Queen Elizabeth’s children
were joined by their nearest and dearest to honour Britain’s longest-serving
monarch. However, there was one royal that wasn’t present for the event.
Katharine, Duchess of Kent did
not attend the sombre occasion. The 89-year-old is married to Prince
Edward, Duke of Kent, who is a first cousin of the late monarch. While
Katherine did not attend the ceremony, her husband was present.
The Duchess, who stepped away
from royal duties in 2002 and dispensed with her HRH title, is rarely seen in
public and was seen for the first time in almost three years in May earlier
this year when she attended an event at Lancaster House in London for her
charity, Future Talent.
Before that, her last public
appearance was in 2019 when she hosted a concert at St James’s Palace for the
Royal Northern College of Music.
While the reason for the
Duchess of Kent’s absence has not been revealed, it is known that she has
suffered from health problems in the past, including ME (myalgic
encephalomyelitis, also known as ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’).
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The Duchess of Kent was not present
Who is the Duchess of
Kent?
Katharine is the fourth child
and only daughter of Sir William Worsley and his wife Joyce Morgan Brunner. She
met the Duke of Kent when she was 24 years old while Edward was living at
Catterick Camp, an English military base. The couple tied the knot
in 1961.
The couple shares three
children Lord Nicholas Windsor, Lady Helen Taylor and George, Earl of St Andrews,
and ten grandchildren.
In a recent interview
with The Telegraph, the Duchess revealed that she quietly took up a
position as a music teacher at the Wansbeck Primary School in Hull for 13 years
after dispensing her royal duties. “I was just known as Mrs Kent,”
she said.
“Only the head knew who I
was. The parents didn’t know and the pupils didn’t know. No one ever noticed.
There was no publicity about it at all – it just seemed to work.”
