Lady Ella Mountbatten
(Picture: Lady Ella Mountbatten / Evening Standard)Ella Mountbatten, a cousin of the Queen, regularly saw the monarch up close, from the intimacy of Balmoral to the ceremony of Buckingham Palace. On one trip to Balmoral, Ella, 26, was “taken aback” when the Queen leant in to kiss her goodbye. Shocked by the informal farewell, she mirrored the Queen’s approach. “We ended up kissing on the lips, which was kind of awkward, and then Prince Philip started laughing!” She recalls a weekend when the Queen berated the Duke for slacking while they had guests. As Philip helped take a bag to the car, Ella overheard the Queen say: “Thanks so much for carrying that. It’s the first thing you’ve done all day to help.”
She also remembers waving from the palace balcony with the royal family as a child. “I remember when I was about 7 or 8 and we went on the balcony, and I kept doing this double handed wave standing next to the Queen as she stood there doing a slow one-handed wave; and then my sister wet her pants and had to take her tights off. The Queen just smiled at us and didn’t say anything.”
