The Queen/Prince Philip

[just_ordinary]

She does, but the drastic change in her posture and all compared to a year or just couple of months ago is quite obvious. Let’s hope she makes it through the year. She really starts to look her age…. which is fine but such a difference to outside watchers. 
I wish she could survive till COVID is more under control and the Brexit situation reaches an ok plateau. Just to give some reassurance and stability. 

[Coconut Flan]

She's held up remarkably well, but recently there have been more signs of her age.  She's, of course, had amazingly good care.  What I'm seeing here is more of the assisted living great-grandma taken out for a party than I've ever noticed before.  

Don't be shocked if she's shown walking around like this in the morning and she's gone by 4 pm.  My mother's most recent roommate was her usual self at breakfast and gone before lunch.  That's happened to two of her roommates in their 90s.

[MamaJunebug]

3 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Whatever is going on behind closed palace doors, I must say that HM QEII looks great in this IG clip:

Digging the height of the cane!  Makes much more sense than the ones that are only about hip high—! 

[Coconut Flan]

Hers actually looks a bit long.  Her arm is bent at an upward angle when using it.  The usual recommendation is to begin with it at 1/2 body height and adjust an inch up or down for comfort.  Normally the arm is never bent up from the elbow, but somewhat downward.  That's why you see so many at hip height. 

I only point that out so people don't damage their arms using a cane that's out of proportion.  

[MamaJunebug]

1 hour ago, Coconut Flan said:

Hers actually looks a bit long.  Her arm is bent at an upward angle when using it.  The usual recommendation is to begin with it at 1/2 body height and adjust an inch up or down for comfort.  Normally the arm is never bent up from the elbow, but somewhat downward.  That's why you see so many at hip height. 

I only point that out so people don't damage their arms using a cane that's out of proportion.  

Oh wow, thanks!  Guess I’m just thinking about that walker i used to see advertised on old-people TV - it was elbow-height instead of hip height and looked linn my s it was much better for posture overall.  

[SoSoNosy]

She has announced that it is her wish that Camilla become Queen Consort when the time comes.

 

[Coconut Flan]

1 hour ago, MamaJunebug said:

Oh wow, thanks!  Guess I’m just thinking about that walker i used to see advertised on old-people TV - it was elbow-height instead of hip height and looked linn my s it was much better for posture overall.  

Using a walker and using a cane are for different purposes.  Canes are for balance only and shouldn't be used for support.  The problem with a lot of especially elderly people is they lean on the walker and then the walker can skitter away in front of them.  The upright walker helps stop that.  When people are leaning are their canes, they probably should have crutch(es) or a walker instead.  I've spent far too much time doing PT haven't I?  I even had to sit through two rounds with my mother.  

When I broke my foot the last time, there was considerable discussion on when I could go from one crutch to a cane and generally they resolved I should stick with the crutch over a cane because I really needed support not balance.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Coconut Flan

[47of74]

Just saw this

 

Quote

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has used the historic milestone of her Platinum Jubilee to redefine the future of the monarchy, calling for the Duchess of Cornwall to be known as Queen Camilla when Charles becomes King.

When Charles married Camilla in 2005, the couple announced she intended to be known as "Princess Consort" despite having a right to the title of Queen. It was seen as a recognition of the sensitivities around a title that was destined for Charles' first wife, Diana.

It's the same reason Camilla doesn't use the title of Princess of Wales.

The Queen would be expected to consult her direct heirs Charles and William before making such a significant announcement about titles, which suggests they both agreed and felt the British public is ready to accept Camilla as Queen.

 

[viii]

It’s dumb that this even needs to be said. Camilla is married to Charles. When he becomes King, she becomes Queen. Diana stans can get over it. 

[MamaJunebug]

7 hours ago, Coconut Flan said:

When I broke my foot the last time, there was considerable discussion on when I could go from one crutch to a cane and generally they resolved I should stick with the crutch over a cane because I really needed support not balance.

