1900 had been Queen Victoria's annus horribilis: “a horrible year, nothing but sadness and horrors of one kind & another,” she wrote.
The Boer War (1899–1902, fought between Great Britain and two Afrikaner republics) weighed heavily on her mind, and the lifting of the sieges against Mafeking and Ladysmith in early 1900 had done little to relieve her anxiety. In April, her eldest son the Prince of Wales had been shot at as he travelled through Belgium, by a young boy protesting against the war.
