Once upon a time, Queen Elizabeth was “merely” Princess Elizabeth, and she was away with her husband enjoying some quiet moments in the beautiful Kenyan countryside. Then it happened. She was told the news that she must have always dreaded: her father had passed away, and she was the new ruler of England and the Commonwealth. The world never witnessed this private moment… but a relative of Elizabeth did, and now she’s shared exactly what she saw.
Always stoic
The monarch and her family tend to fiercely maintain their privacy. Queen Elizabeth may rule an entire country and be known the world over, but you very rarely get a glimpse at what she’s thinking and feeling.
She’s never spoken to anyone about what went through her mind on the day she learned her father had passed. Dramatizations such as The Crown have to merely speculate.
Her Majesty
All we have to go on are eyewitness accounts from those who were there. Seeing the moment a young woman realizes she’s become a queen would likely stay with you forever.
From that point on, Elizabeth was Her Majesty the Queen, and the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
Always aware
But, of course, Elizabeth had known before this moment that she would one day be Queen. She was ten years old when her uncle Edward abdicated the throne. Being that young, it must have been a lot to get her head around!
Many years later, Elizabeth’s grandson Prince William made the decision not to mention to Prince George about his future until he was old enough to understand it.
The burdens of the crown
Prince William himself had had difficulty coming to terms with his whole life being laid out for him — not to mention the fact that becoming king would naturally mean his grandmother and father would have to pass away first.
He actually spoke about this with surprising candor back in 2016.
Family ties
That year, Prince William told royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell that he would be a “modern King” when the time came.
But he also said, “I certainly don’t lie awake at night waiting or hoping for it because it sadly means my family has moved on, and I don’t want that.” And chances are Queen Elizabeth once felt the same way.
Father and daughter
Young Elizabeth was apparently very close to her father, King George VI. This was an era where men weren’t necessarily required to have a hands-on role when it came to parenting — especially not if they had an important job.
And, of course, being a king was the most important job of all. Yet George VI happily took part in raising Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret.
Precious things
George adored his daughter so much that he wrote her a touching letter after her marriage to Prince Philip.
It still survives today, and in part of it, he says, “I was so proud and thrilled at having you so close to me on our long walk in Westminster Abbey. But when I handed your hand to the Archbishop, I felt I had lost something very precious.”
Always counting on you
The king also wrote, “I have watched you grow up all these years with pride under the skillful direction of Mummy [the Queen Mother], who, as you know, is the most marvelous person in the world in my eyes, and I can, I know, always count on you, and now Philip, to help us in our work.”
King George was right.
Difficult past
Though Elizabeth had taken on royal duties from a very young age — she was making radio broadcasts to the nation’s evacuee children at the age of just 14 — she wasn’t actually supposed to be queen at all originally.
If not for the actions of her uncle, Edward VIII, the royal probably would never have been.
The abdication
Back in 1936, King Edward VIII caused one of the biggest scandals in modern royal history. He was in love with an American woman, Wallis Simpson, but she was divorced and therefore not a suitable bride.
So Edward handed back the throne so that he could marry her, making his brother George king.
Cool reception
When young Elizabeth and Margaret digested this news, they reportedly didn’t react with joy.
According to one story, related by the BBC in February 2022, when Elizabeth “coolly” stated she was one day going to be Queen, Margaret replied with, “Poor you!”
Coronation day
Elizabeth’s father was crowned in May 1937, when she was merely 11 years old. George apparently asked the young girl to note down every detail of the coronation, knowing the information would probably come in handy for her future.
In her account, Elizabeth noted that her father was “very beautiful” in his regal attire. It’s a sweet detail that proves how deep their bond went.
Learning the ropes
Gradually, young Elizabeth began learning more and more about what would be required of her in later years.
And this didn’t go unnoticed by the people whose job it was to report on the royal family. In December 1943 newspaper The Atlantic published an article on the then-princess’ education.
Admirable behavior
“So far Princess Elizabeth’s life has most rightly been spent in her home rather than in the public eye,” the piece began.
“And her future subjects know relatively little of her, apart from the admirable broadcast talk she gave some three years ago to the children of the Empire, at home and overseas, when she was only fourteen.”
Big responsibilities
The Atlantic compared the young Elizabeth to one of her most famous female ancestors, saying, “It is more than a century, though not much more, since a girl of 17 stood first in succession to the throne…"
"What part Princess Victoria’s native qualities, and what part the training she received, played respectively in fitting her for the great responsibilities she so greatly sustained is not to be precisely estimated.”
A princess’ reading list
Regarding Elizabeth’s own “training,” the newspaper explained that it was her mother who had helped her to learn to read. And it listed some of the authors who she had reportedly studied. These included, among other illustrious British writers, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen.
When the princess was looking for something less heavy going, she apparently turned to Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Royal skills
But reading was far from the only skill that young Princess Elizabeth was expected to learn. That’s right: The Atlantic noted that she also was educated in “French, the piano, and dancing.”
Plus, she and her sister loved to go horse riding — an activity the Queen still treasures to this day.
Lifesaving training
The newspaper also uncovered something that is little known even now: Elizabeth was a very accomplished swimmer.
According to the article, “Princess Elizabeth was professionally taught, passed her life-saving tests, and gained her badges at the Bath Club, and finds water — with pennies to dive for and the crawl stroke to practice — a hardly less natural element than air.”
Creating a queen
But while Elizabeth was getting her education, her parents and teachers also worked hard to ensure the future queen didn’t let her status go to her head.
Apparently, when young Elizabeth went to a concert with her grandmother, she was thinking about “all the people waiting to see [her] outside.” On hearing this, grandmother Queen Mary made her leave quietly via the back entrance.
