Queen Elizabeth Was So Close to Her Granddaughter Princess Eugenie

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In light of Queen Elizabeth's passing, we're republishing this story on the British monarch's relationship with her granddaughter Princess Eugenie.

With all the attention that's lavished on Princes William and Harry, it can be easy to forget that they are just two of Queen's eight grandchildren. While these eight people may occupy very different places in the royal line of succession, they all have same right to call Queen Elizabeth grannie. And Princess Eugenie, the sixth of her generation, has a particularly close relationship with her grandmother.

While the Queen’s affinity for Eugenie’s mother Sarah Ferguson has wavered over the years, the monarch has always remained close with her granddaughter. Eugenie who is a director at the art gallery Hauser & Wirth in London, has been busy starting her own family in recent years, marrying her husband Jack Brooksbank in 2018, and welcoming their first child, August, in 2021, but despite her status as a non-working royal (an allegedly contentious matter within the Windsor walls) she still spends a great deal of time with her grandmother.

Photo credit: Samir Hussein - Getty Images
Photo credit: Samir Hussein - Getty Images

While Eugenie, like her sister Princess Beatrice, receives no public funding, they both regularly attend functions with their grandmother. For instance, Eugenie often accompanies the Queen to the Easter Day church service in Windsor, and to the Royal Windsor Horse Show and Royal Ascot. These engagements would not be happening were it not for the Queen’s fondness for her sixth-born grandchild.

The closeness Eugenie and the Queen share is also evident every time the princess speaks of her grandmother in public. While William and Harry tend to err on the side of formality and refer to the monarch publicly as "the Queen," Eugenie regularly refers to her simply as "Grannie." In a recent piece for The Spectator, honoring the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, the princess wrote, "Her Majesty the Queen is an incomparable monarch who has reached a record-breaking milestone. She also happens to be my grannie, and I am a very proud granddaughter."

She added, "I think about my son August and what I’d like for him, what kind of world I’d like him to grow up in. And I think of my grannie and what she has stood for, for so many people and for our family during these 70 years. I’d love Augie to have her patience, her calmness and her kindness, while always being able to laugh at himself and keep a twinkle in his eye."

Photo credit: David Cheskin - PA Images - Getty Images
Photo credit: David Cheskin - PA Images - Getty Images

The Queen was one of the only people who knew about Eugenie’s engagement to her future husband, Jack Brooksbank, right from the very beginning—before her cousins William and Harry, before her friends, and before the rest of the family. The princess said in her engagement interview with BBC’s The One Show that the only people who they told straight away were their parents and siblings, plus the Queen and Prince Philip, adding: “Grannie actually knew right at the beginning, she was one of the very few people.”

In fact, the Queen even leant Eugenie a very special tiara for her big day. Though many had speculated that Eugenie would wear the York tiara (which her mother wore to her own wedding to Eugenie's father, Prince Andrew and remained in her mother's personal collection after the couple divorced) for her 2018 wedding, she actually walked down the aisle in the Greville Emerald Kokoshnik, a Boucheron piece with a whopping 93.7 carat emerald at the center, that was bequeathed to the Queen's mother in 1942.

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