They have been the faithful companions of Queen Elizabeth II for decades: her famous Welsh Corgi Pembroke, a breed of dog with which she has always surrounded herself. The British monarch, who died this Thursday at the age of 96, would have had around thirty corgis throughout her life, so this canine species has become inseparable from Buckingham.
The queen’s fondness for these short-legged, big-eared little fellows dates back to her earliest years. Corgis entered the queen’s life in 1933. She was then 7 years old and her father, the future King George VI, brought one of her home to her and her younger sister Margaret to her. The two girls call him Dookie. Eleven years later, she receives a second one, Susan, as a coming-of-age gift.
Elizabeth and Susan become inseparable: according to fashionWhen the Queen and Prince Philip crossed to the UK for their honeymoon in 1947, the dog was on the road. The latter will be, according to Gracestarting point of the entire line of corgis that would accompany Elizabeth II during the following decades.
Your own “corgi room”
Among the queen’s corgis, some were actually dorgis: Susan’s line also gave rise to dorgis, a cross, when one of the queen’s corgis mated with her sister’s dachshund.
Together with the queen, the corgis led the life of a castle: according to mrs figaro, they had their own room in Buckingham, the “corgi room”, where the wicker baskets they slept on were located, raised to avoid draughts. The women’s magazine reports that the Queen fed them from porcelain bowls, vet-approved menus.
Four of them can even boast of having accompanied their lover on the cover of vanity fairin the spring of 2016. However, the shooting had led to other shootings in the company of members of the royal family, but these were only published on the inside pages:
“She wanted to be photographed with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, their daughter, Princess Anne, and their corgis,” Annie Leibovitz, the fashion photographer in charge of the shoot, said at the time. .
She supervised her diet.
The queen also relied on these little animals to relax her guests, as the war surgeon David Nott recounted. As she reeled from a terrible memory during a private lunch at Buckingham Palace, the Queen offered to pet her dogs and give them biscuits.
“For 20 minutes during that lunch, the queen and I fed the dogs. She did it because she knew he was so traumatized,” he told the BBC in 2016.
Elizabeth II loved her corgis so much that she personally supervised their feeding, according to Royal Date Pets, a book dedicated to the pets of the British royal family. Served at 5 pm sharp, the dogs’ dinner consisted of beef tenderloin and chicken breast covered in gravy.
The Queen, her dogs… and James Bond
The queen’s dogs were even the heroes of a humorous short film broadcast on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Actor Daniel Craig, playing his character James Bond, arrived in Buckingham by taxi to collect to the queen – who had agreed to play the game by playing her own part. Agent 007 was greeted by two corgis frolicking on the palace rugs.
According to the BBC, which even compiled a family tree of the queen’s corgis, Elizabeth II had up to nine corgis simultaneously. But their presence dried up over the years until 2015: as Time magazine reports, an adviser to the Queen (then 89) announced to Vanity Fair that year her decision not to breed new dogs, so as not to “leave the dogs behind.” youths”. ”. At that time, two still occupied Buckingham.
In December 2020 his dorgi Vulcan passed away. All he has left is Candy, the last dog of the royal family. But in early 2021 there is a turn of events: the queen reconsiders her decision and acquires two new corgis.
The news is revealed in March by the British press, while the royal family is in the midst of a crisis: Prince Philip is in the hospital – he will die the following month – and Buckingham is preparing for the explosive interview of Meghan and Harry, which he intends to reveal behind scene of his departure on American television. These two dogs were, according to Suna way for the queen to deal with the crisis.
Source: BFM TV
