From Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle to the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Camilla herself, the royal family has swelled in size with each new high-profile wedding. But where did they come from? And – more importantly – where did they live before they moved into one of the many regal residences? Some of those properties were modest, some magnificent. Let's take a look...  

Edoardo (Edo) Mapelli Mozzi married Princess Beatrice in a small, low-profile wedding during the Covid pandemic on 17 July 2020. The pair tied the knot at the Royal Chapel of All Saints in Windsor Great Park after they began dating in 2018, although they had known each other since childhood, as their parents were good friends. In a strange twist, Beatrice's mother Fergie is godmother to Edo's half-brother. 

The successful property developer is the eldest son of Count Alessandro Mapelli Mozzi, who skied in the 1972 Winter Olympics. As such, 
Edo is heir to the Villa Mapelli Mozzi, in Bergamo, Italy. The enormous neoclassical-style palace was built in 1770 on the site of an older castle. The family also owns another property, also known as Villa Mapelli Mozzi, near Lake Como, which they run as a wedding venue.

Edo attended Radley School, which costs almost £45,000 ($56k) a year. Afterwards, he read Politics at the University of Edinburgh, perhaps with the intention of following in the footsteps of his beloved step-father Christopher Shale, who was a close associate of former PM David Cameron. Sadly, Shale died in 2011 after being taken ill at Glastonbury Festival. At the time of his death, Edo said of his stepfather: "He was a father to me, the only father I have ever known... the best father we could ever have."

Edo's mother Nikki Burrows married Christopher Shale when her son was five, and Edo grew up alongside his sister and half-brother in Shale's West Oxfordshire home. The couple bought this house near Chipping Norton in 2010 for £1.5 million ($1.9m) and it's worth an estimated £2.6 million ($3.2m) today. Nikki still lives in the property with her third husband, artist David William-Ellis. During the pandemic, Edo and Beatrice decamped from London to stay in the spacious home.

The couple have lived in an apartment in St James's Palace since they were married. However, after the arrival of their first child, Sienna, in 2021, the couple reportedly bought a £3.5 million ($4.4m) Cotswold farmhouse. The six-bedroom manor is said to have six-foot-high security gates, a swimming pool and tennis courts, as well as a guesthouse. So there's plenty of room for a growing family, as well as Edo's son from a previous relationship. 

The couple attended the coronation of King Charles III and entered Westminster Abbey with Prince Harry. Edo was even seen placing a hand on the prince's lower back, in what appeared to be an affectionate gesture of support. The following evening, the couple partied the night away with the rest of the royals at the King's coronation concert, which was headlined by Lionel Ritchie, Katy Perry and Take That.

In October 2018, Princess Eugenie, the youngest daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, married Jack Brooksbank at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. The couple met while skiing in Verbier in 2010 and dated for seven years before getting engaged. The couple live a relatively low-key life, so let's get to know the elusive royal...

Born on 3 May 1986 in London, Jack attended the £19,200-a-year ($24k) Finton House School in Wandsworth between the ages of four and eight. He lived with his parents Nicola and George in an apartment in this gated period conversion in the same borough, according to The Telegraph. 

The privileged youngster boarded at Stowe School, which these days will set you back almost £41,000 ($51k) per year and boasts other royal alumni, including Prince Ranier III of Monaco. According to the bio that Prince Andrew posted on his official website, Jack was "a School Prefect and Head of House" at Stowe. He also mentioned that Jack is a keen sportsman and "when he was about 10 years old [Jack's] family bought a holiday home in France and he has been going there ever since". Prince Andrew's website was taken down in 2020 after he was embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal.

Skipping university, Brooksbank went straight into the hospitality industry, at one time managing Mahiki, which had been Prince Harry's nightclub of choice back in the late-2000s. As a descendent of the Brooksbank baronets, Jack is a possible heir to the title. Unfortunately, the family pile, Healaugh House in North Yorkshire, was demolished in 1947. 

