Queen Elizabeth's former aid is giving new insight into what she says the royal was really like behind-the-scenes.
In a new interview with The Sunday Times published Saturday, Oct. 12, Samantha Cohen—the late Queen's former aide who worked with the matriarch for 18 years, at one point as her assistant private secretary—said Queen Elizabeth was a "shy person” who valued her privacy.
“It always struck me that in a world of celebrity, where we had all sorts of celebrities coming into the palace, the Queen was the antithesis of celebrity,” she told the publication at the time.
“She was the maestro. She understood this was her role. She took it very seriously and performed it to perfection," Cohen added. "But she knew it was separate to her as a person. She was never intoxicated by the allure, never showed off, was never tempted to preen. I loved that so much about her, because she had no ego.”
In the same interview, Cohen said that despite her innately shy nature, Queen Elizabeth was "playful" and, despite what many people surely assumed, wasn't one to take things so seriously.
"This day, she said, ‘Oh, hold on a minute, there’s a butterfly, we must get it out,'" the former aid said, recalling one of her favorite memories and moments with the late monarch.
"There was this beautiful butterfly sitting on a book. She got up, picked it up and it flew away. Then I caught it and it flew out of my hands. Then she caught it," she continued. "It was hilarious, she was laughing, I was laughing, eventually she caught it, we opened the window, freed the butterfly, and she said, ‘Right, where were we?’ She was so playful. We just had fun."
What as perhaps not as surprising was Cohen describing the late Queen as a fierce family woman, devoted to her children and grandchildren.
“It was important to her," Cohen said, referring to Queen Elizabeth as someone who "wanted to be a family woman."
"She loved hosting everybody for summer, allocating the rooms and checking them herself,” she added. “Some mornings I’d be getting the cereal for breakfast, and the kids would go, ‘Mum! The Queen just rode past on her horse.’ Other times they’d bump into her on their bicycles. The Queen loved families having a nice time and hearing what everyone was doing.”
