THE‘image of Queen Elizabeth sitting alone, with a black mask, in the pews of St George’s Chapel, she remained imprinted in the collective memory as the symbol of a composed pain. But behind that ceremonial solitude was hiding a much more human and earthly feeling: anger. A new biography, Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History written by the historian Hugo Vickers and due out in April, reveals that The Queen was deeply impressed by the manner in which Prince Philip departed on 9 April 2021. Not for the loss itself, but for that vice that the husband had maintained until the end: leave without saying goodbye.
Filippo’s secret: eight years of battle against pancreatic cancer
The book uncovers a truth that has remained locked in the rooms of Buckingham Palace for almost a decade. Contrary to what was officially declared, Philip did not just die of “old age”. According to Vickers, the Duke of Edinburgh had been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer already in 2013. For eight years, the man Elizabeth called her “rock” would lived with the disease in the utmost secrecyappearing in public and honoring his commitments with a mettle that had surprised the doctors themselves. Only during the lockdown, in the Windsor “bubble”, did the couple find an absolute daily life againmade up of slow pace and few servants.
Queen Elizabeth, alone, at St George’s Chapel for Prince Philip’s funeral. (Photo by Jonathan Brady – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
The prince’s last night: a beer and escape from the nurses
The story of the last moments of Philip’s life conveys the image of the rebellious man he has always been. The evening before he died, now very weak, the prince would have eluded the nurses’ surveillance dragging himself with his walker along the corridors of the castle. Destination: the Oak Room of Windsor Castle, for indulge in one last beer in solitude. The following morning, after a bath, he confessed that he felt unwell and passed away in an instant. Elizabeth, however, was not with him at the time.
«Absolutely furious»: the queen’s missed farewell
When the queen was informed of his death, her reaction was disarmingly honest. He would have confided to his closest friends that he was “absolutely furious” because, just as he had done all his life, Philip had left suddenly, without a last look or a parting word. It was a habit of duke: disappear from receptions or private rooms without notifying anyone, leaving the queen to ask the staff where her husband had ended up. That last “escape” was the final act of a man who detested sentimentality and ceremony, even when it came to his own death.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Westminster with Charles and Camilla in 2019. (KIKA)
Towards the “departure hall”: Queen Elizabeth’s premonition
Even the queenin the last months of his life, he seemed to have accepted his fate with the same pragmatism. Hugo Vickers recounts how Elizabeth, speaking about death with her friend Prue Penn, used a perfect metaphor: «I feel like I’m in the departure lounge of an airport». Aware of his own illness (the biographer cites a bone tumor), the sovereign had only one regret: the impossibility of dying in private, far from the clamor of the world that had observed her for seventy years.
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