April 21 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Queen Elizabeth II. She spent 70 years on the throne crafting a reputation as a pragmatic monarch who knew her lane and stuck to it. Elizabeth knew that being in charge of a family business such as the House of Windsor meant her primary imperative was not to establish her own legacy but to hand over the throne in good shape to the next generation.
Now, less than four years after her death, a reappraisal has begun of a woman who, in private, was far more complex than she appeared in public. Two masterful new biographies by Hugo Vickers and Robert Hardman showcase a bounty of revelations from insiders, often talking on the record more frankly than they would have in the past for fear of upsetting the monarch or her family.
In particular, they offer new insights on the crises of the last decade of Elizabeth’s life, especially the departure of her grandson and his wife — Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — and the long-running toxic scandal engulfing her son, the former Prince Andrew, over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
While Harry and Meghan’s actions distressed the monarch — she couldn’t understand why her grandson abandoned his royal role to be “a carer for Archie,” Vickers writes in “Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History” — the Epstein scandal festered into a putrid sore on the monarchy, in part because Elizabeth had to be pushed to protect the monarchy from the actions of her boorish, self-centred son.
“The Queen did not believe he had behaved improperly,” Vickers writes, adding, “It is fortunate that she did not live to witness the denouement.”
The ultimate human frailty
Throughout her reign, Elizabeth and her staff took drastic action to cauterize wounds that threatened her throne, including those from her own family. Elizabeth told her sister, Margaret, that she could marry her divorced love, but she’d have to give up her succession rights. She forced Charles and Diana to separate when their very public marital collapse endlessly dominated the front pages. After the Windsor Castle fire in 1992, the palace announced the Queen would pay taxes on her personal wealth and opened Buckingham Palace to visitors to pay for the restoration. More recently, the Queen nixed Harry and Meghan’s desired half-in, half-out role, believing such intermingling of duty and commercial gain was a recipe for disaster.
Yet, she couldn’t apply the same impersonal thinking with Andrew. “She loved her son; she trusted him,” explained Hardman in an interview with the Star in London. At the same time, “She hated confrontation. She didn’t want to be put in a formal situation where she might have to discipline Andrew but she knew what was happening.”
What is remarkable about Elizabeth’s slow-mo decisions regarding Andrew is that pragmatism was her default setting throughout her reign, Hardman writes in his biography, “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.”
She was able to modernize the institution of the monarchy but could not hold her son accountable. Her motherly protection of Andrew was the ultimate human frailty that hurt her reputation and that of the monarchy as the Andrew-Epstein scandal hung over the last years of her reign. Whenever she was forced to act, she did the bare minimum needed at the time.
In 2011, former prime minister David Cameron informed the Queen that Andrew would have to step down from his role as trade envoy, in part because of his friendship with Epstein — the British press had recently published an image of Andrew walking through Central Park with Jeffrey Epstein well after his conviction — and in part because the opinionated prince was offering too many inappropriate opinions to foreign leaders and diplomats. In Hardman’s book, Cameron offers one bit of backhanded praise for Andrew: “He was very good with all the tyrants.”
Support amid scandals
In 2019, the Queen forced Andrew to cease being a working royal following his disastrous interview on the BBC regarding his relationship with Epstein, in which he cast doubt on Virginia Giuffre’s claims that she was forced to have sex with Andrew by Epstein when she was an underage teen. But Andrew kept all other trappings of royal life, including his title, Duke of York. Three years later, just before he settled a civil case brought by Giuffre for a reported $20 million without admitting liability, the negative publicity over the case forced another royal retreat: Andrew gave up being called “His Royal Highness.”
Yet, through those same years, Elizabeth repeatedly signalled her support for her embattled son. In 2017, two years after Giuffre’s accusations became public, she appointed him colonel of the Grenadier Guards. A few months after settling the Giuffre civil case, he escorted his mother to the memorial service of Prince Philip at Westminster Abbey.
The lingering Andrew mess was a rare exception to Elizabeth’s pragmatic streak. Another was her decision not to fly the Union Jack over Buckingham Palace in the days following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Elizabeth refused to break the tradition of never flying a flag when the monarch was absent from her London home despite mounting public anger over the uncaring symbolism of an empty palace. “The times she put [pragmatism] on hold, it did not serve her well,” Hardman told the Star.
The short-term damage to the monarchy can be seen in opinion polls. While Elizabeth’s popularity is undented, YouGov reports that 58 per cent of Britons believe that the royal family reacted too slowly to the Epstein revelations while half say senior royals should have done more to condemn Andrew.
A complicated legacy
As revelations continue to surface, the final reckoning may take time to appear. This month, Buckingham Palace will announce the name of Queen Elizabeth II’s official biographer — believed to be Anna Keay — who will be given free rein to scour private diaries, archives and state documents. The massive research and writing process of documenting the life of one of the longest-reigning monarchs in history is daunting — Elizabeth’s first Canadian prime minister, Louis St-Laurent was born in 1882; her last, Justin Trudeau, was born in 1971.
Now, it is King Charles III who is tackling the difficult issues left behind by his mother, especially the Andrew-Epstein scandal, that turned white hot after the U.S. Department of Justice released millions of damaging documents that showed the extent of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein. In October, the monarch summarily stripped his brother of all royal trappings, reducing him to Mr. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. On Feb. 19, Andrew was arrested by police in the United Kingdom on suspicion of misconduct in public office, believed to be related to his decade-long role as trade envoy. He has not been charged with any crime and has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
While Charles’s short reign has been dogged by the Epstein scandal, it has been far more successful than critics expected.
“A lot of people predicted that when she died, the wheels would fall off; the monarchy would enter some existential crisis,” writes Hardman. “It just hasn’t happened.” There was also a fear that most of the 15 realms of which King Charles III is head of state would quickly jettison the monarchy to become republics. That hasn’t happened — yet. In Canada, the endless “whither the monarchy” debate largely stopped after the King issued an emotional defence of the country during his opening of Parliament in 2025.
On Tuesday, the centenary of her birth, the royal family and public will see the final plans for a large memorial devoted to Elizabeth that will be constructed in parkland near Buckingham Palace. The King’s brother is not expected to attend.
