Read Game of Crowns: Elizabeth, Camilla, Kate, and the Throne Online
Authors: Christopher Andersen
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After six decades still a serious student of world affairs, the Queen met with then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton and French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009.
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The next year, she covered her head and took off her shoes to visit the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, and was all ears during a meeting of Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet at 10 Downing Street.
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For the first time in seventeen years, Charles attended the State Opening of Parliament in May 2013—another sign the Queen was turning more power over to her son.
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Elizabeth II visited Pope Francis I at the Vatican in May 2014. She was shocked, and influenced, by his predecessor Benedict XVI’s decision to become the first pope to abdicate in six hundred years.
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On his first trip abroad in the spring of 2014, Prince George met an Australian bilby at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo. A windblown Camilla, meanwhile, joined Charles and her mother-in-law at ceremonies in Normandy marking the seventieth anniversary of D-day.
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Aware that she will someday be seated beside King Charles III on such occasions, Camilla looked every inch the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament in May 2015.
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While Daddy flies helicopters for the East Anglian Air Ambulance out of nearby Cambridge, two-year-old George prepares for takeoff with a little help from his mother, the duchess.
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At ninety-four and wearing the seven-pound bearskin hat of the Grenadier Guards, the Duke of Edinburgh was back alongside his wife for the 2015 Trooping of the Colour. The Queen plans to move to Balmoral full-time after Philip’s death.
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Prince George seemed unimpressed as the Queen and Camilla peered in on his sister Charlotte after her christening at Sandringham in July 2015.
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Wearing her nanny’s uniform, Maria Teresa Borrallo smiled at George and Great Granny sharing a heart-to-heart.