Late Queen wrote two final letters on her death bed – one to Charles and one to a non-royal

Following the death of Her Majesty the Queen, details have emerged about her final hours – including information about the very last letters she wrote.

The late monarch passed away peacefully at Balmoral on 8 September 2022 at the age of 96. “Very peaceful. In her sleep. Slipped away. Old age. She wouldn’t have been aware of anything. No pain,” her private secretary Sir Edward Young documented in a memo. Royal expert Robert Hardman shared further details about the moments after the Queen’s death in his book King, Charles III: New King, New Court. The Inside Story. In it, he revealed that, shortly after Sir Edward wrote his note, a footman brought in a locked red box of paperwork found at the late royal’s deathbed.

“When it was opened, staff discovered two sealed letters: one to her son and heir, now King Charles III, and the other to Sir Edward himself,” Hardman wrote. “While their contents are unlikely ever to be made public, the existence of the letters shows that Elizabeth, 96, quietly recognised her time on this earth was at an end.”

The box also reportedly contained the Queen’s final piece of paperwork and last royal order: her choice of candidates for the Order of Merit for ‘exceptionally meritorious service’ across the Commonwealth. “Even on her deathbed, there had been work to do. And she had done it,'” Hardman further noted. Young served as the late Queen’s Private Secretary from 2017 to 2023. He was first recruited to the Royal Household in 2004, serving as Elizabeth II’s assistant and then as deputy private secretary until his promotion to private secretary.

After the Queen’s death, Young served as a joint principal private secretary to King Charles III to assist in the early days of his reign, until he stepped down in May 2023.A Palace spokesman said at the time that Young had brought ‘a vast reservoir of wisdom and experience to bear on helping to deliver the change of reign.’

A discreet figure around the Palace, Lord Young was immortalised in Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare, under the pseudonym ‘The Bee’. The Duke of Sussex said Lord Young was known as ‘The Bee’ thanks to his ‘oval-faced and fuzzy’ appearance and tendency to ‘glide around with great equanimity and poise’. He added that the Private Secretary “was so poised that people didn’t fear him. Big mistake. Sometimes their last mistake”. Following his retirement as private secretary to the sovereign, Young was granted a peerage, made a permanent lord-in-waiting, and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.