Queen Elizabeth was 'completing' some 'unfinished business' on deathbed

Queen Elizabeth suspected that her end was imminent, which is why she began preparations for what was to come. The longest reigning British monarch died on September 8, 2022, at age 96 during the 70th year of her record breaking rule at Balmoral. Before her death, the late matriarch left two letters before she passed, per an excerpt of royal biographer Robert Hardman’s book, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, via The Daily Mail.

The author described that the staff brining up a red box to senior staff including the monarch’s private secretary Sir Edward Young. “It was the last one that had gone up to the Queen before her death,” the excerpt read. “Like all red boxes, it had just two keys, one for the monarch and the other for her duty private secretary.” Inside the box, Young found that the Queen had left a sealed letter to then Prince Charles and a private letter to himself.

“We will probably never know what they said. However, it is clear enough that the Queen had known that the end was imminent and had planned accordingly. Were they final instructions or final farewells? Or both?” Hardman wrote. “Elizabeth II had been completing her own last pieces of unfinished business.”.