Queen Elizabeth misses Remembrance Day service due to a back sprain

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LONDON – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth missed Sunday’s Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph due to a sprained back, prolonging the 95-year-old monarch’s absence from public life after she was ordained. rest after a hospital stay last month.

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A Buckingham Palace source said the sprain was not related to the unspecified ailment that caused the queen’s hospital visit, calling it an “incredibly unfortunate coincidence.”

But Elizabeth’s absence from an engagement she considers one of the most important of the year will raise concerns about her health.

The ceremony would have been the queen’s first in-person public engagement since she was advised to rest after spending a night in the hospital from October 20-21.

“His Majesty is disappointed that the service will be lost,” the palace said in a statement Sunday.

In her 69 years on the throne, the monarch had previously missed the event at the Cenotaph War Memorial in central London only six times, four while on overseas tour and twice while pregnant.

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The ceremony takes place on the Sunday closest to November 11 to mark the end of the First World War. The queen’s sight at the event has been one of the defining images of her reign throughout the decades: her head bowed, dressed in black and displaying a red poppy.

The royal family joins leading members of the government, foreign representatives and the military on Remembrance Sunday to commemorate those who lost their lives in the conflict by laying wreaths.

In recent years, the queen’s son and heir, Prince Charles, has laid a wreath in her name as she watches from a balcony at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Charles replaced the crown on Sunday, as his wife Camilla, along with Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, watched from the balcony.

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Later, thousands of veterans marched beyond the Cenotaph, led by the Coldstream Guards band.

The queen is the oldest and reigning monarch in the world. Since being advised to rest, he has missed events like the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow and a festival to remember the nation’s war dead on Saturday night.

The palace source said the queen expected to continue as planned with her light official duty schedule this week. Recently, the queen has been photographed meeting dignitaries online.

Attending the Cenotaph event would have required the queen to take a car trip from her residence at Windsor Castle, west London, and remain standing for a period of time.

In April, her husband of more than seven decades, Prince Philip, died at the age of 99.