A week ago, the farewell to Philip who touched the queen enough to convince her to write her thanks for Philip to the world. Farewell to a man, a witness of the twentieth century and a person who has become almost family over time. Excluding the meager Republican frond in the United Kingdom. And perhaps the nostalgia that is already felt for Philip is explained by the ability of the Windsors to have been able to create, and keep innovating it, the myth of a family on the throne. With basically popular and everyday passions. Something extremely effective – as the most influential journalist of the Victorian era, Walter Bagehot wrote – also politically.
White House
On St. George’s Day, April 23, The Queen came out of mourning, just a week after Philip’s funeral. And now? What awaits you now? On 11 May the opening of parliament, and in June the meeting with the new American president, Joe Biden. The White House has announced that the 46th president in American history will attend the G7 in the UK in mid-June. And he will meet the Queen and other members of the Windsor household. As I write in Filippo and the Queen (Corriere della Sera-Cairo), the former American presidential couple Donald and Melania Trump, visiting London in 2019, brought Filippo a double gift that was certainly welcome: a first edition of the autobiography I Could Never Be So Lucky Again, signed by James Doolittle, the WWII aviator who led the first air raid on Tokyo after Pearl Harbor, and a customized version of the Air Force One jacket.
Windsor o Buckingham Palace?
Who knows what Biden will bring as a gift to Her Majesty? And where will Her Maejsty meet with the new tenant of the White House? In 2018, before the banquet at Buckingham Palace in 2019, the queen had welcomed Donald and Melania for a royal tea time in Windsor where she had been confined to her anti-covid bubble for a year.
Duchy of Edinburgh
Meanwhile, who will inherit the title of the prince, that duchy of Edinburgh that King George Vi assigned him before his wedding with his daughter, Elizabeth? It will touch his younger son Edoardo – apparently the most distant from Father Philip, in reality he is very close, especially in recent times. Apparently distant because Philip was a naval man, a battlefield, a pragmatist by his own admission, a Dynamo for the description of his cousin Patricia Mountbatten. And instead they share the passion for television that Filippo put at the service of the Crown by exploiting the potential of the medium of television to bring the queen down from the pedestal and … let the air of the street, of everyday life, enter the palace. Edoardo with his production company (actually not a success) of TV and cinema has instead made a profession.
Royal engagement
In recent years, it was rather for their dedication to work for the monarchy, the grind Royal engagement – together with his wife, the commoner who before meeting the prince had worked as a pr, Sophie, to approach them. She too was getting closer to the queen and to Philip until the last days of her life. And the commitment to the Duke of Edimburgh’s Award Scheme in particular did the rest.
Affinit
But why among the sons of Philip and the queen is Edward, the youngest, the one projected to inherit the title? Why so was outlined by the sovereign in 1999 when Edward and Sophie got married in the very same church in Saint George where Philip was buried a week ago. At the time of the wedding, Edward and his wife were awarded the title of Earls of Wessex but it was already imagined that in the future they would also take the title of Dukes of Edinburgh. Who gets the title of Duchess today? But to the sovereign, as consort of the late duke, but obviously as queen she never used it.
The queen and the title
In truth, the dukedom would belong to Philip’s eldest son but, for the same reason that the queen does not use the title of Duchess of Edinburgh today … not even Charles when he is king will make any use of it. Hence the choice of the sovereign – who always has the last word in terms of titles and can decide who they are entitled to – to imagine that she could go to Edoardo, who has already led the Edinburgh International Festival as president for years. Edoardo will therefore be the seventh member of the royal house to bear the title of Duke of Edinburgh.
April 24, 2021 (change April 24, 2021 | 00:08)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED