For over a hundred years, one question has lingered about Queen Victoria and her loyal servant, John Brown.

Did they have a romantic relationship, or didn’t they?

John Brown, the rugged Scotsman with a commanding presence, entered Victoria’s life following the death of her adored Prince Albert in 1861 when he was just 42.

Most famously, Billy Connolly brought Brown to life on the silver screen, opposite Judi Dench’s portrayal of Queen Victoria, in the 1997 film. The movie, marking the queen’s passing 125 years ago today, is filled with intense glances but stops short of suggesting any intimate affair.

Brown, with his striking blue eyes and straightforward demeanor, famously referred to the monarch, who reigned over a vast empire, simply as ‘wumman.’ Victorian wags dubbed him ‘the Queen’s stallion.’

And they referred to her as ‘Mrs. Brown.’

But whether the couple, who were rarely apart from the day he was introduced into the royal household in 1866 till his death in 1883, ever went to bed together has never been proved. Either way.

Certainly at night they were as close as could be – Her Majesty insisted that for 17 years the rough-mannered schoolmaster’s son had the bedroom next to hers.

Queen Victoria with her ‘companion’ John Brown on her horse ‘Fyvie’ taken at Balmoral in 1863

Billy Connolly as John Brown and Judi Dench as Queen Victoria who was called Mrs Brown by Victorian jokers

Certainly they flirted – the Queen’s doctor James Reid recorded a coded, intimate and flirtatious exchange between them involving the lifting of skirts.

And Victoria wrote of regarding Brown ‘with an everlasting love’, equating his death with the loss of Prince Albert.

He loved her back – in all the time they were together he never took a single day off.

And despite those rough edges he had his admirers and was no fool – ‘His shrewd judgement and curt wit made him a stimulating companion,’ wrote Victoria’s biographer Giles St Aubyn. Indeed, one of the Queen’s maids of honour confessed she had the hots for him – the fact that he was ‘a child of the mountains was all part of his charm,’ he wrote.

Certainly theirs was an intense, emotionally intimate and close bond which fuelled the widespread rumours and jealousy which spiralled among the royal court. Senior courtiers – men and women of aristocratic birth who’d served the crown often for generations – hated the way Brown had become Victoria’s gatekeeper, choosing who she should see and who not.

They hated his lack of polish – the way he told the Queen how to behave, the way he ordered her to straighten her back and keep her head up – which they felt undermined the dignity of the crown.

And the Queen’s children – in particular her son Bertie, the future King Edward VIII – hated to see the Highlander at court. In fact the prince was said to have hired a boxer to pick a fight with him

The Lord Chamberlain reportedly called him a ‘coarse animal,’ while many staff found him ‘bossy and arrogant’. There were plots by members of the household to have him dismissed. 

But John Brown was bullet-proof, showily wearing the protection of the Queen’s adoration. She plainly – embarrassingly – adored him.

In the 1997 movie there’s lots of moody looks at each other – but, disappointingly, no hanky-panky

John Brown was a blue-eyed, handsome, rugged personal servant and favourite of Queen Victoria

So did they – or didn’t they?

Historian Dr Fern Riddell, author of a recent book Victoria’s Secret, is in no doubt. They had sex, she says.

More than that, she adds, Victoria’s private chaplain actually made a deathbed confession that he had MARRIED the odd couple. ‘It is called an irregular marriage,’ she explains, ‘and in Scottish law this carries just as much weight legally as a regular marriage south of the border.’ She adds such unions were commonplace in the Aberdeenshire area where Brown came from.

That secret went with Brown to his grave when he died in 1883, aged 56, of a skin infection. ‘Now all, all is gone from this world!’ sobbed the queen. ‘Weep with me, for we have lost the best, the truest heart that ever beat!’

Hysterically she ordered a distinguished writer, Sir Theodore Martin, to write Brown’s biography – but a horrified Martin, wondering how he could fill a chapter let alone a book, ducked out of it. 

Victoria pressed on, deciding to write the book herself, but she was so emotionally charged it was feared she would compromise herself, the crown, and the empire with the revelations which were likely to spill forth and the idea was finally dropped.

But Brown remained fixed in her thoughts – right up to her own death eighteen years later.

Britain’s greatest queen-but-one (can you imagine Elizabeth II compromising herself with a ghillie?) went to that great empire in the sky leaving behind specific instructions which may finally tell us whether she did – or didn’t – enjoy an affair with John Brown.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had nine children: five daughters and four sons and when he died after 21 years of marriage, she suffered such a deep loss that plunged her into lifelong mourning and seclusion from public life

In her coffin alongside her body, she ordered, were to be placed her wedding veil, a number of family photographs, a plaster cast of Prince Albert’s hand, and his favourite dressing-gown.

But there was one, final – and highly secret – instruction, given.

A lock of Brown’s hair alongside a photo of him were to be buried with her, which were carefully hidden in her left hand behind a bunch of flowers. 

And amongst the jewellery worn by Victoria was the wedding ring of his mother, which Brown gifted to her in 1883.