Queen Elizabeth’s Deepest Regret Was Missing Prince Philip’s Final Moments

For more than 70 years, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip stood side by side — through war, travels, receptions, scandal and sweeping change. But in the end, when he quietly slipped away in his sleep on the morning of April 9, 2021, at age 99, she wasn’t there.

According to palace insiders, that single missed moment haunted the monarch during the final year of her life.

“She had been up with him the night before,” a former courtier reveals. “He was fading, and she knew it. But by morning, she hadn’t yet gotten out of bed when the news came — he was gone.”

According to royal biographer Gyles Brandreth’s book, “Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait,” Prince Philip had been in a hospital bed set up in his dressing room at Windsor Castle.

That morning, he was assisted to the bathroom by a nurse.

“When he came back, he said he felt a little faint and wanted help getting back into bed,” writes the royal expert. “The nurse called the Duke’s valet and the Queen’s page for help — and he died before the Queen could be called. She wasn’t yet up. And she wasn’t called until after a doctor had come and pronounced the Duke dead.”

After a lifetime of unwavering duty and composure, those closest to the queen said that moment cracked something inside her.

“She was devastated,” says one insider. “Even at 95, even after everything she’d endured, she wasn’t ready. Not for that. Philip was the only man she ever loved.”

The Duke of Edinburgh had been her rock since she was just 13, when she first fell in love with the dashing naval cadet during a visit to the Royal Naval College with her parents — King George VI and wife Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Philip was dashing and handsome — tall with light blond hair and fine features.

“She never took her eyes off him the whole time,” Elizabeth’s governess recalled later.

Elizabeth was already in love. After she got home to Buckingham Palace, she kept his photo permanently displayed on her desk. She told friends he was “the one.”

By 1944, Philip wanted to marry Elizabeth, who was then 18, but her father said it was too soon.

In one of Philip’s 1946 letters to Elizabeth, he wrote, “To have fallen in love unreservedly makes all one’s troubles seem small and petty.”

He wrote a letter to her mother that said: “Lilibet [Elizabeth’s nickname] is the only thing in this world which is absolutely real to me … I know that I thank God for Lilibet and us.”

On Nov. 20, 1947, when Elizabeth was 21 and Philip was 26, they wed at Westminster Abbey. He was by her side when she became queen at 25, and remained her fiercest protector — publicly stoic, privately warm, always steady.

“He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments. But he has quite simply been my strength and my stay all these years, and I, and his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know,” the queen said about her husband at their 70th wedding anniversary, calling him an “often-hidden force in keeping her steady at the helm.”

Prince Philip’s funeral was held on April 17, 2021, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, with only about 30 loved ones in attendance due to the COVID pandemic. The funeral, much smaller than previous royal burials, was attended by Elizabeth, their four children, eight grandchildren and other close family members and friends. The hour-long ceremony was largely planned by Philip himself, down to a customized Land Rover hearse and the music — including the Royal Navy Hymn, a nod to his military roots.

Although she deeply regretted not having the chance to say goodbye, Elizabeth did write her final words to Philip in a private note that was placed inside his coffin.

In the weeks after his passing, the queen carried on, as she always had — quietly, dutifully, with a smile. But those who saw her behind palace walls noticed the change.

“She kept saying, ‘I just wish I’d been there,’” a palace insider recalls. “Not for herself — but to hold his hand, to tell him he was loved one last time.”

In the end, Elizabeth lived only 17 months without him. And some believe the heartbreak of that missed goodbye played a part in her own passing, so soon after her beloved Philip’s death.

“She didn’t want to live without him,” says a palace courtier. “And after he went, part of her did too.”

Queen Elizabeth passed away peacefully on Sept. 8, 2022, at 96 and is buried next to Prince Philip at St. George’s Chapel.