When the Queen’s medical team confirmed to aides early on that her 70-year reign was heading into its final hours her closest family cancelled engagements and rushed to be by her bedside.
But it is thought only her two eldest children, heir Prince Charles and daughter Princess Anne, were able to complete the sad journeys to the monarch’s Highland estate at Balmoral in time to say their final goodbyes before she slipped away.
Officially to the outside world the 96-year-old monarch was under “medical supervision” at her Aberdeenshire retreat, but the extreme gravity of the situation was clear by the haste of the response from all senior royals.
By chance, both Charles and Anne were in Scotland at the time of the Queen’s sudden deterioration and were able to be with their mother well ahead of the rest of the family.
Senior aides ordered the Queen’s burgundy-liveried helicopter to travel up from Windsor as early as 6.48am to collect Charles from Dumfries House in Ayrshire, where he had stayed the night after attending an international symposium on allergies.
He was seen boarding the aircraft carrying a briefcase for the short trip to Royal Deeside, arriving at Balmoral at 10.27am.
Camilla — now the Queen Consort — was staying at the couple’s Scottish residence Birkhall and travelled the eight miles to Balmoral by car.
Princess Anne was already in Scotland too, having a full diary of engagements on the Hebridean islands of Skye and Raasay the previous day.
As the seriousness of the medical emergency became clear, she travelled by car from nearby Blairgowrie, where she had been carrying out an engagement as the president of the Riding for the Disabled Association.
She is believed to have been staying at Balmoral, once described by the Queen as “my dear paradise in the Highlands”.
Later in the day the Queen’s second son Prince Andrew, her youngest child Prince Edward and his wife Sophie — who had formed a close bond with the Queen in her later years — and her eldest grandchild Prince William all boarded Royal Air Force flight KRF23R at RAF Northolt in west London, bound for Aberdeen airport.
The plane, one of the Dassault Falcon 900LX jets that carried Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to Balmoral on Tuesday for the prime ministerial handover, took off at 2.39pm, touching down at around 4pm.
But the fleet of cars that accompanied the royal party from the airport did not arrive at the gates of Balmoral until 5.06pm. Crowds of anxious wellwishers had already begun to gather when they made it to Balmoral late in the afternoon. The Duke of Cambridge was seen at the wheel of a Range Rover driving his uncles and aunt to the estate where his grandmother spent every August to October.
The exact time of the passing of the Queen has not been confirmed.
The Duchess of Cambridge stayed in Windsor, as the couple’s three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, were all attending their first day at their new school, Lambrook near Bracknell.
Prince Harry, who was scheduled to present the WellChild charity awards honouring the courage of severely ill children with his wife Meghan in London last night, also made an attempt to reach Balmoral in time.
But he only arrived at 8pm, nearly an hour and a half after the official announcement of the succession.
Initially, it was reported that Meghan would be travelling with her husband but she remained at their Windsor estate home, Frogmore Cottage. Their children, Archie and Lilibet, had stayed at their home in California.
The Sussexes, who arrived in the UK on Saturday for two engagements in Britain and one in Germany, had reportedly previously declined an offer to visit the Queen in Scotland “for security reasons” amid a continuing row over their police protection.
But after the lunchtime announcement from Buckingham Palace, a source close to the couple confirmed at around 2pm that they would be travelling up to Scotland to be at her bedside.
However, then, at 4.40pm, the source clarified that the duchess would not, in fact, be “travelling today”.
The duke’s flight was delayed departing Luton by 20 minutes and did not take off until 5.35pm, landing at 6.46pm. The Cessna private jet was still making its approach to Aberdeen when the historic announcement was issued at 6.30pm.
He finally arrived at his grandmother’s home at 7.52pm by Range Rover to join other members of the royal family in mourning the Queen’s death.
The duke was the first to leave Balmoral this morning, departing at about 8.15am before boarding a British Airways flight at Aberdeen International Airport to Heathrow.
