For Adolf Hitler, she was the ‘most dangerous woman in Europe’ thanks to her brains and steely will to win.
Royal photographer Cecil Beaton had a more colorful formulation, describing Elizabeth, queen consort of George VI, as “a marshmallow made on a welding machine.”
As writer Tina Brown explains in her bestseller The Palace Papers, the Queen Mother (as she later called herself) was “an implacable enforcer of royal infallibility,” no matter how cuddly and indulgent a grandmother she was to Prince Charles.
Form took precedence over feeling, Brown writes.
Although loved by the public for her ‘cuddly’ image and famous for spoiling her grandson, King Charles, the Queen Mother was formidable
The late Queen Mother with Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend pictured during a tour of South Africa in 1947. The Queen Mother was strongly opposed to Margaret and Townsend’s engagement
Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend photographed at Harrismith in the Free State Province, formerly known as the Orange Free State, during the Royal Tour of South Africa in 1947
Group Captain Townsend was first equerry to King George VI and then to his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II
Princess Margaret’s 1955 announcement that she had decided not to marry Group Captain Tow
Princess Margaret returns to Clarence House on October 17, 1955 after a weekend in the country where Group Captain Peter Townsend was also a guest. The decision not to marry Townsend was announced on October 31
Group captain Peter Townsend, whose name is linked to that of Princess Margaret, is pictured talking to reporters outside the Lowndes Square house where he is staying in London.
She was strongly opposed to the engagement of the young Princess Margaret to group captain Peter Townsend and made her feelings known.
On the night that Margaret finally decided to part with the older man, a flying ace and friendly equerry to both George VI and Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother went out for the evening.
As historian and biographer Hugo Vickers put it, she “must not have been aware or concerned that her daughter would be eating alone on a tray.”
The Queen Mother expressed the same adamant opposition to her grandson Charles’ relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.
‘Once it became known that Camilla was the Prince of Wales’s mistress, she refused to receive her with or without him.’
Prince Charles as a little boy with his grandmother, the Queen Mother, and a little dog named Pippin
Prince Charles, Prince of Wales greets the Queen Mother with a kiss during their holiday at the Castle of Mey, her home on the Scottish coast
Prince Charles would see his grandmother whenever the two were in London, sometimes daily, and greet her with elaborate kisses on the arm
Charles and his grandmother look closely at Epsom Racecourse on Derby Day 1986. Diana in polka dots looks on
Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is said to have believed that by surrendering to Charles, the Queen Mother was increasing tensions between Prince Philip and his son. The two are pictured here at the Epsom Derby
‘There was rarely a day when Charles and his grandmother were at their London residences that the Prince did not visit her in the morning or for a drink.
‘The queen felt that the old troublemaker was exacerbating tensions between Philip and Charles and that her exemplary example was encouraging him to financial excesses.’