“I think she was really worried something was going to happen,” Robert Hardman said of the Queen’s stresses

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles at his investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarfon Castle in Wales on July 1, 1969.Credit : Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty

Queen Elizabeth was privately struggling during the summer of 1969, royal biographer Robert Hardman has claimed.

Hardman, the author of Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story, out April 9, chatted about the claim on the April 7 episode of the Daily Mail‘s Palace Confidential show.

Host Jo Elvin asked Hardman to elaborate on his mention in the text that the late Queen Elizabeth had one nervous breakdown, which he said occurred during the “extraordinary summer of 1969.”

That summer, the British royal family released the unique fly-on-the-wall documentary Royal Family (which the Queen reportedly later banned), the United States landed a man on the moon and the palace prepared for then-Prince Charles’ grand investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle in Wales on July 1, which Hardman described as “coronation mark two” and “the first made for TV royal moment” in color television.

Queen Elizabeth crowns her son Charles, Prince of Wales, during his investiture ceremony at Caernarfon Castle on July 1, 1969.Hulton Archive/Getty

“That was all lovely except for the fact there was this sort of nascent terrorist movement, Welsh separatist terrorist movement, that started planting bombs around the place. People were actually being killed in the run-up to and even on the day of this investiture, and it was a very tense moment,” he said. The royal author added that this happened in the run-up to the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in America.

“It was a very fractious, febrile time. People are really nervous about which way the world is going,” Hardman said about the state of the world then and suggested that the Queen felt overwhelmed by the attention on her and her family.

“The pressure on her, in the run-up to that investiture, I think she was really worried something was going to happen. She has always taken the view that if something happened to her, she’d live with it, die with it, it comes with the territory,” he alleged, explaining that anxiety around the fear that something could happen to her son and successor, then 20, scared her.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip during the Prince of Wales investiture ceremony, of their son, Prince Charles, at Caernarfon Castle on July 1, 1969.Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty

“This was the threat of terrorism against her son, against his event and against the family, there was just so much pressure in the run-up to the event that afterwards, it was really interesting. Prince Charles went off on a tour of Wales, the Queen went back to London and retired to her bed, and canceled all engagements for the week,” Hardman said. “Very, very unlike her.”

The biographer said that the sovereign cleared her calendar of outings and the palace said she was suffering from the flu, ” which is an odd thing to be suffering in early July.”

“Someone very close to part of her team told me it was nervous exhaustion,” said Hardman. “I don’t know whether we could call it a full nervous breakdown, because she was back on duty just over a week later, but it was the nearest thing to a nervous breakdown.”

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles on July 1, 1969.Daily Mirror/Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix via Getty

The future King Charles was crowned by his mother as the Prince of Wales during an investiture ceremony at Caernarfon Castle in the summer before his 21st birthday. The special ceremony itself continued centuries-old tradition and drew attention to Charles’ rank and future role in the monarchy as he was presented to the people of Wales as their prince.

Decades later, King Charles’ son Prince William did not have an investiture ceremony after the King named him as the new Prince of Wales following his accession to the throne upon Queen Elizabeth’s death in September 2022.