1 Pound - Charles III Una and The Lion

The "Una and the Lion" design has one of the more unusual origin stories in British numismatics. William Wyon's original 1839 pattern sovereign — never adopted for circulation — depicted the young Victoria as Una from Spenser's Faerie Queene, guided by a lion representing British power. It was struck purely as a showpiece and promptly shelved. The composition has since been revived repeatedly as a prestige issue, most recently reinterpreted here under the East India Company's modern licensing operation, which holds no historical continuity with the colonial trading body dissolved in 1874.