However, they all enjoyed an incredibly close bond with the woman they knew simply as ‘Grandma’. As the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Sussex led a poignant vigil for grandchildren around Queen Elizabeth’s coffin on Saturday night with their cousins - Peter Phillips, Zara Tindall, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, Lady Louise Windsor and James, Viscount Severn – stories have once again begun to emerge of the remarkable relationship they all shared behind the palace walls. Like the time the late Queen asked Prince Harry to record the first voicemail message on her new mobile phone. Ever the joker, according to royal author Phil Dampier, Harry spoke the following words into the earpiece: “Hey, wassup? This is Liz. Sorry I’m away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two and for corgis, press three!” The late monarch’s private secretary Robin Janbryn got the shock of his life when he heard this, but she just laughed, always sharing her grandson’s wicked sense of humor. A few years later, in 2016, he agreed to star in a fun video responding to Barack and Michelle Obama’s Invictus Games challenge with the words: “Oh, really, please.” Harry then said: “I think it was almost like you could see that look on her face, at the age of 90, thinking, ‘Why the hell doesn’t anyone ask me to do these things more often?’ With the Duke of Edinburgh often playing pranks on his grandchildren, disorder is the word that seems to characterize the relationship between the older and younger members of the House of Windsor. In a documentary aired after Prince Philip’s death in April last year, both Harry, 38, and William, 40, enjoyed the fact that their grandparents used to love it when “things went wrong” in the royals engagement. “You can imagine they live a life where everything has to go right all the time, so when things go wrong, they both laugh a lot,” William said. “Everyone else is mortified, but they love it.” As her grandson and heir, the Prince of Wales had a special relationship with his late grandmother, who saw him regularly go to Windsor Castle for afternoon tea when he was a student at nearby Eton College. As well as helping him deal with his grief after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 – when he was a boarder at the elite school – the late Queen also used the one-on-one sessions to subtly prepare him for the role of future king, helping to instill in him her own unwavering sense of duty. Naturally shy like Queen Elizabeth, it’s fair to say that William has modeled his subtly statesmanlike but no-nonsense approach to royal life in her image. As her eldest grandchildren and the children of her only daughter Princess Anne, the late Queen was always incredibly close to Peter Phillips, 44, and Zara Tyndall, 41. She was proud that Peter was head boy at Gordonstoun, the jumping of Prince Philip. mata, and of representing Scotland in rugby at junior level. Of course, she was also proud of all Zara’s equestrian achievements having won the World Eventing Championships in 2006 before winning a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012. But what she used to happily tell her friends about her granddaughter was that she was a qualified physiotherapist. Having been home-schooled, Queen Elizabeth greatly admired her degree-educated grandchildren (and was equally proud of Harry’s 10 years of service in the British Army, which saw him complete two tours of duty in Afghanistan).
