Elizabeth the Queen (78 page)

The young couple controlled the guest list, which was heavily weighted toward their contemporaries and representatives of William’s charities. To accommodate the couple’s preferences, ambassadors were invited, but their spouses were not. Even the Queen and Prince Philip had an allocation of only forty places, not unlike most twenty-something weddings, where the grandparents’ circle is rarely in evidence. Elizabeth II was able to invite such members of her extended family as Margaret Rhodes (who had been one of her own bridesmaids), and she arranged for Angela Kelly’s staff of in-house seamstresses to make her cousin a pale blue dress, coat, and hat.

A
MONTH BEFORE
the nuptials, the Queen attended a private party at St. James’s Palace given by her cousin Lady Elizabeth Anson to celebrate the fiftieth year of her party planning business. For more than ninety minutes, Elizabeth II mingled with the crowd of six hundred that included aristocrats as well as caterers and florists. “Usually when members of the royal family come into a room, there is a vacuum around them,” said one partygoer. “But tonight everyone is crowded in around her.” The Queen was in a merry mood, smiling and chatting informally with old friends and strangers alike, without the benefit of Palace aides to smooth her path. “Come on, you two, get together!” she said with an emphatic gesture as she made one spontaneous introduction. Later she remarked on how much she enjoyed spending time with such a diverse group of people. “And everyone was so friendly to me!” she exclaimed.

With eight days to go before her grandson’s big event, she celebrated her eighty-fifth birthday, which coincided with her annual Maundy Service, held at Westminster Abbey for the first time in a decade. She spent nearly a half hour presenting red and white purses of Maundy money to eighty-five men and eighty-five women, walking with a sure stride and showing no sign of the pain in one of her knees that had been bothering her for several months. (She had even given up riding for a while, but had resumed her daily outing on horseback when she and her court moved to Windsor for their annual stay during April.) Philip, looking trim in his morning suit, watched her intently as she carried out her solemn act of humility, and the elderly recipients greeted her with bows and curtsys. Midway through the service, he walked to the pulpit to read the second lesson, from the Book of Matthew, in a clear and strong voice. At the end, the congregation of nearly two thousand sang a thunderous “God Save the Queen” accompanied by military trumpeters and the organ at full volume.

By the following Friday, the Abbey had been transformed into a leafy bower, with the strategic placement along the nave of twenty-foot-tall maple and hornbeam trees in large planters brimming with lilies of the valley. Under the majestic Gothic arches, Catherine wanted to create the illusion of the countryside as she walked down the red-carpeted aisle with her father. It was a bold and successful move, one of numerous examples of the distinctly modern stamp she and William put on their day. The Order of Service not only featured a stunning photograph of the couple by Mario Testino, it included an informal message of thanks to the public for its “kindness” and “incredibly moving … affection” that “touched us both deeply.”

That morning the Queen had given them the titles of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But even more significantly, they overrode protocol by announcing that they could be known by their own names as well. “It is absolutely natural that the public might want to call them Prince William and Princess Catherine,” said Paddy Harverson, press secretary to Prince Charles (technically, “princess” is used only for someone born a princess), “and no one is going to have any argument with that.”

At the heart of the celebration was the infectious joy of a young man and woman who both loved and understood each other. They showed a sense of restraint and respect for the monarchy’s one-thousand-year-old traditions, along with what Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, called a “deeply unpretentious” style. Standing at the altar in the dashing scarlet and gold-braided uniform of the Irish Guards, his regiment as an honorary colonel, William turned to Catherine when she reached his side. “You are beautiful,” he said, taking in her simple yet exquisitely detailed dress with bodice and sleeves of handmade lace, her gossamer veil, and the delicate diamond “Halo” tiara lent to her by the Queen. As they left the Abbey in the horse-drawn 1902 State Landau, Catherine said, “Well, are you happy?” “Yes,” replied William. “It was amazing. I’m so proud you’re my wife.”

