The Queen’s Best Friends: Within Elizabeth II’s inner circle

Even the ninety-five year old Queen Elizabeth has its own “best friends”. A “bubble” of which very few “elected” members belong, with whom The Queen has maintained intimate relationships for decades. Aside from close relatives, only them, as an insider revealed People, they know the more private side of the queen: “With the people she trusts, the sovereign puts aside her solemn air, showing herself simple, easygoing and chatty».

Even in the long months spent in Windsor due to the pandemic, and especially after the death of her beloved husband Philip, these people have never left the sovereign alone. Elizabeth, especially last summer, invited them for lunch or dinner in her castle and some would then stop to watch TV with her. The small circle includes ladies-in-waiting like Lady Susan Hussey, who has known The Queen for six decades and also accompanied her to Filippo’s funeral, and some historical friends like Lady Annabel Whitehead, Lady Elizabeth Leeming, e Susan Rhodes.

Then there is the former nanny of Prince Charles, Mabel anderson. Among the true friends of the sovereign, Mabel occupies a special place. The two women have more than one thing in common. First of all, they are the same age, 95. And they share the same hobbies: crosswords, reading detective stories, but above all the binge-watching di soap opera. It is known that the queen does not miss any episodes of the numerous BBC and ITV soap operas, such as EastEnders e Coronation Street, and watched the DVDs over and over again Downton Abbey.

Mabel Anderson is not Her Majesty’s lifelong friend. This woman without a drop of blue blood entered the Windsors’ service in the late 1950s, when Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were looking for a new nanny for their first two children. Regarded as a second mother from Carlo, Anna, and then Andrea ed Edoardo, the nanny was constantly at the Palace, making the bedroom her kingdom. Each morning and evening, he reported to the queen the daily activities of her offspring. A true friendship developed between the two women. Once the children were grown up, Elizabeth II did not fire Mabel, who had now become indispensable to herself. L’former housekeeper stopped caring for children to take care of the queen herself. Decades later, and particularly after Prince Philip’s death in April 2021, she became her the first confidant of His Majesty.

It is also part of the “real magic circle” Angela Kelly, the stylist who for almost 30 years he has been taking care of the sovereign’s wardrobe. Angela, per The Queen, she is a friend, a confidant, a counselor. So much so that in 2019 she was able to afford the luxury of publishing a book in which she reveals many anecdotes and secrets about Elisabetta – The Other Side of the Coin: The Queen, the Dresser and the Wardrobe col approval of His Majesty: it had never happened.

Over the years the queen has unfortunately had to say goodbye to some of her closest friends. She just recently passed away at the age of 101 Ann Fortune FitzRoy, Duchess of Grafton, lady-in-waiting of the sovereign since 1967. There was a very close bond between the Queen and Ann. Always alongside the queen on many official occasions, including travel and important events, in 1980 the FitzRoy had been nominated Lady of the Grand Cross of the Victorian Royal Order: Her Majesty had her unconditional trust.

One of the queen’s closest friends was hers too female cousin Margaret Rhodes. United since childhood, together with Balmoral during the Second World War (The scions of the royal family were moved to Scotland to protect them from bomb that fell on London), Margaret and Elizabeth never separated. When Rhodes became a widow in 1981, her friend and sovereign cousin proposed to her to become the lady-in-waiting of the Queen Mother. Margaret accepted and for eleven years she was the closest confidant of Elizabeth’s mother: they dined together at the Royal Lodge in Windsor and had their meals served at the card table in the living room. She was the only one who managed to get her to eat even in recent times, when she was almost at the end, telling her funny gossip, bringing her bunches of daffodils and other spring flowers, until her death at the age of 102, in 2002.

Margaret Rhodes passed away on November 25, 2016, at 91 years old. His death was announced in an official statement from Buckingham Palace and his funeral, in the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park, was there his best friend, the queen, in distress.

.

You may also like