What now for the Queen without stalwart at her side?
Long-serving monarch will do her duty for as long as she can, but Charles may take on a more prominent role, writes Valentine Low.
Prince of Greece, Denmark and the United Kingdom, Duke of Edinburgh. b June 10, 1921 d April 9, 2021
In the first half of her reign, it became such a cliche for the Queen to refer in her speeches to ‘‘my husband and I’’ that even she decided it would be wise to drop the phrase. Her rhetorical habits may have changed, but she did not: for more than 70 years he was her mainstay, a loyal companion whose presence at public engagements was for her an unfailing source of strength.
The inevitable question now is: what will happen now that he is no longer there? Will the Queen shrink from public gaze, as Queen Victoria did after the death of Prince Albert? Will she carry on regardless? Or will the Prince of Wales take over her duties?
We have already been afforded a glimpse of the Queen’s likely attitude when the duke was taken ill during the Diamond Jubilee in 2012. Her reaction was exactly as we have come to expect from a woman whose devotion to duty has been unwavering: she carried on regardless. She attended the Buckingham Palace concert without him; and the next day, at St Paul’s Cathedral, she made her way up the aisle by herself, cutting a slightly forlorn figure as she walked slowly behind the lord mayor. The show must go on.
She will, however, miss him terribly. As she said at the time of their golden wedding anniversary: ‘‘He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay over all these years, and I owe him a greater debt than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.’’
Lady Penn, a former lady-inwaiting to the late Queen Mother and a friend of the Queen, once said: ‘‘They are good friends and that is their secret. The Queen has had a lot to contend with. The fact she has coped so wonderfully is largely due to the support he has given her over the years.’’
The late artist Michael Noakes, who painted the Queen several times and knew her well, once said: ‘‘Sometimes she has to gather herself together before she can face going into a room where she knows everyone will be looking at her. When Prince Philip has seen that happening, he has taken over and made sure everything is OK. He likes to say he can make people laugh within 15 seconds.’’
His biographer Philip Eade said that the Queen was not good at putting people at their ease, whereas Philip was ‘‘adept at sauntering up and saying something that somehow defused all the tension and allowed conversation to flow’’.
Even at formal dinners at Buckingham Palace his breezy irreverence would show, when he would look at a menu written in elaborate French and remark cheerily to the guests: ‘‘Ah, good. Fish and chips again.’’
Without her constant companion by her side, there may be moments when the Queen lets her feelings show. At a remembrance service at Westminster Abbey in 2002 a few months after the death of her mother, tears rolled down her cheeks in an uncharacteristic display of public emotion.
Such moments are, however, the exception: the Queen has never been a woman for self-indulgence. This is the woman who the day after her father died had to meet Winston Churchill and other dignitaries as she arrived at Heathrow. She is used to holding her emotions in check in public.
There is little doubt that the Queen will make sure she carries on doing her job as long as she can manage. The question is, though: what will she able to manage? And for how long?
In recent years, although Buckingham Palace has been loath to admit it, the Queen has reduced her public engagements. She no longer takes part in the Remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph, watching instead from the Foreign Office balcony as the Prince of Wales leads the wreath-layers below. Charles also does much of the overseas travel, although the younger royals also play a significant part.
The issue of her age came to a head when it was announced in 2013 that she would not be attending the
Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka because she was reviewing long-haul travel commitments. For reviewing, read ‘‘scaling down’’. Her last trip abroad was to Malta in 2015.
During the crisis over the Duke of York’s Newsnight interview about his relationship with Jeffrey
Epstein, it was Charles who acted as de facto head of the family when he insisted that Andrew should stand down from public duties.
Whether Charles’s increasingly prominent role amounts to a ‘‘job share’’, as has been suggested by some, is perhaps a matter of semantics. In the Queen’s view, however, the situation would be perfectly clear: she is the sovereign, he is the heir, and no matter how many times he steps in, she still occupies the top slot. She reads her red boxes, she presides over the state opening of Parliament, she has weekly audiences with the prime minister.
What has been going on for some time – and will continue to do so now that the duke is dead – is more of a palace evolution than revolution. More Charles, less Queen, and more of the younger royals, in particular the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
When she visited victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, for instance, it was in the company of her grandson the Duke of Cambridge; when she called in on Fortnum & Mason, it was with the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duchess of Cambridge. Although she still holds investitures, a number are also carried out by Charles, William and the Princess Royal.
With Philip’s death, the share of the burden taken on by younger members of the family will increase.
There is one thing that will not happen: The Queen will not abdicate. Ever since the abdication of Edward VIII the royal family has carried a kind of bitter folk-memory of the damage it caused, and it is inconceivable that the Queen will follow the example of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and simply hand over the reins. In 1992 she dismissed speculation that she would step down, insisting: ‘‘It is a job for life.’’
The other possibility is that Prince Charles will become Regent. That, too, however, can be ruled out – if only for the moment. There had been suggestions that the Queen was considering using the 1937 Regency Act to hand power to Charles when she turns 95 this month, but this has been dismissed by some royal sources.
However, the day could come when the Queen, or those close to her, decided it was time for her to step down. Around her 90th birthday a senior figure who worked closely with the Queen for many years said: ‘‘That would really be a matter for the Queen, the Prince of Wales and prime minister. But I assure you if the Queen was so advised and felt she could not continue in her role in the way she wanted to, her sense of duty would kick in. She would only want what was good for the country and the institution of which she is custodian.’’
Britain’s last regency was from 1811 to 1820, when George III’s mental illness left him unable to carry out his duties. His son, the future George IV, was given power under the Regency Act, and gave his name to Regent’s Park and Regent St in London.