Luckily for the young couple, the late Queen granted them the use of Ivy Cottage, in the grounds of Kensington Palace (highlighted here in purple). They lived in the three-bedroom cottage between April 2018 and November 2020, extensively renovating it before they moved in. While Eugenie was expecting their first child Arthur, who was born in February 2021, they briefly sublet Frogmore Cottage from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. 

The Brooksbanks, who are expecting their second child, now split their time between Ivy Cottage and Portugal, where Jack works for a high-profile property company. The couple attended the coronation and sat on the third row back, between Princess Beatrice's husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Prince Harry.

Before her 2018 marriage to Prince Harry, Meghan Markle spent much of her adult life in Toronto, where she spent seven years filming Suits. However, fittingly enough for a Hollywood royal, Meghan is an LA girl through and through. She was born in Los Angeles on 4 August 1981 and spent her childhood living in the heart of the city. Let's take a look at where it all began...

Meghan's first home was this four-bedroom, three-bathroom house in Woodland Hills, a family-friendly neighbourhood just north of the Santa Monica Mountains. It sold in 2021 for $990,000 (£780k), much more than Meghan's parents Thomas and Doria would have paid for it back in the early 1980s. Sadly, this was the only home the family shared together as Meghan's parents separated when she was two years old, divorcing four years later.

Meghan and Doria went to live in an apartment over a garage behind this very overgrown house in the central Mid-Wiltshire neighbourhood of LA. Meghan attended preschool at the Little Red Schoolhouse, now the Hollywood Schoolhouse, which was a short walk from the TV studios where her father worked as a lighting director and the two shops her mother owned. 

In 1991, Meghan started at the almost $20,000-a-year (£16k) Immaculate Heart High School and began staying with her father during the week at his two-bedroom ground-floor apartment in this building on Vista Del Mar Avenue, behind the Hollywood strip. After graduating, Meghan went to Northwestern University in Illinois to study theatre and international studies before returning to LA to launch her acting career. Meghan began to land small TV and film roles, and in 2011 she won the part she's best known for, playing Rachel Zane in Suits. 

That same year she married film producer Trevor Engelson, whom she'd been dating since 2004. Although the couple divorced two years later, this Colonial-style property in Hancock Park, LA was their marital home. Meghan also rented a cosy two-storey home in Toronto while filming Suits. Meghan began dating Prince Harry in 2015 and the pair later moved into Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where Harry proposed in 2017. 

Today, the couple live with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, in a $14.7m million (£11.8m) mansion in Montecito, California. In March 2023, shortly before King Charles III's coronation, the family was evicted from Frogmore Cottage, their only official UK base. The ten-bedroom Grade II-listed property in the grounds of Windsor Castle had been a gift to the royal couple from the late Queen. However, following the release of Harry's book Spare in January 2023, their connection to the family has been strained. While Harry was present at the coronation, he did not appear with his family on the balcony following the ceremony. Meghan remained at home in California.

As future Queen, Catherine, Princess of Wales, will have her pick of palaces and castles. However, she started life in a relatively humble home before her parents' business took off and they set their sights on more impressive digs. Born on 9 January 1982, Kate Middleton married into the royal family in April 2011, when she and Prince William tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in front of millions.

Kate is the eldest child of Michael and Carole Middleton, who bought this four-bedroom semi-detached house on a quiet lane in Bradfield Southend, Berkshire in 1979 for £34,700 (equivalent to £160k/$200k in today's money). The late-Victorian Grade II-listed building was a 10-minute drive from Kate's private prep school in Pangbourne, and the large garden was the perfect spot for Carole and Michael to build a shed from which they launched their business, Party Pieces. As the company flourished, the Middletons sold their cottage in 1995, when Kate was 13, for £158,000 (£300k/$377k in today's money). It last sold at auction in 2011 for £485,000 ($600k).

The Middletons and their three children moved to the village of Bucklebury in West Berkshire. Oak Acre, a six-bedroom detached house, cost them £250,000 ($311k) and was set on one-and-a-half acres of land. Memorably, it was on the driveway of Oak Acre that Carole and Michael met the press to comment on the engagement of Kate to Prince William. However, one year after their eldest daughter's royal wedding in 2011, they moved to a larger house nearby, which they felt offered their family more privacy. More on that impressive pad in a moment.

