honorary colonel, William turned to Catherine when she reached his side. “You are beautiful,” he said, taking in her simple yet exquisitely detailed dress with bodice and sleeves of handmade lace, her gossamer veil, and the delicate diamond “Halo” tiara lent to her by the Queen. As they left the Abbey in the horse-drawn 1902 State Landau, Catherine said, “Well, are you happy?” “Yes,” replied William. “It was amazing. I’m so proud you’re my wife.”
The Queen also pronounced the service “amazing.” A vibrant figure in a buttercup yellow coat and matching hat, she had watched approvingly while keeping her emotions in check, seated in the front row below the high altar with Prince Philip in their wooden and gilded chairs with crimson silk cushions. The bride and groom radiated strength and stability under the scrutiny of forty television cameras transmitting their every expression and word to an estimated two to three billion viewers in 180 countries around the world. They were also being followed by 400 million people on the Internet, with 237 tweets per second.
The wedding service was unabashedly British and Anglican, and it dramatically displayed the royal family’s role as a repository of unself-conscious patriotic pride, providing a chance “for the nation to come together without partisan disagreement, without excuse for political discord,” wrote
The year 2002 had been a turning point for the Queen, but 2011 was a turning point for the monarchy—the arrival of what David Cameron called “the team of the future” for an institution “that’s helped bind the country together” and “has produced incredible people.” Nobody made a direct reference to Diana in the Abbey, but her presence was inescapable, not only through the inclusion of a hymn from her funeral in the same setting, but the memory of William’s stoical sadness that day. Fourteen years later, he had found happiness as well as redemption, closing the book on a painful past.
The Queen was beaming during the six-minute appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony when the newlyweds kissed not once but twice for the jubilant multitude around the Victoria Memorial. Elizabeth II modestly kept to one side, but when it was time to go, she took charge and led the Windsors and the Middletons back inside. As in the Abbey, the atmosphere was surprisingly intimate in the vast state rooms, where the springtime floral decorations included cow parsley and daffodils from Scotland. “The venue was palatial,” said the author Simon Sebag Montefiore, “but really it felt as cozy, informal and effervescent as a traditional British family wedding.”
Few would have noticed that the Queen was recovering from a cold that had been bothering her earlier in the week. One who knew was John Key, prime minister of New Zealand. During a visit with her at Windsor Castle two days earlier, he had given her a jar of his country’s manuka honey, which is known for its infection-fighting properties—a thoughtful gesture that she mentioned to a number of guests at the reception. In New Zealand the popularity of William and Catherine had sparked an impressive surge of support for the monarchy. More than half of the country’s adults watched the royal wedding, and a new poll indicated that only 33 percent expected New Zealand to vote out the monarchy, compared to 58 percent in 2005.
The Queen made no public remarks at the reception, but both future kings spoke from a dais in the Picture Gallery. Charles said he was “thrilled to have a daughter” who was his son’s “soulmate,” teased the groom about his hereditary bald spot, and said he hoped William would care for him in his old age, although he worried his eldest son might “push his wheelchair off a cliff.” William introduced “Mrs. Wales” as “a wonderful girl” with whom he was “in love.” He thanked his grandparents not only for “allowing us to invade your house,” but the Queen in particular “for putting up with numerous telephone calls and silly questions” in the weeks before the wedding.
At 3:30 on the dot, after all the guests had assembled in the garden, Catherine, still in her bridal gown, and William, now in a dark blue Irish Guards frock coat, climbed into Charles’s 1970 Aston Martin convertible, decorated with shiny balloons, ribbons, and a license plate saying “JUST WED.” They drove through the Palace gates onto the Mall for the short ride to Clarence House, as one of William’s Sea King helicopters hovered above, trailing a Union flag. The crowds exuberantly cheered as they passed. “William and Catherine were coming down to earth,” said Margaret Rhodes. “They were like an ordinary couple driving out in their little open car.”
