misshonoriaglossop:

A day before Lord Snowdon (Antony Armstrong-Jones) took the official photos of the Prince and Princess of Wales with their newborn son Prince William, his daughter Lady Sarah and his assistant Andrew Macpherson rehearsed for the photoshoot. 

As the Queen left for Westminster in the Gold State Coach, there were two small figures watching from one of the windows at the front of Buckingham Palace. One was a young Prince Charles, dressed in a silk suit, and the other was Princess Anne, and one of them would soon leave to become the first British child ever to see his mother crowned monarch. Princess Anne wasn’t quite three and she was told she was too young.

“The only thing that I remember, if that’s the right expression, is feeling just a touch grumpy that I wasn’t allowed to go, and after that, nothing. I should have been aware of being on the balcony, but you see, I’m not entirely sure I was aware of that or whether it’s just the fact that you see photographs and you think, ‘I must have remembered it.’ I’m not sure that I do.”

From the day a footman delivered the news in 1936 that Edward VIII had abdicated the British throne, it was clear that his brother’s 10-year-old daughter would one day rule the Commonwealth. Fifteen years later, the princess, by then the wife of a Greek prince and mother of two, became Queen Elizabeth II. As the Queen enters the Diamond Jubilee of her reign—the second longest in English history—VF.com presents a look back at the days of her youth.

(via alessandrahautumn)