A Daughter's Heartbreaking Farewell: Princess Anne Reveals Details of 'Selfless' Conversation She Had With Dying Queen Elizabeth II
Anne, Princess Royal, was with Queen Elizabeth II in the days before the monarch's death, and said her mother was thinking about others over herself until the end.
The late Queen Elizabeth II, who died on September 8, 2022, at Balmoral Castle, was reportedly thinking of her people over her own pain in the days before her death. This led her only daughter, Anne, Princess Royal, to share details of Britain's longest-reigning monarch's "selfless" qualities that uniquely shaped how she approached her own death at the age of 96.
The monarch, who became a "fixture in the imagination of multiple generations" spent her final hours at Balmoral Castle on September 8, which were both "peaceful" and surprisingly busy as the workaholic monarch read and signed state papers.
"A footman appeared with a red box — the last one that had gone up to the Queen before her death. Even on her deathbed, there had been work to do. And she had done it," author Robert Hardman revealed in his new book, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy.
Elizabeth II had been staying at Balmoral in Northern Scotland for weeks before she passed away, which was an annual late summer tradition. Although her daughter later shared how Her late Majesty "worried" that dying at her beloved home would "complicate matters," some have speculated that the monarch "knew" she would likely die at the Highlands estate.
The Queen met with new Prime Minister Liz Truss on September 6, 2022, just two days before she breathed her last, but Hardman's book shows that she also kept working on her literal deathbed.
On the evening of the 6th, "she was quite buzzy over pre-dinner drinks and talking about various prime ministers she had known. But then she said she was going upstairs and would have dinner alone. It was the last time most of her immediate household would see her. Even in familiar surroundings, the exertions of this, her most fundamental constitutional duty, had taken a greater toll than anyone had imagined," Hardman wrote.
"The following morning, September 7, the Queen's health deteriorated. "Fortunately, the Princess Royal, with a diary of engagements in Scotland, was in residence. 'It was purely serendipity that I was there,' Princess Anne recalls. 'I'd been two days up on the West Coast, and I was coming back, stayed the night, and was going south,'" the author added.
Both Anne and the then-Prince Charles would visit the ailing monarch throughout that day, as the sovereign remained in bed, which nearly everyone thought "was not a good sign." As the morning of September 8 dawned, Her late Majesty remained bedridden and had started to slip in and out of consciousness, which had the entire castle on high alert.
After separate bedside visits from her heir and daughter, the beloved sovereign peacefully slipped away in her sleep in mid-afternoon.
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Daily Mirror reported on Anne's remarks.