By every measure, the wedding was the biggest media sensation of the twenty-first century, with nonstop coverage by six thousand accredited journalists and as many as four thousand unaccredited—numbers that astonished Palace officials, and the Queen as well. A million spectators hailed the royal couple on the streets of London and another 24 million in Britain watched on television, nearly 40 percent of the population of 62 million. In a YouGov poll taken for
Following the newlyweds’ ten-day honeymoon in the Seychelles, Catherine readied herself for a gradual adoption of royal duties with a limited number of charity patronages and official engagements. The couple agreed to make their first overseas tour together to Canada, the Queen’s largest realm, for nine days in July 2011, followed by three days in the United States, choosing California rather than Washington, D.C., or New York for their stay— another sign of their fresh approach. William and Catherine made clear their intention to live their own way as well as the royal way, in a Welsh farmhouse near his RAF base for at least two years without the customary domestic staff of valets and maids, and emerging periodically on the public stage. They deliberately chose a path that would allow them to enjoy the normal rhythms of married life while preserving the mystery necessary for the monarchy’s image.
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TWO WEEKS AFTER the wedding, the Queen made a historic state visit to the Republic of Ireland—the first since her grandfather, King George V, toured Dublin a century earlier when the country was still part of the United Kingdom. Thirteen years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Elizabeth II’s four days in Ireland were laden with symbolism. In her most resonant gesture, she silently bowed her head at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance after laying a wreath, honoring those who had fought against Britain for Irish independence. She also paid homage to the nearly fifty thousand Irishmen who had died while serving with their British comrades in World War I and some seventy thousand who had volunteered in World War II despite Ireland’s official position of neutrality.
Elizabeth II moved with quiet dignity from one carefully chosen location to another amid massive security provided by ten thousand police and soldiers. She unflinchingly confronted her nation’s bloody past by visiting Croke Park, the stadium where British troops had fired into the crowd of five thousand at a football game in 1920, killing fourteen spectators in reprisal for the assassination of fourteen British undercover agents by an IRA hit squad. She toured historical sites, business enterprises, education and research institutions, and even three legendary stud farms in County Kildare. The Queen wore emerald green, the British flag flew, and Irish bands played “God Save the Queen” for the first time as leaders of both countries emphasized the value of reconciliation and the potential from strengthening Anglo-Irish ties.
Speaking at a state banquet in Dublin Castle, for centuries the headquarters for British colonial rule, the Queen began with an unscripted greeting in perfect Gaelic—the language once banned by the British—prompting Irish president Mary McAleese to mouth, “Wow, wow, wow,” and for the assembled luminaries to applaud. The relationship between the two neighboring countries had “not always been straightforward,” said the Queen, “nor has the record over the centuries been entirely benign.” She stressed “the importance of forbearance and conciliation,” and, in an echo of her earlier gesture, “of being able to bow to the past, but not be bound by it.”
She directly addressed the “painful legacy” of “heartache, turbulence and loss,” including events that touched “many of us personally”—a clear allusion to the assassination of her Mountbatten cousin. “To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy,” she said. “With the benefit of historical hindsight we all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.”
Her restrained and subtle language was inherently powerful, and her manner was heartfelt. But the impact came mainly from the moral authority that the Queen has earned over her long reign. She didn’t need to issue an abject apology; with her words and her actions, Elizabeth II offered the Irish—and the British—a gentle catharsis. She “helped to release … sorrow for the sufferings of the past, relief that they are over, hope for a decent future,” wrote
Her trip to Ireland was hailed as one of the most significant of her reign. “I don’t think anybody could have achieved what she has,” said Elaine Byrne, a lecturer in politics at Trinity College Dublin. “It just seemed more personal and real.” The Irish people enveloped her with warmth and enthusiasm, marveling at her stamina for an octogenarian—her prolonged standing and her walking across distances and up steps with surprising agility—and pleased that she seemed to be having such a good time. At a concert in her honor, the audience gave her a five-
