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Today would have been the 193rd birthday of Britain's longest-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. 

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And now her private diaries can be read outside of Windsor Castle. They've been published on this Web site. 

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And you can browse all 141 volumes, that's 43,765 pages. 

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And here is the entry for 150 years ago today. You can zoom in and try to read the royal handwriting. 

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Now, transcripts for most entries are still pending.

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Now, CNN's royal correspondent, Max Foster, got his hands on the real deal.

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The round tower at Windsor Castle: from the top, some of the best views in England. 

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And inside these ancient walls, shelves of manuscripts and books, firsthand accounts of the royal family's rich history. 

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In this section, diaries written by Queen Victoria, monarch of a vast global empire.

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Well, let's have a look at three of the journals, then. They're fascinating reading. And this is an early one from 1835, and in it, 

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Victoria writes, "Today is my 16th birthday. How very old that sounds." A typical teenager, you could say.

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This is a later journal, and it shows an illustration by Victoria. So she was an illustrator as well. 

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Victoria there next to her husband, Prince Albert, and her half-brother, Prince Charles, there. 

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Do note they were dressed in fancy dress there.

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This is a particularly poignant entry. And what you need to understand about the later journals is that they were rewritten by Beatrice. 

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So Beatrice's writing, but Victoria's words. Here you see the words, 

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"The Lord Chamberlain then acquainted me that my poor uncle the king was no more and had expired at 12 minutes past two this morning, and consequently that I am queen."

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That was the day in 1837 that Victoria acceded to the throne. The diaries were edited by Beatrice, who was Victoria's daughter. 

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At her mother's request, she removed trivia and things that might embarrass other royals. 

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You wonder what these diaries don't tell you.

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Because of the length of her reign -- she reigned for 63 years -- and because of the time, the size of the British Empire, 

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the relationships also with continental Europe and with America made her a major figure of that period.

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And we're talking here about not just the Commonwealth, but the British Empire at its biggest.

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We are. So this includes countries such as India, which she was Empress of India later in her reign.

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And obviously Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the empire which have gone on, of course, to become the Commonwealth.

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Over four months, castle staff have painstakingly scanned 43,000 pages of journals. 

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And now, they've gone online for the world to see, 

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once private thoughts finally unlocked from the 850-year-old Round Tower of Windsor.