Prince Philip death: Queen will press on with solo engagements

The Queen will attend the state opening of parliament in May with Prince Charles but other appearances will be alone.

The Queen is determined to continue carrying out some solo engagements even as she grieves the loss of the Duke of Edinburgh, The Times understands.

She will resume working when royal mourning comes to an end on April 23, two weeks after the death of Prince Philip. One of the key engagements in her diary is the state opening of parliament on May 11, where the Queen is due to be accompanied at the Palace of Westminster by the Prince of Wales.

The death of the duke has highlighted how members of the royal family have joined the Queen increasingly often on her official engagements.

They include Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Both the Princess Royal and the Countess of Wessex, who has a close relationship with the Queen, joined her for engagements by video call during lockdown.

🌷 The Queen and The Prince of Wales enjoy a walk in the grounds of Frogmore House, Windsor.

This image is one of two released to mark the Easter weekend. Head over to @RoyalFamily to see the second photograph.

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— The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) April 2, 2021

However, several royal sources have confirmed that the Queen, who turns 95 on April 21, is still likely to carry out engagements by herself once the official mourning period ends.

The week before Philip died the Queen - unaccompanied by any members of her family - attended a ceremony marking the centenary of the Royal Australian Air Force at Runnymede near Windsor. Aides noticed that she seemed to be on particularly good form that day, chatting engagedly to RAAF personnel and even allowing the engagement to run slightly over time - usually a clear sign that she is enjoying herself.

Engagements further afield, including what are known in royal circles as “away days”, are likely to involve the Queen being joined by a member of her family. This is regarded as having several benefits. It eases the Queen’s workload, makes the day more enjoyable for her and also means that if she has to cancel at late notice the engagement can still go ahead.

There has, according to multiple sources, been no particular new call for the rest of the family to give the Queen more support with her engagements. Instead the arrangements reflect what has been happening since Prince Philip’s retirement in 2017.

The number of joint engagements may slowly increase as the Queen gets older but it is expected to be a gradual change rather than the result of a sudden directive.

Even though the period of mourning means that the royal family has cancelled most official engagements, it is possible that they may still carry out a handful. These include engagements that are thought to be particularly appropriate and video calls that are difficult or impossible to reschedule.

The Queen is not being given her red boxes of government papers to go through every day while she is in mourning and is not giving royal assent to any legislation. These rules will be relaxed, though, if anything urgent has to be put before her.

The armed forces are stepping up preparations for Philip’s funeral. It will feature servicemen and women from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army and RAF, alongside top military brass, this Saturday at Windsor Castle.

General Sir Tom Beckett, Colonel of the Queen’s Royal Hussars, said: “The regiment is mourning for its colonel-in-chief, who has been associated with the regiment for almost seven decades.”

Soldiers from the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) are understood to be working to prepare the special Land Rover, which the duke helped design, that will carry his coffin on Saturday.

Lieutenant General Paul Jaques, who served with REME, said about the duke, his unit’s former colonel-in-chief: “He was engaged with us and used to visit us probably once or twice every single year since 1969. And he had an enormous passion for all things engineering. In his own words, ‘If it wasn’t invented by God, it was invented by an engineer’. ”

The Times