We think we know everything about it Queen Elizabeth. We think that her life, spent mostly under the watchful eye of British citizens and the international public, no longer holds any secrets. In reality, the matter is much more complicated: the sovereign and the woman have walked side by side for decades. The two roles have overlapped, merged and separated seamlessly. We have almost never seen only the Queen or only Lilibet (the nickname that the family used to address Elizabeth). For this reason, there is always something that escapes us about her, an aspect that we had not taken into consideration, or that can be looked at from different perspectives and still remain a mystery of the personality and existence of this great monarch.
Elizabeth and Wallis
With her actions, speeches, indiscretions and confirmed anecdotes, Queen Elizabeth has left invaluable material for historians studying her existence and her reign. Inevitably, however, knowledge generates further questions. One of the doubts about the late sovereign remains her relationship with Edward VIII, her father’s brother George VIwho abdicated on 11 December 1936 to marry the American Wallis Simpson.
What did Elizabeth II really think of this union? Did she ever forgive her uncles for what many called “a betrayal” towards the United Kingdom? When Edward VIII renounced the throne the future sovereign was only ten years old, but she was old enough to understand the situation created at court, absorb the hatred of the royal family towards Simpson and fears for the future.
Elizabeth II’s mother, Elizabeth Bowes Lyonreportedly declared: “The people who caused me the most problems in life were Wallis Simpson and Hitler.” A phrase that sums up all too well the feelings of the Crown towards the Dukes of Windsor Edward and Wallis. An opinion that the future Queen would have shared even once she became heir to the throne and that would have accompanied her throughout her life. It seems that Elizabeth has never forgiven her uncle for his abdication.
It matters little that this gesture changed her destiny, allowing her to reign. Edward’s step back was perceived as a rebellion against the institution of monarchy, which is more important than individual men and comes before (or, at least, should) personal ambition. The former King had put the survival of the Crownhad destabilized it by placing the desire of man before the duty of the sovereign.
This would have been unforgivable for Queen Elizabeth, who made responsibility and devotion to the monarchy her reason for living. Added to this were personal antipathies. Proof of this would be the sarcastic nicknames that the sovereign and Wallis Simpson they labelled each other: Elizabeth would have defined her step-aunt “that woman”while the latter would have enjoyed calling her niece “Mrs. Temple” (thinking, it seems, of the actress Shirley Temple, who Elizabeth resembled as a child, especially because of her light curls) and “Cookies”.
These, however, were only skirmishes. Elizabeth II dealt the final blow to the Dukes of Windsor in May 1972. At the time, Edward VIII was gravely ill. Throat cancer had drained all his energy and he did not have long to live. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and the then Prince of Wales Carlo went to visit him for the last time (an event also recreated in the fifth season of the Netflix series The Crown).
In the documentary The Royal Crown. Inside The House of Windsor (2023), cited by PeopleEdward’s former nurse, Julie Alexander recalled that moment: “(Edward) was very ill…he was not eating at all…he was very, very worried about his appearance and insisted on sitting in a chair, not in bed.” The former sovereign reportedly had one last wish that only Elizabeth could grant: to grant Wallis Simpson the royal treatment. royal height. He was sure his niece wouldn’t deny him that. Not at that moment. He was wrong. “The Queen said no” Alexander said. “He said no on that sad day, too. I think it broke his heart. This was what he wanted… Not getting the title for his wife was, for him, a moral slap in the face.”
The stormy relationship with Diana
Many doubts and mysteries also surround the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Lady Diana. Is it possible that these two women, so important to the British monarchy, actually hated each other? That they never managed to find a compromise, to get closer to each other to try to understand each other and smooth out the rough edges, let’s call them that, of their character?
Perhaps, as often happens in such cases, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Once again, after Wallis Simpson, Queen Elizabeth found herself facing a person who could shake the institution. Of course, the two stories are completely different. Diana had the charisma to overturn the monarchy and change her for the better, giving her the key to open the doors of the Palace to modernity (although the princess has also made several mistakes).
We could say that between Elizabeth and Diana there was a generational clash, as well as between two very strong personalities, the first symbol of tradition, the second of the future. At the beginning Elizabeth thought that her daughter-in-law would not have great difficulty adapting to life at court. In a letter cited by Elle.com the sovereign wrote: “I trust that Diana will find life here less burdensome than expected”. Probably His Majesty overestimated the flexibility of the princess’s character, who, for her part, “she was just terrified of her mother-in-law”Andrew Morton reported in the book Diana. Her True Story by her In Her Own Words (1992). “He kept…his distance.”
