the great unknown
We have all met the queen, but very few the person. She was a country woman, with a great sense of humor and “low ego.” As a mother, however, she was not particularly warm or caring.
Reserved, always perfect in her public face, always queen, Elizabeth II has barely hinted at the woman under the crown. The enigma and the mystery that surrounded her person were part of her work, and she understood it very well from the beginning: without mysticism, the monarchy falters.
The queen never stopped being the queen. But, out of the limelight, in private, those who were able to get to know her more closely paint the portrait of a simple, practical woman, wife, mother and grandmother, an animal lover, with a developed sense of humor.
Richard Griffin, one of the agents who was responsible for his protection for years, recently recounted a revealing anecdote in this regard. One day, walking the dogs around Balmoral Castle, where she died yesterday, she met a couple of American tourists who did not recognize her, and even asked her if she had ever met the queen. . “I don’t, but Dick (by Griffin) sees her often,” she said. “And how is she?” They questioned curious. “He can be a bit curmudgeonly at times, but he has a great sense of humor,” the agent replied.
In addition to jokes, Elizabeth II had a great talent for imitating accents and public figures she had met, such as Boris Yeltsin or Margaret Thatcher, although always within her most intimate circle.
Despite this, the people who worked with her describe a shy woman, who used tricks such as always carrying her bag, even though she did not need it, as part of her armor to face official acts. «She was very normal, the most normal of the non-normal people I have ever met. She was very humble, she had no ego, she was quite shy », said her former press secretary for 17 years, Samantha Cohen, to the newspaper ‘The Telegraph’.
They say that opposite personalities attract each other, and it is perhaps that shyness that led her to fall in love with that handsome Navy officer so sure of himself. Isabel met Felipe when she was 13 and he was 18. She fell in love with her immediately and, despite the ups and downs of any marriage, her devotion to him lasted a lifetime. “She never looked at anyone else,” says her cousin Margaret Rhodes in one of the many biographies that have been written about her.
As a mother, however, she was not particularly warm or caring. Her reunion in 1952 with her children Carlos and Ana, who were 5 and 3 years old at the time, after a six-month tour that took him halfway around the world, is famous. There were no kisses or hugs. The monarch shook hands with her children, which then surprised even some of the most recalcitrant members of high society.
His biographers say, however, that this lack of affection was due more to his education and the rigidity of the British upper class, at least in those days, than to a coldness of feeling.
Isabel and Felipe barely saw their children twice a day, after breakfast and at tea time. The little ones were raised with nannies, and family decisions, according to historian Sally Bedell Smith, fell to her husband, especially since she ascended the throne as a young mother of only 25 years.
With her husband and her children Carlos and Ana in 1952. /
Although her children have always understood that, being the monarch, her mother was not a mother to use, that affective detachment did seem to leave consequences in her children, at least in Carlos. The now king was sent as a child to a strict boarding school in Scotland where he barely received visits from his parents. When he came down with the flu in 1957, Isabel sent him off with a letter, before embarking on a trip to Canada. In the biographies that have been written about him there is always a resentment about that lonely childhood.
In spite of everything, Isabel enjoyed motherhood, and even decided to breastfeed her four children, just as her mother did with her and as was the custom in the royal family until in the 19th century, the unmaternal queen Victoria changed that. trend.
Andrew the favorite
Her two young children, Andrés and Eduardo, who have been with their older brothers for almost a decade, were able to enjoy their mother in another way. Elizabeth had already been on the throne for years, she felt more comfortable as a mother and as a queen, and she decided to extend her maternity leave to take care of the little ones. The British press has always said that Andrés has been her favorite son, whom she has supported even in the most difficult moments. The time they enjoyed together helped forge the bond.
His grandchildren, however, paint a different portrait from Carlos. The now Prince of Wales, William, has come to say that for him his grandmother was always first, and then the queen. But Elizabeth Windsor will not be the only or the last strict mother who softened with her grandchildren.
Horses and corgi dogs have been his other passion, perhaps the best known of them all. The ‘Racing Post’, a publication on horse and dog racing, was the first newspaper he read every morning, and it has been in horse racing that the British have been able to see a queen without masks, enjoying the show without restraint.
Deep down, say some who knew her, Isabel was a country woman. Balmoral was always her favorite haunt. The green of her moors has already remained forever under her eyelids.
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