Queen Elizabeth kept her stoic composure during her husband’s funeral service on Saturday, alone and poignantly small beneath the reflective stones of St. George’s Chapel.
Lonely in her pew because of her strict social distancing, she bowed her head to mourn her beloved 73-year-old consort, widows of every rank and fortune.
But an accidental photo of the frost rather dab her eye the day may have caught her only outward display of grief.
Elizabeth, 94, who has rarely been seen crying in public, was fooled into touching her black-gloved hands to her eyes and adjusting her mask as she sat in the back of her black Bentley following the funeral procession.
“The Queen wipes away a tear as she says goodbye to her 73-year-old husband,” the Royal Central wrote in the photo.
“Did Queen Elizabeth cry at Prince Philip’s funeral?” USA Today wondered in a headline.
“Unable to contain her grief,” the more rampant British Express urged her majesty.
Whether it was a tear or not may never be known. The queen was clearly grim, but she was in control by the time she arrived at the church and during the gloomy service that followed.
Perhaps the most famous engagement in her short drive from Windsor Castle to St. George’s Chapel was her Bentley’s position in the procession.
Throughout their marriage, Philip had followed the Queen in every public procession, in accordance with royal protocol.
But the queen, who appeared small and frail as she mourned, especially when she was alone in church, followed the funeral procession in her car on Saturday.
She stood behind her husband’s hearse and marchers, instead of in front of them where a monarch would normally be, as if he would lead her together for a change and for their final procession.