The Royal Family marked two sad anniversaries in the family's personal history this weekend.
- The Royal Family marked two sad anniversaries this weekend on November 20.
- While one was a bittersweet anniversary, another was a devastating loss for the Royal Family and took place three decades ago.
- In other royal news, King Charles could be planning major changes for first Sandringham Christmas as monarch
The 30-year anniversary of the Windsor Castle fire took place on Sunday, November 20, 2022. The fire, which took place at the Queen's Berkshire property, Windsor Castle, recently featured in season five of The Crown, which showed the devastating impact this event had on the Royal Family.
According to the Royal Family’s website the fire broke out in the Private Chapel when a spotlight came into contact with a curtain and began to burn. Following this, the Windsor Castle fire rapidly spread, with nine principle rooms and over 100 other rooms damaged or destroyed in the fire. This amounted to one-fifth of the area of the castle and an area of 9,000 square meters. It then took 15 hours and one-and-a-half million gallons of water to put out the fire.
This event was one of the many awful events to take place in 1992, the year her Majesty referred to as her Annus Horribilis, the Latin phrase meaning horrible year. This was also marked as a 'horrible' year, because 1992 was also the time when a number of her children's marriages began to fall apart.
The Princess Royal and her first husband Captain Mark Phillips - the father of the oldest of the Queen’s grandchildren Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall - completed their divorce proceedings in 1992 after separating in 1989. Similarly, Charles and Princess Diana’s relationship came to an end in a different way as they announced their separation in December 1992.
Although devastating, the Windsor Fire was just one of the many sad things taking place in the Queen's life during her annus horribilis. That being said, the fire was particularly hard for the Queen, as it took place on her 45th wedding anniversary to the Duke of Edinburgh.
November 20, 2022 not only the anniversary of the Windsor Castle fire, but another painful date for the Royal Family because of an anniversary that once was a pleasant celebration for the Royals.
November 20 marks the Queen and Prince Philip’s wedding anniversary, and the date this year would have been the couple's 75th wedding anniversary. This is particularly bittersweet for the Royal Family because the Queen and Prince Philip are both no longer around to mark this date.
The Queen died on September 8, 2022, and Prince Philip died the year before on April 9, 2021. This means that while the couple was able to mark 73 years of marriage together, they fell just short of their 75th diamond anniversary. It is likely that the late Queen and Prince Philip's wedding anniversary was silently and privately marked by the Royal Family on Sunday.
