LIZ JONES: How the Queen would’ve reacted to THAT Kate video
The tiny details are still etched in sharp relief, two years on. The horseshoe brooch on Princess Charlotte’s lapel, a gift from Granny. The sprigs of myrtle on the Queen’s coffin, grown from the very plant that adorned her wedding bouquet in 1947.
The hypnotic swaying of the sailors’ white caps in procession. The sound of boots and hooves, like so many hearts beating. The empty sky. And Emma the patient pony, bearing one of the Queen’s Hermes scarves and watching her owner take her last journey to Windsor Castle.
There were distractions, too. The fact that Harry was not allowed to wear a uniform, despite his tours of active service. Meghan’s tears, wiped away by a black glove. Her black Stella McCartney cape dress.
Princess Charlotte at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in September 2022
And, of course, Kate, who was dressed immaculately in a razor-sharp Alexander McQueen coat dress, looking solemn yet striking in a Philip Treacy hat and veil and ropes of creamy pearls. Appearing to pretend Meghan did not even exist, she kept a watchful eye on her children and Prince William. Kate knew the day was not about her.
Ultimately, the occasion wasn’t about a tragedy, a life taken too soon. There was none of the visceral sobbing that wracked Princess Diana’s procession in 1997. It was more of a celebration, a pause before something new. It was an acknowledgement of everything the Queen stood for, a chance to show the world that, in the words of Carly Simon, nobody does it better.
The queue for the Queen’s lying in state had, for me, been a revelation. No pushing, no jostling – well, apart from the odd TV presenter. The long line of mourners had been a slow-moving symbol of what it means to be British. The mood was far from maudlin: it was jolly. In my group, people would volunteer to fetch supplies: ‘Oh look, an M&S! What does everyone want? Wine?’ Inside the hall, tears flowed, everyone bowed their heads before emerging shaken, moved. It was the sense of an ending, but also a warm feeling of optimism about what was to come.
Queen Elizabeth at the state opening of Parliament
That first year, the transition seemed positive and smooth. Charles’s coronation in May last year took place with barely a hitch. He and Camilla, now Queen, have been warmly received on walkabouts.
And then… the Dutch version of a book by Omid Scobie named two so-called ‘royal racists’. The Princess of Wales was forced to apologise for confusion over edits to a ‘manipulated’ Mother’s Day picture. And, of course, Charles and Kate announced their cancer diagnoses within months of one another. Suddenly, the Royal Family seemed depleted, rudderless. Wild speculation about Catherine’s absence from public life earlier this year, before she revealed she had cancer, swirled online, and the Queen’s mantra of ‘never complain, never explain’ seemed as outdated and restricting as a corset.
The Queen would be heartbroken that, having waited so long to wear the Crown, Charles has been rendered so frail so swiftly.
Yet, in a way, her ascendance to the throne at such a young age – she was just 25 in 1952, remember – was a harder cross to bear. She had no real family life, no freedom, no privacy, no room for an opinion, a slip, a hissy fit. When Charles vented his frustration at a leaky pen while signing the visitors’ book at Hillsborough Castle just days after his mother’s death – telling courtiers he ‘can’t bear this bloody thing’ – didn’t we all think: ‘Well, the Queen would never in a million years have done that!’ The Elizabethan age of ‘stiff upper lip’ and uncomplaining service and restraint finally ended in that moment.
King Charles and Queen Camilla on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following their coronation in May 2023
Then there is the Harry issue. I think the Queen would have counselled Charles to allow Harry more time when he flew to Buckingham Palace upon news of his father’s illness in February this year. She would have told her son that it was not a good look to be so ungenerous. And I believe she would firmly tell William to tread softly with Harry, too.
I imagine Charles’s most recent hardening against his younger brother, Prince Andrew – wanting him to downsize from the Grade II-listed Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park to the empty Frogmore Cottage – would also furrow her brow: the Queen, after all, made sure Andrew accompanied her to Prince Philip’s memorial, a rare act of placing family before duty.
She was unafraid of harsh truths, advising Liz Truss, whom she asked to form a government in what would turn out to be her last official duty, to pace herself. How inappropriate it seems now, rewatching her funeral, to see our shortest-serving prime minister give a reading. To hear the now utterly shamed Huw Edwards’s dulcet tones, besmirching a collective memory like a stain.
How different our streets seem today from that crisp autumn by the Thames as we snaked towards her coffin. How saddened would she have been at the murder of the children in Southport, how swift would have been her message of condolence. That she has been spared the sight of riots fuelled by hatred is a blessing; I fear she’d have felt her life’s work, building the Commonwealth, was about to crumble. I’m reminded of something so many families say: ‘I’m glad Mummy isn’t around to see this.’
The Princess of Wales announced that she has finished chemotherapy with a video that featured Prince William and their children
The Queen would be dismayed, perhaps, that her generation, the one that built this country, is seemingly being unfairly punished by a new Labour government, though she would, of course, have kept any political opinions to herself. That’s what I miss most: her ability to keep quiet when there is so much unsolicited, ill-informed noise.
But how proud she would be of William and Kate, watching their moving video announcing the Princess’s completion of chemotherapy. She would doubtless have rolled her eyes at the soft-focus, surely made in response to the tyranny of intimacy we all demand these days. But she would have seen herself in Kate – her uncomplaining, straight-backed, stoic lack of self-pity. And I am convinced the late Queen would be comforted that the family, currently so fractured, is in very safe hands.