Meanwhile, after graduating from university, Kate lived with her sister in their parents’ Chelsea flat while working in London. The three-storey, three-bedroom property reportedly cost £780,000 ($970k) when they bought it in 2002; they sold it for a massive £1.88 million ($2.3m) in 2019. The flat was a refuge for Kate during the years in which her relationship with William was severely tested. Middleton was nicknamed "Waity Katie" by the media, and the couple split for several months before making a secret marriage pact while on holiday in the Seychelles.

Looking for more privacy but not ready to leave their charming village, the Middletons snapped up Bucklebury Manor in 2012. The seven-bedroom Grade II-listed Georgian home is currently estimated to be worth around £4.7 million ($5.9m). After the birth of their first child, Prince George, Kate and William drove straight from the hospital to Bucklebury Manor so Carole could help the new parents settle into family life. Kate's brother, James Middleton shared several videos of the house during the covid pandemic, when he spent time in lockdown there with his parents and then-fiancée Alizée Thevenet.

In May 2023, Kate wowed audiences across the world with her dignified presence at the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. She sat alongside Prince William and two of her three children, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, during the ceremony. Prince George, the couple's eldest son and second in line to the throne, acted as King Charles' Page of Honour. Today, the family live in Adelaide Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Park, although they have reportedly received pressure to move into Windsor Castle.

Mike Tindall married Zara Phillips, daughter of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips, on 30 July 2011 in Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. Tindall is a well-known rugby player who captained England and was a member of the 2003 Rugby World Cup-winning squad. But what do we know about his home life? 

Tindall was born on 18 October 1978 to a banker and a social worker. He grew up about as far from royalty as you can get, in the small West Yorkshire market town of Otley, where the average house price is £290,179 ($361k), according to Rightmove. It was a far cry from Zara's privileged childhood, growing up in Gatcombe Park and attending the expensive Gordonstoun school. Tindall also went to an independent school – Queen Elizabeth Grammar School (QEGS) in Wakefield, which was founded in 1591. 

After meeting during the Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2003, the pair dated for seven years before they got engaged. They were already living together when Mike popped the question and the couple announced their engagement outside their home, Hallery House in Cheltenham. They sold the Grade-II listed townhouse in 2013 for £1.2 million ($1.5m), which gave us the opportunity to peek inside... 

The detached four-storey villa has seven bedrooms, a state of the art kitchen and – not unusual for two sports stars – a gym equipped with enormous spa bath. The agent who sold the property in 2017 told the Daily Mail, "The Tindalls weren't here that long but they refurbished it to what it is now. [They] did a great job of making it look very beautiful."

Today, the sporty couple live at Aston Farm on Princess Anne's incredible Gatcombe Park estate in the Cotswolds. The renovated seven-bedroom farmhouse had previously been home to Zara's father, Mark, who lived there following his divorce from Anne in 1992. The Tindalls' renovations have added a gun room, gym, cinema and games room to the house, which is home to their three children, Mia, Lena and Lucas. 

Although the couple don't get any financial help from the crown, as former sports starts the Tindalls are thought to earn money from endorsement deals, while Mike is a regular booking for after-dinner speeches. He also appeared on the reality TV show I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Known to enjoy a drink, the Tindalls were reportedly partying in a private members club the night before the coronation of King Charles, heading home at 2 am – just nine hours before they appeared fresh-faced at Westminster Abbey. 

Queen Camilla had been in the public eye for decades before she became the wife of King Charles III, infamously as his mistress of many years. Prevented from marrying in the 1970s, the couple went on to marry other partners before reuniting and eventually marrying in February 2005. But while their romance is an oft-told story, how much do we know about Camilla's childhood? 

