As the world’s leaders gathered in Glasgow this week for COP26, Queen Elizabeth II — most likely the dignitary they were keenest to glimpse — was not there to greet them. Europe’s last anointed and longest reigning monarch addressed the delegates in a recorded video instead.
This is but the latest of several intimations of royal mortality. The queen, 95 years old this year, long ago handed over arduous foreign tours to her son and heir to the throne, Prince Charles. Just as the Palace begins to transfer more duties around the royal "firm,” the U.K. must begin to think the unthinkable: of life without her.
Britain’s constitutional head of state canceled a planned two-day visit to Northern Ireland recently following an overnight stay in a London hospital, news of which Palace officials ill-advisedly withheld from the world’s media. The intention was to play down fears for her health and spare her privacy from intrusion. Instead, it set alarm bells ringing and accusations of a cover-up. To avoid a recurrence, aides will have to be more open with the press and public about the monarch’s health in old age.