PRINCESS ALEXANDRA: THE WOULD-BE QUEEN
The Queen’s life would have been very different if her uncle David (later Edward VIII) hadn’t fallen for divorced American Wallis Simpson. If he’d married a different bride and had children, she’d have been the monarch’s cousin instead of the monarch.
She’d most likely have led a life very similar to that of her cousin, Princess Alexandra. Alexandra’s father Prince George, Duke of Kent, was the younger brother of Elizabeth’s father Prince
Albert (who became George
VI). Alexandra was sixth in line to the throne when she was born on Christmas Day, 1936, but has now slipped to 53rd.
Alexandra, 84, is actually technically more royal than the Queen; although they were both the granddaughters of George V, Alexandra has ties to other royal houses thanks to her mother, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark.
Unlike Elizabeth, who was homeschooled by governesses at Buckingham Palace, Alexandra became the first British princess to attend a regular school. She later went to boarding school and also studied in Paris. In 1963, she married businessman Angus Ogilvy, second son of the Earl of Airlie, and they had two children, James and Marina.
Like her cousin Elizabeth, Alexandra’s life has been devoted to service. She is the patron or president of more than 100 organisations, including Cancer Research
UK, the Alzheimer’s Society, the Mental Health Foundation and the English National Opera. She often acts as the Queen’s representative and has attended hundreds of events in Her Majesty’s place, including making official visits to Thailand, Norway, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates and Canada. She also fronts up to state occasions like the Trooping the Colour and state dinners for visiting dignitaries.
Alexandra keeps busy with her royal duties but her workload is only a fraction of the Queen’s. In 2018, she had 67 engagements (although she did have three months off with a broken wrist) whereas the queen attended 283. Like the Queen, she has kept working long after retirement, but a couple of years ago she eased back on duties due to developing arthritis.
Widowed following the death of Angus in 2004, she lives in a six-bedroom home, Thatched House Lodge, in Richmond, London, that’s leased from the Crown Estate, and has use of a grace-andfavour apartment at St James’s Palace. She manages to keep her private life under the radar and can go out and do “normal things”. The only time the family has made headlines was in the late 1980s, when her daughter Marina went through a rebellious phase, getting pregnant while unmarried, posing in rubber clothing for a fetish magazine and living on the dole.
Son James, who’s a magazine publisher and landscape gardener, has stayed out of the public eye, only making the news in 1997 when he was bitten by a shark while swimming in Florida.
A royal insider says that although the Queen has never wavered from doing her duty, “she must sometimes look at Alexandra and see what her life might have been like”.
and even included Anne’s thermal underwear.
But there are some things she won’t skimp on. For example, when she visits friends, she takes two boxes of chocolates – one for the hostess and one for herself. She also keeps a supply of chocolates in her bedroom because her “greedy” family is likely to demolish them otherwise.
Pamela was on hand to witness a teenage Elizabeth falling head over heels in love with dashing naval cadet Philip and says while it was love at first sight for the future Queen, Philip’s feelings took a little longer to develop. “She was very much in love. He grew very much in love.”
One of the saddest moments Pamela ever witnessed was when she accompanied the young royals to Kenya in
1952, where the then-Princess Elizabeth was representing her ailing father George VI in the Commonwealth.
After an equerry broke the sad news to Philip that the king had died, Philip suggested that his wife accompany him on a walk by a stream.
“You could see the moment she was told,” remembers Pamela. “She stopped walking and slumped a bit. And one thought, ‘How awful for her.’”
Despite worrying about how frail the Queen looked at her coronation, Pamela says her life has been “entirely dictated by her sense of duty” and she is “an amazing person.”
Another childhood friend, Alathea Fitzalan Howard, 97, has previously written about the Queen and says her pal’s attitude toward duty was shaped by her parents, who taught her not just standards of behaviour, but the principles of integrity and decency that have governed her life.
Not naturally outgoing like her younger sister Princess Margaret, she would often have to steel herself before walking into a room of strangers. “Lillibet finds making conversation very difficult.”
One trick she uses if she’s greeting people at one of the royal residences is to let her dogs into the room so they’ll give her something to talk about.
Alathea says the Queen has always tended to keep some
distance from her friends because no matter how close they are, she’s first and foremost their monarch, not their pal. Any thoughts she may have had over the years of being able to lead a “normal” life have been pushed to the side as she focuses on the role she inherited. There has never been any question that she would step aside, even though she has reached a great age.
“She has always been suited to a simpler life, but her sense of duty is too strong.” #