New information has been revealed about late Queen Elizabeth II the day her husband, Prince Philip, died on April 9, 2021.
Queen Elizabeth allegedly couldn’t make it to the late Duke of Edinburgh’s bedside before he died at age 99, royal biographer Gyles Brandreth claims.
It was reported that the Queen was beside her husband when he died, but Brandreth wrote, “In fact, I don’t believe she was,” in his book “Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait.”
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“The Duke of Edinburgh had been in a hospital bed, set up in his dressing room at Windsor Castle. That morning, he went to the bathroom, helped by a nurse.”
Brandreth, a former Conversative MP and now Chancellor of the University of Chester, claims that Prince Philip said he felt “a little faint” and wanted help to go back into bed when he came back into the room.
“The nurse called the Duke’s valet and the Queen’s page, Paul Whybrew, for help — and he died before the Queen could be called. The Queen wasn’t yet up. And she wasn’t called until after a doctor had come and pronounced the Duke dead,” Brandreth wrote.
The royal biographer first met the Queen in 1968 when he was 20. Brandreth is known as a “close friend” of Queen Elizabeth who “knew Philip and Queen Elizabeth for decades,” according to the Daily Mirror.
When describing his relationship with the royal couple, Brandreth told The Times in 2021 that there is a limit of closeness between a person and a royal family member.
“The Duke showed me great friendliness over 40 years,” Brandreth started. “But royalty offer you friendliness, not friendship, and you have to remember the difference.”
Due to the pandemic, the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral only had 30 family members and loved ones at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on April 17, 2021. The hour-long ceremony, mostly planned by the Duke himself, included a customized Land Rover hearse and the Royal Navy Hymn.
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For those watching the funeral service, viewers saw the Queen sitting by herself in a pew with a black mask on.
“In some ways, I’m glad we didn’t see that moment,” their daughter Princess Anne said in an interview with CBC in 2023. “And when you see the photgraph, it’s much more worse somehow.”
The 74-year-old princess later went on, comparing the audience views and her experience in person, saying “you saw more of that than we did, [since we were] accompanying the coffin.”
The royal monarchs first met each other at Princess Marina of Greece and Prince George, Duke of Kent’s wedding in 1934. On July 9, 1947, the royal couple announced their engagement and got married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abby.
The pair shared four children, King Charles III, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward, eight grandchildren, and 13 great grandchildren.
Royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith told PEOPLE in 2022 that the Queen “fell in love and she never looked at anyone else,” as a teenager.
Queen Elizabeth made a public tribute to Prince Philip for their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997.
“He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he had quite simply been my strength and stay all these years,” she said about her husband at the time. “And I…owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.”
After celebrating 73 years of marriage in November 2020, the 99-year-old Duke died five months later.
Ailsa Anderson, a former palace spokeswoman, spoke to PEOPLE in 2021 about the Duke’s funeral.
“Ironically, it is probably how he would have liked,” Anderson said. “No fuss, no bother. Right through his life, he never knew what all the fuss was about.”
Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96, just over a year after her late husband.
Her official death certificate officially listed her cause of death as “old age.”
The royal couple are buried next to each other at the King George VI Memorial Chapel in Windsor Castle.