The Queen also pronounced the service “amazing.” A vibrant figure in a buttercup yellow coat and matching hat, she had watched approvingly while keeping her emotions in check, seated in the front row below the high altar with Prince Philip in their wooden and gilded chairs with crimson silk cushions. The bride and groom radiated strength and stability under the scrutiny of forty television cameras transmitting their every expression and word to an estimated two to three billion viewers in 180 countries around the world. They were also being followed by 400 million people on the Internet, with 237 tweets per second.

The wedding service was unabashedly British and Anglican, and it dramatically displayed the royal family’s role as a repository of unself-conscious patriotic pride, providing a chance “for the nation to come together without partisan disagreement, without excuse for political discord,” wrote
The Times
. At a time of economic distress and low morale, “there was sunshine and laughter and happiness that everyone could join in.”

The year 2002 had been a turning point for the Queen, but 2011 was a turning point for the monarchy—the arrival of what David Cameron called “the team of the future” for an institution “that’s helped bind the country together” and “has produced incredible people.” Nobody made a direct reference to Diana in the Abbey, but her presence was inescapable, not only through the inclusion of a hymn from her funeral in the same setting, but the memory of William’s stoical sadness that day. Fourteen years later, he had found happiness as well as redemption, closing the book on a painful past.

The Queen was beaming during the six-minute appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony when the newlyweds kissed not once but twice for the jubilant multitude around the Victoria Memorial. Elizabeth II modestly kept to one side, but when it was time to go, she took charge and led the Windsors and the Middletons back inside. As in the Abbey, the atmosphere was surprisingly intimate in the vast state rooms, where the springtime floral decorations included cow parsley and daffodils from Scotland. “The venue was palatial,” said the author Simon Sebag Montefiore, “but really it felt as cozy, informal and effervescent as a traditional British family wedding.”

Few would have noticed that the Queen was recovering from a cold that had been bothering her earlier in the week. One who knew was John Key, prime minister of New Zealand. During a visit with her at Windsor Castle two days earlier, he had given her a jar of his country’s manuka honey, which is known for its infection-fighting properties—a thoughtful gesture that she mentioned to a number of guests at the reception. In New Zealand the popularity of William and Catherine had sparked an impressive surge of support for the monarchy. More than half of the country’s adults watched the royal wedding, and a new poll indicated that only 33 percent expected New Zealand to vote out the monarchy, compared to 58 percent in 2005.

The Queen made no public remarks at the reception, but both future kings spoke from a dais in the Picture Gallery. Charles said he was “thrilled to have a daughter” who was his son’s “soulmate,” teased the groom about his hereditary bald spot, and said he hoped William would care for him in his old age, although he worried his eldest son might “push his wheelchair off a cliff.” William introduced “Mrs. Wales” as “a wonderful girl” with whom he was “in love.” He thanked his grandparents not only for “allowing us to invade your house,” but the Queen in particular “for putting up with numerous telephone calls and silly questions” in the weeks before the wedding.

At 3:30 on the dot, after all the guests had assembled in the garden, Catherine, still in her bridal gown, and William, now in a dark blue Irish Guards frock coat, climbed into Charles’s 1970 Aston Martin convertible, decorated with shiny balloons, ribbons, and a license plate saying “JUST WED.” They drove through the Palace gates onto the Mall for the short ride to Clarence House, as one of William’s Sea King helicopters hovered above, trailing a Union flag. The crowds exuberantly cheered as they passed. “William and Catherine were coming down to earth,” said Margaret Rhodes. “They were like an ordinary couple driving out in their little open car.”

By every measure, the wedding was the biggest media sensation of the twenty-first century, with nonstop coverage by six thousand accredited journalists and as many as four thousand unaccredited—numbers that astonished Palace officials, and the Queen as well. A million spectators hailed the royal couple on the streets of London and another 24 million in Britain watched on television, nearly 40 percent of the population of 62 million. In a YouGov poll taken for
The Sunday Times
, 73 percent of respondents said Catherine would help revivify the royal family.

