Before she was Queen... SHE WAS MUMMY

THE FAMILY DYNASTY BECAME HER GREATEST PRIDE AND JOY

To the world, she was Her Majesty the Queen, but to her family, she was Mummy, Grannie, or Gan-Gan.

She was already mother to Prince Charles, 3, and Princess Anne, 1, when she devoted herself to a lifetime of service as Queen at just 25 years old. But as she navigated the early years of her rule, the relationship with her eldest children suffered.

The youngsters were left in the care of nannies for a bewildering six months when she and Prince Philip went on Commonwealth tour, and Charles famously hated being sent by his parents to brutal Gordonstoun boarding school in Scotland.

“The Queen and her husband could never be accused of being the most tactile of parents,” says one royal insider. “They were big on tradition and not so big on bedtime cocoa and cuddles.”

Charles would later complain that his upbringing was marred by his “absentee” parents, and in 1994 he revealed he was “inevitably raised by nursery staff”.

By the time Prince Andrew was born – 10 years after his big brother – it seemed the Queen had learned some parenting lessons. Royal experts agree she was “much more hands-on” with Andrew and his younger brother, Prince Edward.

Andrew – now 62 and disgraced for his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – was her favourite child, a fact that complicated things when she had to ask him to step down as a working royal last year.