![\"Britain's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/news-p.v1.20260421.28f5c47b3ed749c8be67b366b90dff68_P1.jpg\")
Britain’s King Charles III (right) and Queen Camilla during a visit to the Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style exhibition at The King’s Gallery, at Buckingham Palace in London, Monday. AP-Yonhap <\/p>\n Britain’s King Charles III (right) and Queen Camilla during a visit to the Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style exhibition at The King’s Gallery, at Buckingham Palace in London, Monday. AP-Yonhap <\/p>\n
LONDON (AFP) — Britain’s King Charles on Tuesday paid a heartfelt tribute to his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II in a video message on what would have been her 100th birthday.<\/p>\n
The king’s moving homage came as the final masterplan for the memorial for the nation’s longest serving monarch was unveiled.<\/p>\n
Referring to Elizabeth as “darling mama”, Charles, 77, said she had “remained constant, steadfast and wholly devoted to the people she served” throughout her long life.<\/p>\n
The monarch died aged 96 in September 2022 after a 70-year reign.<\/p>\n
“Much about the times we now live in, I suspect, may have troubled her deeply, but I take heart from her belief that goodness will always prevail and that a brighter dawn is never far from the horizon,” the king said in his message.<\/p>\n
“For as a young Princess Elizabeth put it in her first ever public broadcast, aged just 14, we can each play our part ‘to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place’.<\/p>\n
“It is a belief which I share, with all my heart,” he added.<\/p>\n
The memorial to the Queen will feature a statue by sculptor Martin Jennings of her as a young woman dressed in ceremonial robes.<\/p>\n
The bronze likeness will take inspiration from a celebrated 1955 portrait of her by Italian artist Pietro Annigoni.<\/p>\n
A 28-year-old Elizabeth sat for Annigoni in late 1954 just a couple of years into her reign.<\/p>\n
Robin Janvrin, Elizabeth’s former private secretary and chair of the memorial project’s committee, described the resulting portrait as a “lovely, iconic image of the young Queen.”<\/p>\n
The combined statue and plinth will stand 7.3 meters high at the entrance to the memorial in London’s St. James’s Park, close to Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n
The memorial will feature a family of gardens through the park with meandering paths and a new translucent glass unity bridge, inspired by Elizabeth’s wedding tiara.<\/p>\n
There will also be a smaller statue of her late husband Prince Philip dressed in his naval uniform looking up at his wife.<\/p>\n
Charles and other members of the royal family will view maquettes of the planned statues and a scale model of the wider memorial on a visit to London’s British Museum on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Elizabeth, who was born on April 21, 1926 was not expected to become Queen.<\/p>\n
An accident of history brought her to the throne after her uncle Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson in 1936.<\/p>\n
After the abdication her reluctant father, who suffered from a severe stammer, became King George VI.<\/p>\n
But his death in 1952 saw the young princess accede aged just 25, setting the stage for her record-breaking reign.<\/p>\n
Since her death, the royal family have endured a turbulent time as a result of illness, family estrangement and scandal.<\/p>\n
Both Charles and his daughter-in-law Catherine, wife of his elder son Prince William, have battled cancer, while his younger son Prince Harry wrote a wounding tell-all memoir after quitting royal duties with his wife Meghan.<\/p>\n
Charles’s brother Andrew meanwhile is facing a police probe amid new revelations about his ties to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s King Charles III (right) and Queen Camilla during a visit to the Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-204145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}