Sorry you had to go thru thus multiple times! But thank you so much for the education on support/balance devices!

#The More An Old Person Knows…!

[SoSoNosy]

Charles and Diana were so horribly mismatched, I think their divorce was inevitable.  I think everybody wishes it hadn't played out so publicly for the boys' sake.

[EmCatlyn]

18 hours ago, SoSoNosy said:

Charles and Diana were so horribly mismatched, I think their divorce was inevitable.  I think everybody wishes it hadn't played out so publicly for the boys' sake.

I bet the tabloids didn’t wish that. If they had cared about “the boys” (or, for that matter, Camilla’s kids) they would not have reported some of the more scandalous stuff.  Both Charles and Diana were also to blame for not being more discreet and for revealing stuff about their private lives to the media. And they don’t seem to have thought of how this would impact their kids at all.

In hindsight we can all look and see that the boys were victims of their parents’ incompatibility,  And while the primary responsibility for that ill-conceived marriage is difficult to pin down, the fact is that everyone there was at fault.

The incompatibility was definitely a major issue, but the real problem was that no one seems to have made Diana understand from the beginning that this was (from the perspective of everyone except the sentimental public) a marriage of convenience.  I think (by Diana’s own account) that Charles tried (badly, but he tried).  When he proposed he asked if she understood that marrying him meant she would someday be queen.  When he realized that she was expecting love, he rather stupidly tried to make her understand (just before the wedding !🙄)  that he wasn’t in love with her.  He handled it badly, and the whole thing would have been better if he had included the “not in love” part in the original proposal.  But he seems to have been the only person who even tried (though he bungled it).  Her sisters and her parents should have warned her, but they didn’t.  In fact, when she got cold feet as the wedding came closer, one of her sisters told her that she had to go through with it now.

The tragedy here was that in trying to avoid the “scandal” of young Charles marrying a “woman with a past,” the Windsors made things worse.  In a different time, Charles could have proposed to Camilla before she married Parker-Bowles and the whole mess with Diana would not have happened.

Returning to the subject of the Queen and Phillip, their decisions concerning their family were not always wise.  Elizabeth did not protect Margaret but instead forced her sister to give up her first love because he was divorced.  And Charles was pressured to find a “woman with no past” at a time when any young woman over 21 was probably going to have “a past.”  Then Phillip pressured Charles to commit himself to Diana before he and Diana had a chance to really get to know each other.   The failure of that marriage, as you say, was pretty inevitable.

 

[Ozlsn]

12 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

The tragedy here was that in trying to avoid the “scandal” of young Charles marrying a “woman with a past,” the Windsors made things worse.  In a different time, Charles could have proposed to Camilla before she married Parker-Bowles and the whole mess with Diana would not have happened.

Yes, so much in agreement with this. I do think the very public implosion of that marriage, and probably also Andrew's marriage, forced the Palace into the late twentieth century in terms of recognising that even "eligible gels" quite likely had some degree of "past" and that virginity wasn't the be all and end all for a partner (now if we can get some other sectors of society on board...) 

I do wonder about an alternate timeline where Charles had the courage to say "marrying her, you can all go jump" - and in which Diana found someone who truly loved her.

[louisa05]

That’s not at all how any of it went down.  
I would highly recommend Penny Junor’s bio of Charles. Very fair and balanced. Louis Mountbatten was the only one pushing Charles at any point about marriage. 

[EmCatlyn]

3 hours ago, louisa05 said:

That’s not at all how any of it went down.  
I would highly recommend Penny Junor’s bio of Charles. Very fair and balanced. Louis Mountbatten was the only one pushing Charles at any point about marriage. 

I was not trying to cover “the whole story” — just the part about how Diana and Charles ended up married in spite of their incompatibility.  Louis Mountbatten was dead by then. In fact, according to some accounts it was  Diana’s warm empathy when meeting Charles after Mountbatten died that first made him notice her.

