Grandmothers are almost always portrayed as sweet women giving heartfelt pieces of advice to the youth and boosting their self-esteem — but what if your grandmother is the Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms? Sure enough this granny isn’t spending much time doing cross-stitch patterns and baking cookies.
Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second is surrounded by countless duties and protocols that leave commoners wondering what the Queen really is like as a grandmother. And the best way to find out is to listen to what her grandchildren have to say.
“A lot of people get very excited and sort of nervous around her,” said grandson Prince William. “And I've seen some very comical moments. I've seen people literally faint in front of her. It's quite a startling moment as to what to do when you faint in front of the Queen! There's a lot of trembling knees and people can't talk sometimes,” he continued.
“Growing up, having this figurehead, having this stability above me has been incredible,” the Duke of Cambridge explained. “I have been able to explore, understand, slightly carve my own path. I greatly appreciate and value that protection,” he added.
On Aug. 31, 1997, when Prince William and Prince Harry got the news that their mother, Princess Diana, had been killed in a car crash, the Queen put the boys ahead of all other concerns in those first few critical days. “She felt very torn between being the grandmother to William and Harry, and her queen role,” William recalled in the 2017 BBC documentary “Diana, 7 Days.”
“Our grandmother deliberately removed the newspapers, and things like that, so there was nothing in the house at all. So we didn't know what was going on,” he added.
Meanwhile, Prince Harry is all praises for her grandmother’s devotion to her duties. “It's just incredible to know that someone at that age appreciated and understood exactly what was expected of them and to basically put duty ahead of everything else so early on in her life is quite remarkable,” the prince said. “I have been asking her for years what her secret is, but she won't tell me,” he joked.
“The queen has been fantastic in letting us choose what we'd like to do,” Prince Harry explained. “She tells us to take our time and really think things through. I admire the queen hugely and of course, had no option but to agree to help her relieve her load. It has, though, stopped me having a career of my own.”
The public is not blind to notice that the Queen does let her guard down a bit with Prince Harry. And they do have this very special kind of grandma–grandson relationship that looks, well, normal.
Her Majesty has eight grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Based on the statements of princes William and Harry, everyone can agree that the Queen is a protective type of grandmother who teaches them manners and laughs at their jokes.
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