Following the newlyweds’ ten-day honeymoon in the Seychelles, Catherine readied herself for a gradual adoption of royal duties with a limited number of charity patronages and official engagements. The couple agreed to make their first overseas tour together to Canada, the Queen’s largest realm, for nine days in July 2011, followed by three days in the United States, choosing California rather than Washington, D.C., or New York for their stay—another sign of their fresh approach. William and Catherine made clear their intention to live their own way as well as the royal way, in a Welsh farmhouse near his RAF base for at least two years without the customary domestic staff of valets and maids, and emerging periodically on the public stage. They deliberately chose a path that would allow them to enjoy the normal rhythms of married life while preserving the mystery necessary for the monarchy’s image.

* * *

T
WO WEEKS AFTER
the wedding, the Queen made a historic state visit to the Republic of Ireland—the first since her grandfather, King George V, toured Dublin a century earlier when the country was still part of the United Kingdom. Thirteen years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Elizabeth II’s four days in Ireland were laden with symbolism. In her most resonant gesture, she silently bowed her head at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance after laying a wreath, honoring those who had fought against Britain for Irish independence. She also paid homage to the nearly fifty thousand Irishmen who had died while serving with their British comrades in World War I and some seventy thousand who had volunteered in World War II despite Ireland’s official position of neutrality.

Elizabeth II moved with quiet dignity from one carefully chosen location to another amid massive security provided by ten thousand police and soldiers. She unflinchingly confronted her nation’s bloody past by visiting Croke Park, the stadium where British troops had fired into the crowd of five thousand at a football game in 1920, killing fourteen spectators in reprisal for the assassination of fourteen British undercover agents by an IRA hit squad. She toured historical sites, business enterprises, education and research institutions, and even three legendary stud farms in County Kildare. The Queen wore emerald green, the British flag flew, and Irish bands played “God Save the Queen” for the first time as leaders of both countries emphasized the value of reconciliation and the potential from strengthening Anglo-Irish ties.

Speaking at a state banquet in Dublin Castle, for centuries the headquarters for British colonial rule, the Queen began with an unscripted greeting in perfect Gaelic—the language once banned by the British—prompting Irish president Mary McAleese to mouth, “Wow, wow, wow,” and for the assembled luminaries to applaud. The relationship between the two neighboring countries had “not always been straightforward,” said the Queen, “nor has the record over the centuries been entirely benign.” She stressed “the importance of forbearance and conciliation,” and, in an echo of her earlier gesture, “of being able to bow to the past, but not be bound by it.”

She directly addressed the “painful legacy” of “heartache, turbulence and loss,” including events that touched “many of us personally”—a clear allusion to the assassination of her Mountbatten cousin. “To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy,” she said. “With the benefit of historical hindsight we all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”

Her restrained and subtle language was inherently powerful, and her manner was heartfelt. But the impact came mainly from the moral authority that the Queen has earned over her long reign. She didn’t need to issue an abject apology; with her words and her actions, Elizabeth II offered the Irish—and the British—a gentle catharsis. She “helped to release … sorrow for the sufferings of the past, relief that they are over, hope for a decent future,” wrote
The Irish Times
. Even Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm, praised the Queen’s “sincere expression of sympathy.”

Her trip to Ireland was hailed as one of the most significant of her reign. “I don’t think anybody could have achieved what she has,” said Elaine Byrne, a lecturer in politics at Trinity College Dublin. “It just seemed more personal and real.” The Irish people enveloped her with warmth and enthusiasm, marveling at her stamina for an octogenarian—her prolonged standing and her walking across distances and up steps with surprising agility—and pleased that she seemed to be having such a good time. At a concert in her honor, the audience gave her a five-minute standing ovation as she stood on the stage and smiled appreciatively. During her final rounds in the city of Cork, known for its history as a bastion of republican rebels, she took an unscheduled walkabout and greeted cheering onlookers, some even waving union flags. The Queen’s visit, said Byrne, “left us feeling a bit better about ourselves for the first time in a long time.”