Photo: PA Images via Getty
Before she wasQueen Elizabeth, she was a new wife and mother.
In a letter from her honeymoon, the then-Princess Elizabeth told her cousinMargaret Rhodesshe was “blissfully happy,” as told in acollector’s edition of PEOPLEdedicated to the late monarch, who died in September.
“I’m enjoying being married to the best and nicest man in the world,” she said of life withPrince Philip.
She joked to Rhodes in a letter, “I couldn’t help wishing that a photographer would come along, just for once, as he would never have believed what he saw!”
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their honeymoon in 1947.Central Press/Getty
Prince Philip, too, was very much in love.
“Cherish Lilibet? I wonder if that word is enough to express what is in me,” he wrote to his mother-in-lawQueen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother— though his rakish side was also on display. When a friend said of his wife, “I never realized what lovely skin she has,” the prince replied, “Yes, she’s like that all over!”
Within three months of tying the knot, Princess Elizabeth was pregnant with their first child. Despite suffering from morning sickness, their social life continued to be a whirl of races, restaurants and nightclubs. For a costume party at the Duchess of Kent’s home, she dressed “in black lace, with a large comb and mantilla, as an Infanta [a Spanish princess],” wrote diarist Chips Channon, and “danced every dance until nearly 5 a.m.”
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The futureKing Charleswas born on Nov. 14, 1948, at home on the second floor of Buckingham Palace.Prince Philiphad been playing squash and, still dressed in sneakers and sports clothes, arrived to cheers from the waiting crowd, then gave his wife a bouquet and a kiss.
Two weeks later, the excited new mother wrote to her cousin Lady Mary Cambridge, “I had no idea that one could be kept so busy in bed — there seems to be something happening all the time!”
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WhenPrince Philipresumed his naval career in the fall of 1949 as first lieutenant aboard the destroyer HMSChequersbased in Malta, Princess Elizabeth made it clear thatshe would join him.
For the next two years, she divided her time between London and a hilltop villa on the island whilePrince Charlesremained at Clarence House in the care of his nanny anddoting grandparents.
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So began what she would later call the happiest years of her life. Princess Elizabeth’s days were occupied with ordinary pleasures — driving alone, going to the hairdresser and shops, handling cash for the first time.
“It was the only place that she was able to live the life of a naval officer’s wife, just like all the other wives,“Lady Pamela Hicks, the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, told theDaily Mail.Inheriting the throne felt a long way off.
PEOPLE is looking back at theQueen Elizabethera with a newly revised special edition. It isavailable nowwherever magazines are sold.
source: people.com
