“My audience with Queen Elizabeth”
“Ten minutes in front of the queen, her smile was reassuring.” This is the memory of her majesty Queen Elizabeth, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 96, the ambassador of San Marino Scotland Silvia Marchetti who met her in 2018, during a private audience during which she presented the letters that pronounced the accreditation as ambassador to the United Kingdom. Later that same evening she met her again at Buckingham Palace during the meeting with the diplomatic corps.
Bow and get ready
«But it was during the private audience of about ten minutes that – the ambassador recalls – I was able to have an interview with the sovereign who knew my country well. It was a formal context marked by protocol rigor, where nothing could be left to chance, from bowing to preparations, but also under the human aspect – he underlines – which I have is very pleasant, because the queen made me feel at my agony. And he remarks: «Despite the physiological apprehension, at the thought of meeting a figure with a very high institutional profile, His Majesty said to create an atmosphere of normality even simply with his smile», he concludes.
The honor
“With his death, an era is over”, comments the former Regent Giacomo Simoncini who visited London in March 2021, with his colleague Francesco Mussoni and 8 other institutional figures. The most significant act of the trip, as Simoncini explains, was the awarding to the Queen of the Grand Collar of the Equestrian Order of San Marino, a homage that Elizabeth was missing, while it had already been awarded to her father, her majesty George 6 on February 20. of 1937. “The queen was unable to attend for private reasons and – recalls the 27-year-old – the personal secretary received the honor”, explaining that, crossing the threshold of the palace was equivalent to entering a city within the city, opposite of a great emotion “. During the mandate, included in the semester from 1 October 2021 to 1 October 2022, another meeting followed in Scotland, in November of the same year during the United Nations conference on climate change where – concludes the former Head of State – intervened however the Prince of Wales Charles and his eldest son William. It would have been a privilege to know her ».