If you come for the queen, you best not miss. No fewer than seven would-be assassins learned that lesson the hard way when they tried — and, in every case, failed — to take the life of England’s Queen Victoria. 

The first incident occurred during a ride through London’s Hyde Park in June 1840, at which point the monarch was newly married and four months pregnant. Edward Oxford, described by Prince Albert as “a little mean-looking man,” shot at her with a dueling pistol and missed. He never provided a motive for his attempt on the monarch’s life and was declared insane. 

Next was John Francis, whose gun likewise misfired on his first attempt on May 29, 1842, and missed entirely on the second attempt the following day. He was sentenced to death, but Queen Victoria had him sent to Australia instead. (Albert, who apparently could have been an insult comic, deemed Francis a “little, swarthy, ill-looking rascal.”)

John William Bean (whose attempt took place on July 3, 1842) and William Hamilton (June 29, 1849) were similarly bad shots. Bean, who suffered from a spinal deformity, loaded his pistol with tobacco, and Hamilton loaded his with gunpowder, neither of which proved especially effective. Robert Pate came closest, but he was armed with only a cane. He managed to bonk the queen on the head with it outside Cambridge House on June 27, 1850, leaving her with a scar and a bruise. As punishment, Pate was sent to Tasmania, which was a penal colony at the time.

Arthur O’Connor infiltrated Buckingham Palace on February 29, 1872, but this was more of a stunt than a true assassination attempt — his pistol was unloaded and broken. Then there was 28-year-old Roderick Maclean, who shot at Victoria (and, as you’ll have guessed by now, missed) outside Windsor Station on March 2, 1882. “I then realised that it was a shot, which must have been meant for me,” the queen later said of the incident. He, too, was declared insane and spent the rest of his life committed to various asylums.