Leaving for Kenya
All of these efforts worked. Elizabeth grew into a capable and mature young woman and, as time went on, began replacing her ailing father on trips around the world. One of these, which she set off on in January 1952, was a tour of Kenya.
And when Elizabeth waved goodbye to her dad at the airport, she had no idea that it would be the last time she’d ever see him.
Out in the wilds
Inbetween royal duties, Elizabeth stayed at the Treetops hotel in Kenya, where she had to climb a ladder to get to her room.
It was surrounded by hordes of genuinely very dangerous wildlife, including leopards, baboons, and rhinos. Elizabeth didn’t mind, though, and supposedly spent hours capturing the species on her camera.
Sudden grief
But while Elizabeth was working and relaxing miles away, awful things were happening to her family back home. Her father had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away in his sleep, throwing the palace into mourning and chaos.
Elizabeth was the new monarch, and she needed to have the news of her father’s death broken to her gently. There was just one problem: no one was able to contact her.
Telegrams
Elizabeth had left Treetops that morning and had traveled some 20 miles away to the Sagana fishing lodge. While she was enjoying the scenery, officials frantically tried to reach her.
A telegram was sent to Government House in Nairobi, but no one could read it as they couldn’t track down the keys for the codebook safe.
Delivering bad news
Finally, the authorities were able to reach Prince Philip at the fishing lodge, and he reacted with horror.
It was he who broke the news to Elizabeth, and naturally, no cameras or journalists were privy to that conversation. But we know some details of what happened right afterward.
Lady in waiting
There were, you see, some other people with the Queen on her trip to Kenya, and they watched events unfold in real-time.
One such person was Lady Pamela Hicks, Prince Philip’s cousin and a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth. She and her daughter India often speak about their experiences with the royal family.
Hyde Park Corner
Both Pamela and India spoke to People magazine in February 2021 — almost 69 years to the day since George VI’s death.
Speculation about the Queen’s reaction to her father’s passing had only increased after The Crown showed its interpretation in the second episode, Hyde Park Corner.
Apologies
India told People, “My mother remembered very clearly that when she heard the news, she paced up and down, up and down with Philip and the ladies-in-waiting and the private secretary.
Finally, when the Queen had gathered herself, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, but we are going to have to go back to England.’”
Hugs and curtsys
The younger Hicks went on, “That was so indicative of the Queen that she would have apologized for something like that.
They all said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’” Right after that, Hicks said, “My mother gave her a hug and suddenly remembered, ‘This is my queen,’ and dropped into a deep curtsy.”
Highlights
And Pamela herself told the magazine about what the trip to Kenya had been like in the days before the news hit.
She said, “[Elizabeth and Philip] had been fishing and riding, but the climax of it was a night up the tree to look at the game. [Elizabeth] had her cine camera with her, and for her, it was the absolute highlight.”
Moment of happiness
Pamela remembered that the woman who would shortly be Queen Elizabeth II “had been tremendously excited by all the game we had seen.
She kept talking about how she was going to write to her parents and describe it all.” But, sadly, that would never happen in the end.
Philip’s reaction
Pamela has also spoken in the past about Prince Philip’s reaction to the news. Philip was apparently reading the newspaper while Elizabeth was in another room writing a letter to her father — a tragic detail recreated in The Crown many decades later.
Philip was told what had happened by his equerry Mike Parker, who at first didn’t actually know for certain that the news was true.
Confirmation
As Lady Pamela said on her daughter’s podcast in 2019, “Mike crawls in as he doesn’t want the princess to look up and see him, so he’s crawling out of her sightline and gesturing to get hold of the radio.”
The radio would confirm whether or not the king was truly dead.
Such a shock
“He secretly turns it very, very low and hears all the stations [playing] the same dirge-like music, being very solemn… so it’s obviously true,” Pamela continued.
“Philip just takes the newspaper and covers his face with it, hides behind it and says, ‘This will be such a shock.’” And he wasn’t wrong.
Dress code
It’s fairly well known that there were some issues as the Queen prepared to fly back home. No one had guessed the king might pass away while his daughter was in Kenya, so a black mourning dress hadn’t been packed in Elizabeth’s luggage.
And it would be a horrible breach of protocol for her to arrive in England in a color other than black.
Mourning clothes
Lady Pamela recalled what happened on an episode of her daughter’s podcast in 2022. In the end, she said, the Queen wasn’t given the appropriate attire until the plane had landed.
“A black dress was quickly smuggled on board because we didn’t have a black dress. So she quickly had to change,” Pamela explained.
Waiting for Churchill
Pamela was by the Queen’s side as she waited on the plane for Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
She remembered, “Having got dressed, she passes by me and looks out of my window, looks over my head and said, ‘Ahhh.’ She was looking for her car, and she said, ‘Oh, they’ve sent the hearses.’”
Never again
But the cars weren’t really hearses. Lady Pamela remembered, “I realized she meant that the big royal limousines were all stacked up.”
And then, “I suddenly looked and thought, ‘Here’s this young woman of 25 with two small children, having just been leading virtually a normal Naval officer’s life in Malta, and [is] now never going to be private again.’”
Funeral and coronation
Elizabeth must have known this, too, but she immediately threw herself into her duties. As the new monarch, one of the first things she needed to do was arrange her father’s funeral, which must have been incredibly hard.
And only after that, when over a year had passed since King George’s death, did she have her official coronation.
Further down the road
In the years to come, it’ll be Prince Charles who has to do this difficult duty — and then, eventually, Prince William and after him most likely Prince George.
But just in case we have any more shock abdications, there's still a long list of royals who can step up to the challenge.