The way the Queen referred to a fateful year when three of her children divorced their partners and Windsor burned down remains for history
At the Guildhall Palace in the City of London, everything was ready for the big day. The Corporation had invited the Queen to a ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of her coronation. The decorated tables, the glasses ready to be lifted, and the secret wish that a difficult year would come to an end.
It was November 24, 1992. Isabel II began speaking to a packed house that held her breath as she began her speech after the formal thanksgiving. 1992 is not a year I look back on fondly. In the words of one of my most sympathetic correspondents, it has become an ‘annus horribilis’. I suspect I’m not the only one who thinks so.
He was then 66 years old and four decades in office. However, she was shaking in her green dress. Nervously he moved the papers and his arms. He was about to deliver one of the most personal speeches of his long career, suffering the effects of a severe cold and great consternation.
Just four days earlier, a massive fire had destroyed part of Windsor Castle. It would be the latest in a string of setbacks that began with the announcement on March 19 that his second son, Prince Andrew, was divorcing his wife, the Duchess of York. A month later, on April 23, his daughter, Princess Anne, would divorce Captain Mark Phillips. On June 16, ‘Diana: Her True Story’ was published by journalist Andrew Morton, a stab at Diana of Wales, portraying a cold court and oblivious to the princess’s nutritional problems. On November 13, the romance between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles was confirmed.
The royal family starred in the pages of the yellow press, where criticism was fierce. He had to face them and save the dignity of the monarchy. His speech gracefully skimmed over the details, focusing on the impact of events and how “unfairly” the institution had been treated. “I sometimes wonder how future generations will judge the events of this tumultuous year. I dare say the story will have a slightly more moderate picture than some contemporary commentators.” He asked those “auditors” of the Royal House for “a touch of kindness, good humor and understanding”.
The chronicle has given for history the description of ‘annus horribilis’ for that fateful 1992. But Elizabeth II has lived to mourn greater misfortunes than those that plagued the 40th anniversary of her coronation and, if possible, with greater impact on ‘the institution’. . The consummation of the divorce of Carlos and Diana, in 1996, was something that was expected, as painful and uncomfortable as it was for the Queen. But Diana Spencer’s death the following year, in 1997, was an even greater test for the Crown and for herself.
Elizabeth II met a real national mourning in the hearts of the British who reached the gates of Kensington Palace, the residence of the former princess (her title had been taken away from her), where citizens laid more than a million bouquets of flowers. But the Royal House was slow to express their feelings, something not expected from strict protocol, but demanded by the press, as well as Diana’s family. The political crisis resulting from this death was reflected in the film ‘The Queen’, which shows, in a somewhat friendly way, the Windsors’ clumsy and cold response to the tragedy.
The issue of racism
The year 2000 arrived and time gave so many problems the perspective that Elizabeth II spoke of in that Guildhall speech. The new Brits began to feel comfortable with a new princess consort, Camilla, the eternal companion of Carlos and his wife since 2005, and with a younger generation, that of Diana’s children, who began to take over from the elderly. and expanded the family to include their own descendants. Then a storybook marriage, between flowers and gospel music, once again removed the foundations of the institution.
It was the year 2018 when American Meghan Markle entered the royal family as the wife of Enrique, the youngest son of Diana and Carlos, and put a debate hidden under a thousand carpets, that of racism, on the agenda. In March 2021, the couple gave an interview to presenter Oprah Winfrey. They discovered the intimacies of palace life, admitted that Meghan had mental health problems from the pressures of office, and exposed racist behavior by members of her own family and staff towards Harry’s young wife.
2021 was charged with pain just a month later with the death in April of Philip of Edinburgh, who was about to turn 100, and after 73 years of marriage. They say Prince Andrew heard his mother say it seemed “a miracle” that her husband had died in peace. Sense of responsibility, sense of duty and sense of humor. That’s how it was until the end.
Source: La Verdad
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