King Charles Learned of Queen Elizabeth’s Death With These 2 Words, New Biography Claims: ‘No Further Explanation Was Needed’
King Charles III needed to hear only two words to know his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was dead. According to a new biography, upon being told a simple phrase — not Operation London Bridge, the codename for the protocols surrounding the queen’s death — the now-75-year-old monarch knew his mom’s life had ended. Ahead, where King Charles was when the queen took her last breath and what he later received that gave him insight into the queen’s thoughts in her final days.
King Charles was driving to Balmoral when he was told Queen Elizabeth died
Not unlike Prince Harry being mid-flight when he learned of his grandmother’s death, King Charles was also traveling when he heard the news.
The king was driving a Land Rover to Balmoral, the queen’s home in Scotland, from his own (Birkhall), alongside his wife, Queen Camilla, and their team, Robert Hardman shared in a Daily Mail excerpt of his upcoming biography, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy.
But he was too late. The queen died before his arrival, meaning Sir Edward Young, Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary, had a “duty” to “alert the new monarch before anyone else could do so.”
“There was no question of waiting for the car to pull up at Balmoral,” Hardman wrote. “Imagine if there had been some accident or a hold-up along the way,” he quoted a senior official as saying. “It was essential that the new King was told before anyone else.”
Queen Elizabeth’s private secretary told King Charles by addressing him as ‘Your Majesty’
All it took was a simple “Your Majesty” for King Charles, then the Prince of Wales, to know his entire life had changed. No longer was he an heir to the throne. Now he was the new leader of the British royal family.
It happened when King Charles and Queen Camilla were almost to Balmoral. Young called the Balmoral switchboard, setting off a flurry of phone numbers before finally being connected to Sir Clive Alderton, the king’s then-private secretary, who was traveling with him at the time.
Although “staff would usually have phones on silent” in the royals’ presence, Harman explained, “one of the party felt their phone vibrating,” saw the number on the screen, and answered before handing the phone to Alderton.
“He had to ask his boss to pull over and stop,” Hardman wrote. “Sir Edward Young was now on the other end of the phone. The new monarch knew exactly what was coming next.”
King Charles, he continued, “had just turned off the B976 onto the back drive of the estate when, at the age of 73, he was addressed as ‘Your Majesty’ for the first time. No further explanation was needed.”
At that, the king “softly” replied, “We’re nearly there,” as those in the car offered their condolences. Then he continued driving and, moments later, was greeted by his sister, Princess Anne.
King Charles later got a box of telling paperwork from next to Queen Elizabeth’s deathbed
Later, the queen’s footman retrieved a locked box of paperwork from the late queen’s deathbed. In it, per Hardman, “was the last completed homework of the longest reign in history.”
There were sealed letters to her oldest son, King Charles, and another to Young, her private secretary.
“Were they final instructions or final farewells? Or both?” the biographer wrote. “We will probably never know what they said. However, it is clear that the Queen had known that the end was imminent and had planned accordingly.”
Elsewhere in the box was the queen’s last royal order, the final piece of official paperwork she handled before dying. It was a “completed” list of her picks for the six individuals to join the Order of Merit.
The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy hits shelves on Jan. 18, 2024.
