In today’s world, pregnancy announcements are generally welcomed with high popularity. You just have to open your preferred social media platform to find endless photos and videos of pregnancy announcements and very elaborate gender reveals. Now, if this happens with common people, anytime any celebrity is pregnant, we all get obsessed to see their cute bellies and the radiance of their face. Royal women are no different.
Royal pregnancies are highly expected and anticipated right after a very public royal marriage. We saw all the fuzz with Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle, and even the Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice. The happy news are often shared by the Royal institution itself and spread through media, and when they’re finally born, the public expects a well-produced photo of the mom and her beautiful royal baby. So, if Royal babies cause such a fuzz, why aren’t there any photos of Queen Elizabeth II pregnant?
As you know, Queen Elizabeth had four children, two of them as a Princess, and one already as Queen of the United Kingdom. In none of her four pregnancies, Queen Elizabeth was seen proudly showing her cute baby bump. Not only that, in some of them, she didn’t even announce she was expecting. There might be some pics of her while pregnant, but she was always very careful not to show her belly so people wouldn’t realize She was pregnant. The simple answer is that those were other times.
Elizabeth had King Charles in 1948, a time when pregnancies didn’t produce the same effects they do now. Having a baby was seen as a simple responsibility for women, and more importantly, bragging about it was frowned upon. So if that was the common opinion towards pregnancies in general, for Queen Elizabeth, it was doubly difficult. As a woman, when her father ascended to the throne, she had to work hard to demonstrate she was worthy of being the first in the line of succession. Showing off her pregnancies would’ve put her in a state of vulnerability that would not help show her capabilities as a future monarch.
So, when she was pregnant with Charles, she didn’t even announce she was expecting. During the first months, Queen Elizabeth wore boxy coats and garments fit perfectly to conceal her baby bump in a way that people wouldn’t guess she was pregnant. When her belly was considerably big, Buckingham Palace merely announced that she would not “undertake public engagements after the end of June.” Only five months later, she gave birth to Prince Charles. Still, she didn’t present him immediately as Princess Diana or Kate Middleton did. Charle’s first official photos were taken on the day of his christening a month later.
Another curious thing about the pregnancies and royal births of Queen Elizabeth, compared to more modern ones, is that she had to do basically everything by herself and inside the palace (Princess Diana was the first royal to give birth in a hospital). That is, Prince Philip had no participation whatsoever in the birth of his children. Well, the first three, he broke protocol during the birth of Prince Edward. This sheds more light on how pregnancies were seen back in the day. I mean, in Charle’s birth Philip went out to play squash while Elizabeth had to undergo an emergency cesarean.
Imagine having to conceal such a huge experience only because it would make you appear weak and not fit to rule?