The Queen marked the seventieth anniversary of her reign, on February 6, 2022, quietly and privately at Sandringham. However, a written Accession Day message to the nation was soon dominating the airwaves.
In it, she had expressed her ‘sincere wish’ that the Duchess of Cornwall should, in due course, become Queen Consort and not Princess Consort. Like changes to the laws of succession, no one had been keen to raise this eggshell issue for as long as there had been no pressing need.
However, the Queen’s advancing years, as well as mounting conjecture about the Prince of Wales’s plans for the monarchy, had led to renewed internal thinking. ‘By this stage of the reign, you are finding that you can’t ignore all those things that were once just consigned to the “Too Difficult” folder,’ said one aide.
Accession Day was seen as an appropriate moment to deal with this one. Few would quibble with the Queen’s wishes on a day like this, so the thinking went. The appointment of the Duchess to the Order of the Garter just five weeks earlier in the New Year’s Honours List had been carefully planned to pave the way.
Queen Camilla Letter
The long-awaited award of the Garter to Tony Blair in the very same Honours List (almost fifteen years after his departure from Downing Street) would also help to deflect media attention.
It was no coincidence. Yet, the announcement about a future ‘Queen Camilla’ caused barely a ripple. ‘Timing is all,’ observed one Palace veteran.
Senior politicians and world leaders merely issued messages and tweets congratulating the monarch on her seventieth anniversary. The ‘Too Difficult’ folder was now a little lighter.
By this point, the Palace had decided not to announce the Queen’s intention to attend anything, on the basis that a pleasant surprise was preferable to explaining a cancellation. She was saving her strength for Westminster Abbey. The memorial service for the Duke of Edinburgh on 29 March was the long-awaited chance for all those who could not attend his tiny funeral service the previous year to pay their respects.
They included the wider Royal Family, many other royal houses and 500 representatives of the Duke’s many charities, ranging from the Scottish Youth Hostels Association to The Caravan Club.
The event also brought ongoing family tensions into sharp relief. The Duke of Sussex had let it be known that he would not be attending due to unresolved questions about security arrangements.
However, his non-attendance was eclipsed by the prospect of a public appearance by the Duke of York, his first since agreeing to a multimillion-pound out-of-court settlement to end the sexual assault claim against him in the USA.
