Queen Elizabeth II has
left behind a lasting legacy following her 70-year reign, including a bond
between the House of Windsor and the Kennedy family that continues to this
day.
Americans have joined the
British in mourning the monarch, who died ‘peacefully’ with her family by her
side at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on Thursday, September 8, at age
96, Buckingham Palace announced. Her son Charles, the former
Prince of Wales, is now King Charles III.
After taking the throne in
February 1952, she was nearly a decade into her reign when she hosted
President John F. Kennedy and his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, at
Buckingham Palace in June 1961.
The meeting took place just
four months after his inauguration, and there have long been rumors
of friction between Queen Elizabeth and Jackie, including alleged tension over
the guest list before the meeting.
Divorcées were traditionally
not invited to state dinners, but Jackie pushed for her sister, Princess Lee
Radziwill, and her second husband, the twice-divorced Prince Stanislaw
Radziwill, to be in attendance.
‘Under pressure, she relents,
but, by way of retaliation, singularly fails to invite Princess Margaret or
Princess Marina, both of whose names Jackie has put forward,’ according
to Reader’s Digest.
‘The queen had her revenge,’
Jackie allegedly confided to Gore Vidal. ‘No Margaret, no Marina, no one except
every Commonwealth minister of agriculture they could find.’
She also supposedly told Vidal
that she thought Elizabeth ‘resented’ her and was ‘pretty heavy going,’ She
added that the queen’s husband, Prince Philip, was ‘nice, but nervous.’
However, the two women did
seem to find common ground when discussing the difficulties of living life in
the public eye.
When Elizabeth asked Jackie
about her trip to Canada, she admitted that she found it draining to be in the
spotlight. The queen reportedly responded, ‘One gets crafty after a while
and learns how to save oneself.’
After dinner, the queen is
said to have taken Jackie on a tour of the palace to view some of the
art.
Cecil Beaton later wrote in
his diary that Jackie was underwhelmed by Buckingham Palace’s interior
design, as well as Queen Elizabeth’s style, according to The Telegraph.