Over time, however, the two would try to meet halfway. In the book The Queen. Her Life (2022) the famous biographer Andrew Morton wrote: “(Elizabeth) was very supportive of Diana” and the princess the “she felt…as a sort of arbiter of her marriage and she felt that the Queen could really intervene in the relationship between her husband and Mrs Parker Bowles. But the Queen’s criterion was to hope for the best.”
The sovereign, then, would have tried to give the princess her space, to not make her feel too much the weight of the role. For example when she died Grace Kellyin 1982, Diana expressed a desire to attend her funeral as a representative of the British monarchy. Charles and the royal staff objected, but not Elizabeth. Diana told Morton: “I went to the Queen and said, ‘You know, I’d like to do this,’ and she said, ‘I don’t see why not. If you want to do it, you can.’ It was the first public engagement that Diana faced alone, at 21 years old, in another country, receiving public acclaim for her impeccable behaviour and “decent”like a true royal.
The relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law would have definitively deteriorated with the failure of the marriage of Charles And Diana. A few days after the announcement of the separation, which took place on December 9, 1992, Elizabeth granted the princess an audience at Buckingham Palace. As soon as she entered the room, Diana began to cry, claiming that the royal family was against her. “The Queen didn’t know what to do”recalled a lady-in-waiting, quoted by People. “He had always hated these kinds of emotional confrontations and, quite frankly, he had never had to face them before or since.”
During the interview, the sovereign reassured her daughter-in-law that no one would take her children away from her, a real cause of anguish for the princess. It also seems that Her Majesty, at least for a certain period, had believed in a reconciliation between her son and daughter-in-law. The publication of the book written by Andrew Morton in 1992, the betrayals and the interviews of Lady D. would have extinguished all her hopes.
Every word uttered by the former wife of the heir to the throne gave rise to a media storm that Buckingham Palace she could barely stop. As a woman, perhaps, Elizabeth could understand Lady Diana’s anger. But as a sovereign she could not tolerate any affront to the integrity of the Crown.
Just a great friendship
The plot of the third season of the Netflix series The Crown suggests that between Elizabeth II and Lord Henry Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon (also known as Lord Porchester, 1924-2001), head of the royal stables, there was something more than a simple confidence born from the common passion for horses. In reality there were several insinuations and rumors regarding the true relationship between the two, but they were never verified. According to the most authoritative sources between the Queen and the count there never was anything, except a friendship that began during the Second World War.
Elizabeth and Henry, explained the Telegraphthey met in 1944, when the then princess was 17 and the count was 20. The Guardian added that they would have seen each other for the first time at the Beckhampton stables. It also seems that the aristocrat accompanied Elizabeth and her sister Margaret to celebrate, incognito, the end of the war outside Buckingham Palace, the famous night of May 8, 1945. On that occasion, the future sovereign and her sister mingled with the crowd to breathe the air of newfound freedom and peace. No one recognized them, as they walked through Whitehall, Piccadilly and Hyde Park.
To the Telegraphin 2012, the son of Lord Porchester he assured that nothing ever happened between the Count and the Queen: “It was a friendship between equals, spanning many interests. They were of the same generation, they had been through the war. They shared a great love of the countryside, of nature, as well as horses. Whether they were walking at Sandringham, Highclere or in Scotland, it was always an obsession.”
Royal expert Dickie Arbiter was decidedly harsher when he spoke out about the insinuations of an alleged love affair between the Count and the sovereign told the Sunday Times: “(It is) disgraceful and baseless. The Queen is the last person in the world who would ever consider (the idea) looking at another man. The Crown is fiction…”.
The Queen’s Last Letters
In the summer of 2022, the news of a letter written by Elizabeth II in 1986, during the restoration of the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney and sent to the then mayor of the Australian city, Douglas William Sutherland. The peculiarity of the letter lies in the order given by the sovereign to disclose its content “…on a suitable day of your choosing in the year 2085…”.
A singular choice never explained by His Majesty. No one knows what is written in the message. However, according to the book The Making of a King. King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy (January 18, 2024) by Robert Hardman, quoted from Daily Mailthe one sent to the citizens of Sydney It would not be the only mysterious letter left by Elizabeth. After her death, in fact, the Balmoral staff would have found two letters in one of the Red Boxes, or the suitcases that contain private documents and correspondence intended for the British sovereigns.
“It was the last (Red Box) to arrive at the Queen”wrote Hardman. “Like all Red Boxes it had only two keys, one for the monarch, the other for her private secretary.” One of the messages was for Charles IIIthe other one just for Sir Edward Young, the personal secretary. “We will probably never know what is written there.
However, it is quite clear that the Queen had known the end was imminent and made plans accordingly. Were these final instructions or farewells? Or both?” the author speculated. “Elizabeth II had completed the last pieces of an unfinished work.”