was given a present of a paper knife, and expressed herself ‘much delighted’. The handle was set with overlapping gold coins each bearing the portrait of a British monarch. The uppermost coin bore an image of Victoria herself; the one beneath it, that of her grandfather George III. As Victoria recorded in her journal, 23 September 1896 was ‘the day on which I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign’. She had exceeded George III’s record of 21,644 days on the throne and, unlike her grandfather, remained of sound mind (if you overlook her taste in interior decoration and her views on women’s rights).

Recent Buckingham Palace calculations suggest that at her death in January 1901, Victoria had reigned 23,226 days, 16 hours and 23 minutes — in layman’s terms, 63 years and seven months. It’s an incredible record but one that will this year be bested as (God willing) Queen Elizabeth II nudges her great-great-grandmother into second place. Perhaps breaking a reigning record doesn’t seem much of an actual achievement, but it has a huge symbolic significance. Britain reacted to Victoria’s record with an outburst of national rejoicing because it confirmed in the public mind the importance of the Victorian era — and they’ll do the same for Elizabeth come 9 September.

Victoria was at Balmoral that Wednesday morning, as Elizabeth plans to be. As the day progressed, church bells clanged out their clarion, bonfires blazed from hilltops. ‘People of all kinds and ranks, from every part of the kingdom, sent congratulatory telegrams,’ Victoria wrote — by turns triumphant and self-effacing. She understood that her achievement was merely survival, but that in itself was no mean feat. As a teenager, Victoria had nearly died of typhoid fever; she had subsequently been the target of numerous assassination attempts.