The late Queen Elizabeth II was famously private, and made no secret of the fact that she wanted the rest of the royal family follow suit. That trait may very well have come from her own mother, the late Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who is often credited as the driving force behind the monarchy’s “never complain, never explain” mantra.
According to The Queen Mother: The Official Biography by William Shawcross, the Queen Mother – born Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon, the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Glamis – was staunchly opposed to anything that aired the family’s private lives in public.
When her grandchildren – then-Prince Charles, Princess Anne, and Prince Andrew – divorced their respective spouses, Princess Diana, Captain Mark Phillips, and Sarah Ferguson, she was reportedly appalled at just how public the proceedings became.
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Charles, Andrew And Anne's Divorces Were Reportedly 'Abhorrent' To The Queen Mother
As per excerpts from the biography obtained by the Daily Mail, while the Queen Mother was reportedly supportive of her grandchildren on a personal level, she wished that they had handled their marital breakdowns far more discreetly, in keeping with previous royal tradition.
"She had been sympathetic to both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York over the enormous pressure they faced from the media. But the washing of dirty linen in public was utterly abhorrent to Elizabeth," Shawcross wrote, adding: "Her entire life was based upon obligation, discretion and restraint."
The Queen Mother was therefore unsurprisingly upset and embarrassed when Princess Diana gave her explosive Panorama interview to Martin Bashir in 1995, where the infamous quote about three people in her marriage, in reference to Queen Camilla, came from.
Her exact quote was: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." Shawcross explained that "public rejection of her husband and his life was contrary to everything that Elizabeth believed and practiced."
The now King Charles wasn't any better, either, as the Queen Mother reportedly "regretted" the things he told journalist Jonathan Dimbleby. When Dimbleby asked King Charles if he had been faithful to Princess Diana, he told the journalist that he had been, "until it became clear that the marriage had irretrievably broken."
As per the book, the Queen Mother said: "It's always a mistake to talk about your marriage." In her eyes, the public unraveling of her grandchildren's royal marriages wasn't just unfortunate, it was a direct contradiction of everything she had worked to preserve.
