Queen Elizabeth Left Behind Two Letters on Her Deathbed—One for Charles, Another for A Staff Member

Late Queen Elizabeth wrote two letters on her deathbed before passing away. One was addressed to King Charles, and another to a non-royal, to carry forward with her 'unfinished business.' The informal private letters were the last written pieces by the then-British monarch. Royal biographer Robert Hardman’s book, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, details who got the Queen's last two letters.

Hardman described in his book how the staff came across the envelopes on September 8, 2022, when the Queen took her last breath in the Balmoral Castle. According to the Daily Mail, the private secretary of the Queen, Sir Edward Young, was asked to have a look at the Queen's red boxes, which were used daily for sharing documents of importance to the ministers in Great Britain. This is when Young's attention was brought to two letters by the deceased Queen.

The book excerpt read, "It was the last one that had gone up to the Queen before her death. Like all red boxes, it had just two keys, one for the monarch and the other for her duty private secretary," according to Mirror. "When it was opened, staff discovered two sealed letters: one to her son and heir, now King Charles III, and the other to Sir Edward himself," Hardman wrote. "While their contents are unlikely ever to be made public, the existence of the letters shows that Elizabeth, 96, quietly recognized her time on this earth was at an end," Hardman said. 

The excerpt further noted, "We will probably never know what they said. However, it is clear enough that the Queen had known that the end was imminent and had planned accordingly. Were they final instructions or final farewells? Or both? Elizabeth II had been completing her own last pieces of unfinished business." Other than the letters, the Queen left a list of candidates she found fit for her final royal duty. 

According to the royal expert, the Queen had always been diligent about royal paperwork, even in her final days. "The paperwork had gone up to her two days before so that she could go through the notes and tick her choices," he wrote. "It was the last document ever handled by Queen Elizabeth II. Even on her deathbed, there had been work to do. And she had done it," the author wrote while praising the dedication of the late Queen.

In an interesting turn of events, according to Prince Harry's explosive memoir Spare, the royal expert was dubbed "The Bee." Furthermore, the Duke of Sussex revealed that he was called so due to his 'oval-face' and 'fuzzy' temperament. On the other hand, the private secretary "was so poised that people didn't fear him. Big mistake. Sometimes their last mistake," the memoir read, per Mirror.

This article originally appeared 1 month ago.