The Queen was left with a ‘huge void’ following the death of her husband Prince Philip in April 2021 – but she put her focus on her family in the aftermath of his passing
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The Queen’s incredible love story with Prince Philip came to an end on 9 April 2021, when her husband of 73 years passed away at the age of 99.
Buckingham Palace confirmed the sad news in a statement that read: “It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.” The thoughts of the nation were with the Queen, who had famously said of the Duke: “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.” But her attention turned to her family, including their four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward.
Writing in his book, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, royal author and confidante Gyles Brandreth spoke about the immediate aftermath of Philip’s death, when the members of the family started to arrive. “As they tried to comfort the Queen, the Queen was comforting them,” he revealed. It echoes comments made by Prince Andrew following his father’s passing. “I feel very sorry and supportive of my mother, who’s feeling it, I think, probably more than everyone else,” he said a short time later.
“The Queen, as you’d expect, is an incredibly stoic person. She described his passing as a miracle. She’s contemplating, I think is the way that I would put it,” Andrew continued. “She described it as having left a huge void in her life, but we, the family, the ones that are close to her, are rallying around to make sure we are there to support her.” Of Philip, he said: “I loved him as a father. He was so calm…He was always someone you could go to and he would always listen. We’ve lost, almost, the grandfather of the nation.”
Following the news of the Duke of Edinburgh‘s passing, the Queen‘s former press secretary, Charles Anson, spoke about how the monarch would be coping with her loss by remaining calm, an emotion that comes to her naturally and through experience, and that she would have already prepared herself for the inevitable. “She would have thought about this moment several times, and her way would be to remain as steady and as calm as possible,” he told People . “That comes naturally to her through her temperament and her experience.” Anson, who worked for the Queen in the 1990s, then reflected on his firsthand experience witnessing the monarch’s calm disposition, telling the outlet: “In my years of working for her she was always calm, no matter what was going on,” before adding: “But for any human being, this is a very cathartic moment.”
