USA TODAY International Edition
Queen maintains stoic stance
Queen Elizabeth II never weeps in public – that’s the common perception forged over seven decades of soaring triumphs and terrible tragedies for the United Kingdom’s head of state.
Even if many people believe it, it’s not strictly true, royal historians say.
“There have been more times she’s been in tears than people recognize or choose to remember,” says Sally Bedell Smith, the American biographer of the queen and other senior royals.
Bedell Smith ticks off a half- dozen occasions when the queen was in tears, and not just in 1997 when the beloved royal yacht, the Britannia, was retired. She cried when she went to Aberfan, Wales, in 1966 to meet with survivors of a horrifying avalanche of coal waste that killed 144 people, most of them children, Bedell Smith says. At her sister Princess Margaret’s funeral in 2002, people who were there and seated near her told Bedell Smith she was “very tearful” and “the saddest I’ve ever seen her.”
“She has shed tears, but it’s been at appropriate times, such as the Remembrance Sunday commemorations” for Britain’s war dead every November, says longtime royal commentator Victoria Arbiter, who spent part of her childhood in Kensington Palace as the daughter of a former press secretary to the queen.
But the widespread impression that the queen rarely shows emotion gets to the underlying role of the longestserving reigning monarch in British history: After 69 years on her throne, she has had a lot of practice at hiding her feelings when necessary – and often it is necessary.
The queen held back her sorrow Saturday at the funeral of her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who died April 9 at age 99. The 94- year- old monarch kept her composure as she exited her Bentley and entered St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, a tiny, stooped figure dressed in black and wearing a matching face mask. She sat alone at the service, her head bowed, and left with the Dean of Windsor, who officiated.
“I don’t think we can underestimate how significant a loss this is to the queen – it’s undeniable this will be the hardest day of her life,” Arbiter says.
Her family has seen her grief up close, but those watching the televised service did not. All 30 guests in the congregation, in keeping with pandemic rules, were wearing masks. TV cameras stayed a respectful distance from royal faces during the service, as is customary.
The queen’s second son, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, said to be her favorite, gave a hint of his mother’s demeanor when he spoke to reporters two days after his father’s death.
“The queen, as you would expect, is an incredibly stoic person,” said Andrew, 61. “She described ( his death) as having left a huge void in her life but we, the family, the ones that are close, are rallying round to make sure that we’re there to support her.”
The definition of a stoic is a person
who can endure pain or hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. This is the queen to a T, Bedell Smith says.
“She is a woman of deep feeling but she works very hard to present an impassive face,” Bedell Smith says. “It’s partly due to her role, and partly her temperament and the way she was brought up.”
The then- Princess Elizabeth, as she was known until her ascension in 1952, was trained very deliberately not to show her feelings in public, Bedell Smith says.
“If you see her at any number of ( performances) or events, for practical reasons she watches but she doesn’t applaud,” Bedell Smith says. “The theory is, if she starts to express reaction of any kind, it will be seen as favoring one group over another. So she’s perfected this neutral look.”
At times, she has been criticized for having a “stony” face, for appearing to be unfeeling or uncaring, Arbiter says. She is damned if she shows emotion and damned if she doesn’t, so her safest option is to not react.
“The best way to avoid criticism is to give away nothing, but it takes a will of steel and many years of practice,” Arbiter says.
Compared with her husband, who was more likely to express himself if he was vexed or moved in some way, she has to show neutrality. “The discipline! She is so disciplined in every way,” Bedell Smith says.
As a member of Britain’s World War II generation, when so many endured hardship, loss, grief and devastation, stoicism was a coping mechanism for everybody, not just the queen, Arbiter says.
“There’s a famous phrase the royals say: ‘ Don’t wear private grief on a public sleeve,’ ” Arbiter says. “The family recognize that so many Britons have gone through hell in the past year and they will want to maintain that perspective” during the funeral.
The family wanted the ceremony to be focused on the duke, the longestserving royal consort in British history, and to his years of service to the nation.
The queen, who is head of the Church of England, may choose may have chosen to make her final goodbye in an even more private and spiritual setting: in her private chapel where his casket had been at rest since his death. There are no TV cameras there.
“I think before the funeral she will have gone to the private chapel for a moment with coffin alone,” Arbiter says. “That will be her intimate moment of goodbye, a quiet moment of reflection and faith.”
Then she put on her neutral face, and a mask and led her family through another royal ceremony to be remembered down the ages.