Born Camilla Rosemary Shand on 17 July 1947, Queen Camilla grew up between her parents' South Kensington townhouse and a country home called The Laines in Plumpton, East Sussex. She has described her childhood as "perfect in every way", and certainly growing up in the charming 18th-century rectory would have felt like being raised in a fairytale. With classic knapped-flint walls, gothic-style orangery, swimming pool and five acres of gardens and paddocks, the seven-bedroom home is the perfect family-friendly rural retreat. 

Camilla lived here with her parents, Major Bruce Shand and The Hon. Rosalind Cubitt, as well as her younger brother and sister. "I was one of the very lucky ones," Camilla told Women's Weekly Australia in 2022. "I had an idyllic childhood right in the country, sitting on the South Downs with my brother and my sister and our pets and our ponies. I think it was a simple childhood. We just pottered along this very pretty road with two or three cars going past. Life was very laid-back,” she reminisced. "I suppose I thought life was always going to be like that."

The Grade II-listed building was her father's home for 45 years, and it was from here that Camilla attended her first school, Dumbrells, before moving on to Queen's Gate School in Kensington, London and later a finishing school in Switzerland. The Laines last sold in 2016 for only the second time in 63 years. Actor James Wilby, best known for playing aristocratic roles in films including Gosford Park, let go of the beautiful abode for £2.3 million ($2.9m) in 2016.

According to Camilla's biographer, she met Andrew Parker Bowles in the late 1960s and the pair married in 1973, after an on-off relationship during which time Camilla was also courted by Prince Charles. The newlyweds bought Bolehyde Manor, this stunning 17th-century house in Allington, Wiltshire, shortly after their marriage. They left the charming eight-bedroom home, which is set on 80 acres, in 1986 when they moved to the equally lovely Middlewick House, which they sold in 1995 to Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason. The couple divorced that same year.

As we now know, Camilla and King (then Prince) Charles remained in love throughout their separate marriages, which caused Camilla to become "the most hated woman in Britain" following Charles' split from Diana, Princess of Wales. After her divorce, she withdrew to Ray Mill House in Reybridge, Wiltshire, which she bought for £850,000 ($1m) in 1995. The secluded Grade II-listed home, with a pool, stables and large vegetable garden, is conveniently close to Charles' country residence, Highgrove. Camilla still owns the six-bedroom property and stays there from time to time, even returning there alone after Queen Elizabeth II's funeral. 

Camilla married her prince in 2005, and the couple have called Highgrove their private residence ever since. However, since Queen Elizabeth died in 2022 and King Charles III and Queen Camilla were crowned in May 2023, they now have a multitude of grand homes to choose from, including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral. Famously eco-minded, Charles has been publicly cutting spending on royal residences, ending the lease on his Welsh house and turning off the heating in Buckingham Palace.

Sophie Rhys-Jones married Prince Edward on 19 June 1999 at St George's Chapel, Windsor. They became the Earl and Countess of Wessex, and are now styled the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, following the deaths of Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth. Born in Oxford to a middle-class family, Sophie was known for being a career girl when she joined the royal clan. Let's take a look at a few of her homes...

Sophie grew up in the four-bedroom 17th-century Homestead Farmhouse in Brenchley, Kent. Although she was born into a solidly middle-class family, she flitted around the edges of high society, once dancing with Prince Philip at a ball, long before she met his son, Prince Edward. Sophie was an energetic, sporty child. Her prep school head Robin Peverett said: "My memory of her is very much as a happy, popular, natural girl with lots of common sense, conscientious at her school work and good at sport." 

Sophie attended Kent College, Pembury, where she was friends with Sarah Sienesi, with whom she later shared a flat in Fulham and who became her lady-in-waiting. Their flat, shown here, was made famous in the early 90s when Sophie began dating Prince Edward after meeting him through her PR work. Photographers would excitedly snap the "PR girl-turned-princess" as she left her home on her way to and from the office.

