Photograph of Queen Victoria wearing spectacles and leaning forward to read a piece of paper that she holds in both hands. Towards the end of Queen Victoria's life the portraits issued showed her just as she was: an elderly lady. It seems as though, throughout her life, the Queen wished to show her feelings to the world: first as a wife; then as a broken-hearted widow; and finally as the Queen Empress who was the 'grandmother of Europe' and mother of her people. Queen Victoria's truthful nature and lack of vanity sometimes allowed the publication of portraits which were not flattering. She justified this by claiming, 'I do not think ... much of artistic arrangements in photographs and God knows there is nothing to admire in my ugly old person.'