Introduced in 1856 as the highest award for British military valor, the Victoria Cross is a product of the Crimean War. Instituted by Royal Warrant, the honor sought to unite public opinion in the face of wartime discontent. The award celebrated military masculinity, honoring those few who had had performed exemplary acts of bravery in battle. Battle technologies have changed across centuries, but the award remains Britain’s rarest military honor, with fewer than 1400 crosses granted to date. The Cross has bestowed fame and fortune on many recipients. Across the ages, it has thus been an object of desire for veterans, regiments, and families. Even today, museums and collectors seek out Crosses to buy and display. The award never carried the talismanic power that its champions hoped, however. The Cross could not quell radical critique during the Crimean War. It did not upend the disillusionment that came with World War I. Nor did it allay the discontent of the colonized in their pushes for independence across the twentieth century. While the honor has sated appetites for heroism, its fetishistic promises have remained unanswered, from Crimean times to our own.

The year 2020 provides evidence of the Crimea’s continued relevance in troubled times. In Britain, 2020 marks the moment that Brexit was finally done. Several critics found resonance in the Charge of the Light Brigade and the cult around it, which valorized heroic failure. Like the officers of the Light Brigade, the Tory leadership blundered as it led the nation into the abyss. In Britain and beyond, 2020 will be remembered as the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Like the battle against the cholera in the Crimea, the British struggle against the virus was marred by mismanagement. In response, the names of Nightingale and Seacole found their ways onto makeshift hospitals and rehabilitation centers. And, as in the Crimea, military men – here, centenarians whose youths overlapped with the longest-lived of the Victorian generation – captured the hearts of the public. Most notable was Captain Tom Moore, whose compassion and particular variety of courage spurred him, at the age of 100, to raise money for the NHS before dying a celebrity in 2021. Even now, the Crimean War’s long afterlife provides touchstones for success, failure, and hope.