Pranter
Imperial Majesty
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Molly is there a link about that? Just curious...like to read about it!
LaRae
LaRae
Molly is there a link about that? Just curious...like to read about it!
LaRae
"Family dinner" could mean a range of things from just the households we know well as working royals to a broader swathe of people who are family or like family to her Majesty. That it would be just the closest family members was always just an assumption.
If all the cousins come with their kids and grandkids and if close friends are invited and allowed to bring dates the number gets high pretty quickly.
Three score years and ten is our lease on this Earth, according to the Bible. What does it mean to be married for that long, to spend a whole lifetime together? In the shag’n’go era of Love Island and Tinder, a dating app that “facilitates communication between mutually interested users” (be still my beating heart!) the 70th wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip feels like a magnificent achievement, almost defiant in its patient and tender longevity.
Some things never change. The official portrait to mark the most successful marriage in Royal history shows ninety-one-year-old Elizabeth smiling warmly at the camera, as she always does. Her husband, still ramrod straight at 96, gives that unmistakable flinty-eyed Philip look which hisses, “Get on with it, man!”
After seven often turbulent decades, the Queen and Prince Philip are a sterling example of the unfashionable virtue of perserverance, of sticking to your vows. They have four children (three of them divorced), eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren – with a fifth, from William and Kate, due in the spring.
Corgis have come and gone, so have prime ministers; new coins become old, ways of feeling and thinking changed utterly from anything that could have been imagined in 1947. Throughout, this couple’s great gift to the nation has been stability, the blessed relief of being able to take them utterly for granted.
I don’t think we will understand how much we are in their debt till death do them part (for nothing else will part them now). Theirs is one of the great love stories if, by love, we mean not the fireworks of passion but a candle kept alight in the darkest days. Today, we should all congratulate them on their platinum wedding anniversary. High time, I reckon, to pop down to the cellar and crack open a can of tinned pineapple from the Government of Queensland.
As the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh mark their 70th wedding anniversary today they can look back on a marriage that is the longest royal union in British history.
The Queen has described the Duke as her “strength and stay” throughout her many years of service.
At the age of 96, the Duke has only just retired from public duties, in which has shown a remarkable energy as well as devotion to the Queen. Yet by his own admission, the Duke did not find the initial transition from the head of his family to royal consort an easy one.
He was a talented and forthright young naval officer when they met, who served with bravery in the Second World War, and not someone naturally disposed to a playing supporting role.
But over the decades, the Duke said that he and the Queen “achieved a sensible divide of labour” that has led to a Royal partnership of unprecedented longevity.
The video clip indicates some of the foreign royals will be attending so it's way more than just a cousins/kids/grandkids type of thing.
IF it's accurate.
LaRae
I thought I recognised the Duchess' pearls this evening from SOMEWHERE...
They were so smitten with each other when they first began courting that the Queen is said to have played 'People Will Say We're in Love' from the musical Oklahoma! on repeat. "How good he is, Crawfie," the young Elizabeth exclaimed to her nanny, as she watched Philip jump over the tennis nets at Dartmouth College in 1939. "How high he can jump!"
But what did the Queen and Prince Philip really think about each other in those early years, and how has their love and respect for one another evolved over their 70-year marriage?
They are notoriously private, not prone to public displays of affection. But over the years they have, now and again, shown us a glimpse - in speeches, or in letters to loved ones - of the deep bond that exists between them.
We take a look at some of the most poignant moments, when their true feelings have been revealed.
In 2006, at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, the Prince said it was the secret of a happy marriage "to have different interests."
But undoubtedly the secret to their very unique marriage must lie in Prince Philip's unfailing support of his wife throughout her reign.
The Queen once recalled: "Philip once met an Australian man who said: 'My wife is a doctor of philosophy and much more important than I am.' Philip said: 'Ah yes, we have that trouble in my family, too'."
Humour has also undoubtedly been at the route of their long partnership.
heirs was a love match. When the then Princess Elizabeth wed Philip Mountbatten 70 years ago today, no degree of formality, royal protocol or decorum could conceal that she did so for the most romantic of reasons. Their regard for one another is evident in those early photographs, her eyes gazing into his; two people on the threshold of a lifetime of service, during which their marriage would be tested like few others are.
Yet despite the extraordinary nature of their existence, living out their years in the full glare of public scrutiny, their union has endured. And to tease out the secret to its success, we must look first to what brought the pair together: their love, “an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is never shaken,” as Shakespeare put it in Sonnet 116.
In a letter to the princess before their marriage, Philip declared himself “to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly.” Elizabeth, for her part, was described as looking “flushed and radiant with happiness” at their first joint public appearance, noted Philip Eade in his biography of the young duke.
Epic fail by whoever was in charge of captioning the photos in the Mail article.
No, nothing planned - read more about it in the previous posts here. ?Lovely to have such a large family gathering. I am a little surprised there has been no service of thanksgiving. Is something planned for a later date?
That's British photographers for you - even police officers who check visitors with a guest list have to be photographed.