Queen heartbroken: How THREE of Queen’s four children broke her heart – ‘Annus horribilis’
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip have been married for more than 70 years and have four children together. The monarch’s children are Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. In 1992, the Queen had what she described as an “annus horribilis”, or “horrible year”, and it was partly due to three of her four children.
The expression was brought to modern prominence by Queen Elizabeth II in a speech to Guildhall on November 24, 1992, marking the 40th anniversary of her accession.
She said: “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.
“In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an annus horribilis.”
Some of the unpleasant events the monarch faced this year were the ends of three of her children’s marriages.
Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son, divorced from his wife Sarah Ferguson on March 19, 1992.
Just over a month later, her only daughter, Princess Anne, divorced from Captain Mark Phillips on April 23.
Then, Princess Diana’s tell-all book Diana: Her True Story, revealing the problems in her marriage to the Queen’s eldest son, Prince Charles, – particularly his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles – was published on June 8.
Princess Diana and Charles officially separated in December later that year.
But the divorces and separations to hit her children weren’t the only tragedies in the Queen’s life that year.
On November 20, a fire in Windsor Castle, one of the Queen’s official residences, broke out causing extensive damage.
In addition, the death of her nephew, Prince Albrecht of Hohenlohe-Langenburg on April 23, the same day as Princess Anne’s divorce, is said to have hit the Queen hard.
Photographs of Sarah Ferguson sunbathing topless with her friend, John Bryan were also published in August, 1992.
And as that wasn’t enough, intimate conversations between Princess Diana and James Gilbey from a tape recording of their phone calls were published.
During the calls, Gilbey affectionately called Diana by the names “Squidgy” and “Squidge”.
The Sun newspaper publicly revealed the tapes’ existence in an article entitled “Squidgygate”, which is a cultural reference to the American Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