His parents may not have been “pressuring” him to marry, but the press was certainly doing so. 😉  And there was never any question that he could marry a “woman with a past.”  I remember that whenever Charles’s name was linked with any woman, there was a lot of digging into her past and that when Diana came on the scene there was talk about how he was interested in her because she didn’t have a past.  The story about Phillip was that he told Charles that if he was not interested in Diana, he should stop seeing her because she was getting so much attention that it would be hard on her after things built up more.

I have always had sympathy for Charles because he seems to mean well.   I am not sure about Junor’s biography, but it is worth checking out.

 

Edited February 8, 2022 by EmCatlyn
Rephrase something.

[viii]

I mean… Diana had to get her virginity checked before he married her. Let’s not pretend that Charles was free to marry any kind of woman he wanted. 

[EmCatlyn]

21 minutes ago, viii said:

I mean… Diana had to get her virginity checked before he married her. Let’s not pretend that Charles was free to marry any kind of woman he wanted. 

Huh?  I hadn’t heard that about the “virginity check.”  Where did you hear it?

[viii]

I’ve known that story all my life. They made a big deal when William married Kate that they were dropping that inspection by a doctor. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[louisa05]

50 minutes ago, viii said:

I mean… Diana had to get her virginity checked before he married her. Let’s not pretend that Charles was free to marry any kind of woman he wanted. 

No. She did not. That did not happen. 

31 minutes ago, EmCatlyn said:

Huh?  I hadn’t heard that about the “virginity check.”  Where did you hear it?

Her uncle announced to the press that she was a virgin. There has since been speculation that she was, in fact, not. There was no test. The story grew from that unfortunate announcement prior to the wedding. 

[just_ordinary]

I don’t think we can have a real idea if a “virginity check” went down or not. Or if her gyn just made a note or no one was interested really. Maybe a check to make sure she wasn’t pregnant? However, as no one involved said something that’s all highly speculative.

[viii]

10 hours ago, louisa05 said:

No. She did not. That did not happen. 

Her uncle announced to the press that she was a virgin. There has since been speculation that she was, in fact, not. There was no test. The story grew from that unfortunate announcement prior to the wedding. 

That makes more sense. Thank you!

[SoSoNosy]

I had seen somewhere that the "virginity test" was fake news.  And it would be kind of hard to check Kate right before the wedding since they had been living together for several years.  

 

[QuiverFullofBooks]

Supposedly the ob/gun visit was to make sure Diana was fertile (kind of obnoxious, but understandable under the circumstances) and everyone just assumed that the doctor told the Queen’s staff whether she was a virgin. Apparently Mark Phillips had to have his sperm checked before he married Princess Anne. 

[DalmatianCat]

On 2/6/2022 at 9:12 PM, SoSoNosy said:

Charles and Diana were so horribly mismatched, I think their divorce was inevitable.  I think everybody wishes it hadn't played out so publicly for the boys' sake.

As far behind the times as the royal family is, it’s still weird to think that in 1979/80, no one thought that a 19 year-old girl who didn’t have any higher education, (and had dropped out of finishing school after failing exams) would be able to travel extensively, meet world leaders, and marry into one of the most well-known families in the world, and not have any problems adjusting. I wonder if Diana had been encouraged to get a degree or a private tutor if things might have been easier for her in the early days. I wonder if she ever considered going back to school after she and Charles separated.

[EmCatlyn]

16 hours ago, viii said:

I’ve known that story all my life. They made a big deal when William married Kate that they were dropping that inspection by a doctor. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don’t remember hearing that, and I would think it very unlikely there was ever such a practice.  I can’t imagine that either Alexandra of Denmark (Edward VII) or Mary of Teck (George V) were put through such an inspection. (Those were the last two to marry a Prince of Wales.)  Going back, the previous one would have been George IV’s wife (Caroline of Brunswick).  I just don’t see it as very likely that any sort of “certificate of virginity” was required.  Maybe there was talk of it, and jokes about how Kate (who had been living with William) wouldn’t pass if there were such a test?