Placing the burden of royal destiny deprived the Queen of her preferred life as ‘a lady living in the country with lots of horses and dogs’
For a Windsor dynasty anxious to distance itself from its own teutonic links, the future Duke of Edinburgh’s family name – Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg – was a hindrance both symbolic and practical in nature. Quite which lengths the Princess Elizabeth and her intended had to go to secure the eventual blessing of her mother and King George VI remain concealed, along with countless other royal secrets, in the archives of Windsor Castle.
On his wedding day, the Duke is said to have steeled himself with a mid-morning gin and tonic before turning to ask a confidant: “Am I being very brave or very foolish?” But the episode of the Queen’s obdurate determination to marry her beau serves above all as a rare insight into the private mind of a monarch whose inscrutability regarding her own feelings became a trademark.
It was, after all, a large part of the job description she wrote for herself to be both ubiquitous and inscrutable.Of the few times that the cameras were allowed behind the scenes, the most revelatory documentary was rapidly withdrawn and locked up along with 43 hours of raw footage never to be seen again except for a brief period 51 years later.
Ben Pimlott, the late royal historian and one of the monarch’s most perceptive biographers, argued it was wrong to describe Elizabeth II as a solitary figure but that equally her role and its requirement of permanent regality shaped every relationship she formed. Apart from an abiding interest in matters equestrian, the single trait most often mentioned by those who knew the Queen is her dry, occasionally mordant, wit.
There were occasional public displays of that caustic humour. When asked by former Northern Ireland deputy first minister and one-time IRA commander Martin McGuinness how she was keeping in 2016, the Queen replied: “Well, I’m still alive, anyway.” Her childhood friend, Sonia Berry, once observed: “She’s always calm. She might get annoyed about something, but as a rule, she stays on an even keel. I’ve never seen her lose her temper.”Nor, it would seem, indulge in spontaneous displays of affection.
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