The late Queen Elizabeth’s initial cousin Woman Ogilvy, a bridesmaid at her wedding day in 1947, has featured in recently-launched portrait of performing royals in celebration of the King’s Coronation.

Princess Alexandra, 86, is stood concerning the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh as the doing work royals marked the close of the weekend’s events and celebrations.

Edward and Sophie have been viewed to be sweetly supplying assist Girl Ogilvy, who was smiling broadly, with both of those aiding her by holding her arms.

Forever stylish, quintessentially diplomatic, she has by no means place a foot mistaken in a life time of general public company. But the polished exterior conceals a record of turmoil and upset that would have prompted a lesser female to give up community responsibilities extended ago.

She may be unrecognisable to quite a few on the lookout about the new portrait, but Woman Ogilvy was not only the late Queen’s cousin, but also a person of her closest mates and was after referred to as the ‘unsung heroine’ of the Royal Family members.

A single biographer also described her as ‘the most successful operating princess in the world’.

Her royal design is muted and unflashy, in stark distinction to some of the much more lurid situations that have surrounded her life.

She was a bridesmaid at the 1943 wedding day of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, even though her very own marriage to businessman Sir Angus Ogilvy was broadcast to around 200 million people 20 a long time later on. 

Girl Ogilvy is 56th in line to the throne, but she has turn into an integral aspect of the Royal Spouse and children and a stalwart for 6 many years.

Her father is the Duke of Kent, one particular of George VI’s more youthful brothers, and the previous King was just one of her godparents. Her mother was Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark.

Royal biographer Hugo Vickers advised The Telegraph: ”If you ended up a royal-watcher standing in the avenue, there’s no a person you’d like to see extra than her. 

‘She’s a sort of nationwide treasure. She’s the legitimate posting: the most royal of all of them.’

Alexandra’s very first several years ended up scarred by the seemingly unlimited gross sales of treasured spouse and children belongings, humiliatingly stripped from their residence and retrieved from different other royal homes. They were being misleadingly priced up for disposal in the salerooms as ‘surplus to requirement’.

The town property in London’s Belgrave Square, where Alexandra was born ‘to the sound of a lone carol singer in the street’ was offered — but her mom, Princess Marina, was however plunged into the purple at the bank.

The parsimonious king, George VI, bailed her out with a very small allowance, but Marina ‘acquired a standing for meanness’, according to her biographer Audrey Whiting. With no actual earnings, what else could she perhaps do?

Versus this background, her daughter Alexandra turned the 1st royal princess to be despatched absent to university — Heathfield, in Sussex — instead than currently being taught at house.

And when her cousin Elizabeth turned Queen on her father’s premature demise in an RAF crash in Scotland aged just 39, Alexandra was catapulted up the royal batting order to turn into sixth in line to the throne.

Her mother was also only 61 when she died of a brain tumour.

But in the course of her grownup lifetime, Lady Ogilvy continued to be a challenging-doing work and energetic royal, attending all around 120 general public engagements a year. 

This bundled missions to Japan in 1961, assisting to restore diplomatic relations next the war.

Mr Vickers additional: ”If you had been a royal-watcher standing in the avenue, there is no one you’d like to see a lot more than her.

‘She has in no way performed everything except royal obligations all her lifetime – there were not so a lot of members of the Royal loved ones close to when she started functioning,’

Irrespective of obtaining hardly a penny to her title, she was the most suitable girl in Britain and the warm suggestion was she would marry an Outdated Etonian landowner a few years her senior, Lord O’Neill, whose stepfather was the James Bond writer Ian Fleming.

As an alternative, she plumped for still a further Previous Etonian, the Hon Angus Ogilvy, the son of the royal-connected Earls of Airlie.

They married at Westminster Abbey with a complete glass carriage procession and held a white-tie ball at Windsor Castle the night right before.

At the invitation of the Queen, the newlyweds put in their honeymoon at Birkhall (now the Scottish household of Prince Charles and Camilla).

Her connection with the late monarch would only carry on to develop above the years and she was awarded the Garter in 2003, along with an 80th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in 2016.

Princess Alexandra’s eldest baby, James Ogilvy, is comprehended to be a landscape gardener and is close with Prince Edward soon after possessing long gone to university collectively.

Her daughter Marina is also the goddaughter of King Charles.

Her granddaughter Flora Ogilvy, an artwork curator, married Swedish financier Timothy Vesterberg in September 2020 – in the course of Covid limitations.

They celebrated the wedding day when constraints ended up lifted in September 2021, with associates of the Royal Household attending.

Friends integrated the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, as perfectly as Lord Frederick Windsor and his Peep Exhibit actress spouse Sophie Winkleman.

Princess Alexandra also donned pink for the massive working day, wearing a good blazer and polkadot gown which she paired with product add-ons.

Nowadays she is as regal, as tough-doing the job, as partaking and as everlastingly stylish as she’s usually been. 

The delight of royals in seeing her joining them for the formal portrait is testament to her reputation.