Two letters left by Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed

Queen Elizabeth wrote two private letters before her death. One letter was addressed to her son, King Charles, and the other letter was addressed to her inner circle.

In an excerpt from royal biographer Robert Hardman’s book, How to Make a King: Charles III and the Modern Monarchy (Released on January 18th) daily mail The author described on Friday how staff discovered two private letters left by the Queen after her death on September 8, 2022.

Following the Queen’s death at Balmoral Castle, senior staff, including the King’s private secretary Sir Edward Young, were planning their future when a servant brought them one of the Queen’s famous red boxes. . The red boxes are daily dispatches of documents from ministers across the UK. It may also include documents and communications from representatives of the Commonwealth and other countries around the world.

“It was the last thing delivered to the Queen before she died,” Hardman writes in the excerpt. “Like the other red boxes, it had only two keys, one for the monarch and one for the king’s private secretary.”

Inside the box, Young discovered that the Queen had left a sealed letter to Prince Charles and a private letter to herself.

“We’ll probably never know what they said. But it’s abundantly clear that the Queen knew the end was imminent and was planning accordingly. “Was it an instruction or a final farewell? Or both?” Hardman writes. “Elizabeth II was completing her final unfinished business.”

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The Queen also left a list of candidates to join the Order of Merit, the final royal duty.

“The Queen has always taken this issue extremely seriously,” Hardman wrote. daily mailThis is an excerpt from “The documents had been given to her two days ago and she was able to look over the notes and tick her selections. Here it is completed and sent back for Sir Edward to make the necessary arrangements. It was the last document Queen Elizabeth II handled. Even on her deathbed, she had a job to do. And she did it.”