Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Reuters/Wikimedia Commons
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Despite years of planning for the fall of London Bridge, as Queen Elizabeth II was codenamed, her actual death, a year ago on Thursday September 8, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, caught her family and the nation largely by surprise. The most graphic illustration of this was that only two of her children—Prince, now King, Charles and Princess Anne—were with her, with the rest of her children and grandchildren stuck on various planes and automobiles as they raced, in vain, to see her one last time.
Anne and Charles had both been, by sheer good luck, in Scotland in the days before her death, and both made it to her bedside a few hours before she passed away. Anne had stayed overnight at Balmoral on Wednesday, but, incredibly, on Thursday morning left the castle to fulfill an engagement at nearby Blairgowrie, where she was attending a Riding for the Disabled Association event.