Queen Victoria's desk


How come she or any other of her successors never found the plank in the desk?

~ In the name of the Yoda, the Gandalf, and the Dumbledore ~

reply

'cos, she doesn't actually have the desk, and the desk doesn't actually exist in chinese puzzle box form

the commentary mentions it's elsewhere
and a googles search, that I did do, found no actual Gilvray desk creation-er in the first cpl of pages that seemed relevant

reply

Well no, seeing as how Victoria is long dead, she wouldn't have the desk would she? As the film states, there were four desks made from the HMS Resolute, two of which were "sister" desks. One of the desks was presented in 1880 to Rutherford B. Hayes as a gift from Victoria. The other sat in Buckingham Palace, but is now in Windsor Castle (another smaller writing table/desk, also belonging to Victoria for her private yacht, is now in the collection of the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth), and therefore the scene where Ben, Riley, and Abigail find the wooden treasure plank hidden within Victoria's desk in Buckingham Palace is inaccurate, given that the desk is at Windsor.

As for the OP's question, Marhleet_DR is correct, as far as anyone knows there is no hidden plank inside any of the desks made from the timber of the HMS Resolute. It was a clever plot twist for the movie however, given that there aren't many identical (well, they were originally identical, several modifications have been made to the US desk, beginning with the panel Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned to hide his leg braces and wheelchair) artifacts once used (and the US desk continues to be used by each president) by the leaders of both England and the United States. If there were planks inside the "sister" desks, it's not a stretch to assume that only the one inside the US desk would have been discovered, given that Victoria's desk in on display whereas the President's desk has been in nearly constant use (either in the Oval Office or the President's private study) since it's arrival from England well over a century ago.

"There isn't any more, you drank the whole fairy...and you're going to your room."

reply