Sophie then moved to a flat in Coleherne Court, Earl's Court, shortly before her marriage to Edward. Diana had moved into the same building following her engagement to Prince Charles years earlier and the press were quick to look for similarities between the two. However, while Diana had married at the age of 20 to a man 12 years her senior, Sophie was a career woman in her mid-thirties by the time she married. At the time of her engagement, Sophie said of joining the royal family: "It is slightly nerve-wracking in many ways. But I am ready for it now and I am fully aware of the responsibilities."

These days, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh live with their son and daughter in the enormous Bagshot Park. Built in 1879 on the site of an earlier mansion, the sprawling red brick house is built in the Tudor Gothic style and has an impressive 120 rooms. The couple leased it from the Crown Estate in 1998 and spent £2.98 million (that's £5.4m / $6.7m in today's money) on renovations. In 2021, Prince Edward paid £5 million ($6.2m) to extend the lease to 150 years, meaning his children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren should be able to live there in the future. 

The Duchess of Edinburgh played a prominent role in the coronation of her brother-in-law, King Charles III. In fact, in the years since her marriage, she has become a royal stalwart – she is a patron of over 70 charities and she and Prince Edward carried out 359 royal engagements between them. In recognition, in 2010 the late Queen appointed Sophie Dame Grand Cross of the Victorian Order, the highest honour a monarch can bestow.

On 23 July 1986, 27-year-old Sarah Ferguson married Prince Andrew, the late Queen's favourite son, at Westminster Abbey. Her father, Major Ronald Ferguson, was the Duke of Edinburgh's polo manager, a position he later took up for King (then Prince) Charles. According to their parents, Fergie and Andrew first met at age 3, beside the polo field. "Doesn't everybody?" her mother, Susan famously asked many years later. The couple met again at a party in 1985 and were engaged a year later.

As a child, the Duchess of York lived at the 480-acre Dummer Down Farm in Hampshire, which has been owned by the Ferguson family since 1953. Her parents divorced when she was 15 and her mother Susan married an Argentinian polo player and moved to South America. Today, Dummer Down is a working farm with a microbrewery, cafe and shop – it even hosts festivals on the land – and is owned and managed by Sarah's half-brother Andrew.

After Fergie's parents divorced, Major Ferguson married another Susan in 1976 and the couple had three children, Andrew, Alice (both of whom played roles in their half-sister's royal wedding) and Eliza. As we can see from this cosy photo of the Major with Fergie's two eldest half-siblings, the interior of what was presumably Andrew's bedroom was simply decorated with oak furniture and subtle floral wallpaper.

Fergie attended Hurst Lodge School in Ascot as a weekly boarder. The official biography states she "excelled at swimming and tennis, and rather less so at academic achievement". She got up to the usual "jolly dormitory japes", such as sliding down the broad stairway on duvets and starting food fights in the dining hall. Such was her popularity at school that she was even appointed head girl.

After taking a secretarial course in London, Fergie started a job in publishing and lived in this ground-floor flat in Lavender Gardens, Clapham. She paid just £30 a week in rent, which is about £87 ($109) today. Branded 'South Chelsea' in the 80s, Fergie reportedly held society soirees at the garden flat. According to Andrew Morton’s biography Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words, it was "at one of Sarah’s cocktail parties at her home in Lavender Gardens, Diana met Paddy McNally, a motor racing entrepreneur who enjoyed an uneven and untimely romance with Fergie.”

As Fergie told Graham Norton in 2009, it was while she lived here that she began dating Prince Andrew. He "couldn't believe my bathroom and my bedroom and everything was all in one room," she recalled. “And I didn’t have a wardrobe, I just had a laundry rail and hung everything on the laundry rail. I was a single working girl!” It wasn't exactly shabby though – the flat boasts high ceilings, original ornate cornicing and a period fireplace and was worth roughly £185,000 back in 1985, or about £535,000 ($673k) today. She also revealed that when the young Prince Andrew visited her unassuming flat, he'd have a couple of policemen in tow. “In fact, I probably had to get on better with the policemen than Prince Andrew," she joked, "just to make sure that in the car journey back they said, ‘Oh, she’s nice.’”

After their marriage, Fergie and Andrew rented Castlewood House near Windsor from 1986 to 1988, while they built their dream home nearby. Castlewood House was the English home of King Hussein of Jordan, who left it to his daughter, Princess Haya. The 12-bedroom mansion has a swimming pool, tennis court and private wood.

The late Queen Elizabeth II gifted her now-disgraced son and his wife a 665-acre parcel of land on the Sunninghill Park Estate in Berkshire following their wedding. When finished, the flash property was dubbed 'Dallas Palace.' Andrew and Fergie divorced in 1996, yet the duo continued to live under the same roof with their two daughters. In 2002, the Duke decamped to the Royal Lodge in Windsor and Sunninghill was put on the market. The Duchess and their daughters followed in 2006, leaving the property vacant. By 2009, it lay abandoned and dilapidated until it sold in 2007 for £15 million ($18.8m). It has since been demolished.

While Fergie wasn't invited to the coronation, she did attend the concert, where she sat next to her ex-husband. Prior to the coronation, she told ITV's Loose Women that she would celebrate by “having a little tea room and coronation chicken sandwich and putting out the bunting." She maintains she didn't expect to be invited to the formal occasion. “I am divorced from him [Prince Andrew] so I don’t expect... you can’t have it both ways, you can’t be divorced and then say: ‘I want this…’ [You’re in] or you’re out."

As with all things royal, the absence of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, loomed large over the coronation of her former husband, whom she married in July 1981. Diana's tumultuous and ultimately tragic adult life is well-known across the world, but her teenage years were some of the happiest of her life. Let's take a look at where she spent them... 

Lady Diana Spencer was born on 1 July 1961 at Park House in Sandringham, a rented property on the Royal Family's private estate. The Spencer family came from a long line of aristocrats and Diana’s grandmother, Baroness Fermoy, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II. Diana lived at Park House until she was 14, so she spent most of her childhood there. Even Diana’s mother, the Hon. Frances Burke Roche, was born at Park House in 1936.

Diana moved to Althorp in 1969, after her father, Viscount Althorp, divorced her mother and won custody of their children. Despite having a troubled relationship with her stepmother, she was said to have loved living at the Grade I-listed stately home. A former Althorp cook, Betty Andrews, told the BBC after Diana's death in 1997: "Looking back, it was probably the happiest time of her life.” 

The grand stately home has been in Diana’s family for more than 500 years, with 20 generations having lived there. As well as the 90-room house built in 1508, there is also a beautiful estate covering over 500 acres. Set in the grounds there are cottages, farms, woodland and entire villages. The King William bedroom, adorned in blues and sunny yellows, was Diana's favourite place to sleep whenever she'd return to visit Althorp after she was married.

In July 1979, Diana’s mother bought her a flat at Coleherne Court in Earl's Court for a reported £50,000 (roughly £230k/$286k today) as an 18th birthday present. In the documentary Diana, In Her Own Words, she called her days there "the happiest time of her life... It was juvenile, innocent, uncomplicated and, above, all fun." She lived there with three flatmates until 25th February 1981, when she accepted the proposal of a 31-year-old Prince Charles. Following their official engagement, Diana left her job as a nursery worker and moved into Clarence House to prepare for their wedding that summer. 

Their happiness was not to last. In 1992, Charles and Diana separated; soon afterwards, Charles gave an interview in which he admitted he had been unfaithful. In 1995, Diana gave an interview of her own, admitting to adultery and mental health issues. Referring to Camilla, she famously said: "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded." Charles and Diana formally divorced in August 1996; Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in August 1997.

When the royal family celebrated King Charles's coronation, they would no doubt have also been remembering the late Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Philip married into 'The Firm', as the family is affectionately known, on 20 November 1947 and at the time of his death was the longest-serving royal consort in history. Let's find out a little more about his royal lineage and the grand buildings he called home...

Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was born on 10 June 1921 on the dining room table of Mon Repos villa on the Greek island of Corfu, as the Greco-Turkish War raged on. After the Greeks suffered a number of heavy defeats, Philip's father Prince Andrew was banished from Greece for life. The family was evacuated by a British naval vessel and the 18-month-old Philip was famously carried onboard in a fruit box.

The villa was built in 1931 as a summer residence for a British High Commissioner but was rarely used. It was subsequently gifted to King George I of Greece and he named it "Mon Repos" (French for "My Rest"). The royal family used it as a summer residence until King Constantine II fled the country in 1967. The neoclassical villa subsequently became derelict, but was restored in the 1990s and is now a museum.

In 1934, the young prince started at Gordonstoun School in Scotland, which is today a mixed boarding school costing almost £47,000 ($58k) per year. Philip's former headmaster said of him that "his marked trait was his undefeatable spirit. He enjoyed life, his laughter was heard everywhere and created merriness around him...In work he showed lively intelligence." 

The school (and particularly the dormitories) were sparse in Philip's day and were probably not much better when a young King Charles III followed his father's footsteps there in 1962. Although Philip had enjoyed his time at Gordonstoun, Charles was less keen, describing it as "Colditz in kilts". However, he spoke more fondly of the school in later years, saying it had taught him "to accept challenges and take the initiative". After Gordonstoun, Philip attended the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and served the Royal Navy throughout WWII. After marrying in 1947, Prince Philip and the then Princess Elizabeth lived in Clarence House until her accession in 1952.

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth had four children and were married for 73 years, until Philip's death in April 2021 at the age of 99. Queen Elizabeth died aged 96 on 8 September 2022 at Balmoral. King Charles III announced the moment of "greatest sadness", declaring her a "cherished Sovereign and a much-loved mother".

Although she hailed from a background most of us would consider very grand indeed, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was considered technically a 'commoner' when she married Prince Albert in 1923, as she didn't have a title. While she wasn't quite the first untitled woman to marry into the royal family (that honour goes to Elizabeth Woodville, who married Edward IV in 1464), she certainly graced the notoriously stuffy royals with a breath of fresh air.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was born in August 1900, the ninth child of Lord Glamis, later the 14th Earl of Strathmore, either in her parents' Westminster home or in a horse-drawn ambulance on the way to a hospital, according to historian Alison Weir. In the 1901 census, her birth was listed as having taken place at her parent's country house, St Paul's Walden Bury, where she spent much of her childhood. The gardens, which are Grade I-listed, were designed in the 1730s and are a rare example of such a formal woodland style.

The rest of her childhood was spent at Glamis Castle, which has been in her family since the 14th century. In 1606, the 9th Lord Glamis revamped the original building and improvements were made over the following hundred years to create the building we see today. The young Elizabeth and her brother David loved Glamis and enjoyed pulling pranks, such as throwing ice water from the ramparts onto guests and placing a football under the wheels of the family car so it would explode and scare the chauffeur. 

During WWI, the castle became a convalescent home where Elizabeth cared for wounded soldiers. When a fire broke out in 1916, it was Elizabeth who marshalled everyone to fight the fire, organising a chain to convey buckets of water from the river and the removal of valuables onto the lawn. Attending a ball a few years later, Elizabeth met Prince Albert, or "Bertie", who proposed to her twice in 1921 before she accepted. 

After their wedding, the couple honeymooned at Princess Elizabeth's beloved Glamis and afterwards moved into their first family home, 145 Piccadilly, which the future Queen Elizabeth would call home for the first five years of her life. Inside the five-storey townhouse, which overlooked Green Park, the royal children had both a day and a night nursery, which were surprisingly plain. In contrast, the rest of the house boasted a ballroom, a library and twenty-five bedrooms. The house was destroyed by a bomb during WWII; today, the InterContinental London Park Lane Hotel stands in its place. 

When King Edward VIII abdicated in December 1936, his brother, Albert, Duke of York, was proclaimed King George VI, and Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth, the first British-born Queen consort since Tudor times. After George VI died in 1952, Elizabeth supported her eldest daughter in her role as the new Queen and continued to carry out royal duties. She outlived her husband by 50 years and died in 2002 at the age of 101.

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