Palace Insiders Snub Queen's Walking Stick

The balcony at Buckingham Palace has long been a choice spot for the Queen to wave at her adoring people on feted occasions. Here she is on her coronation day – I know she looks like she’s wearing an Apple Watch in this photo but she isn’t.

But due to her mobility issues and the fact that she may be dead, Queen Elizabeth may not be able to stand on the famed balcony overlooking celebrations at the culmination of her Platinum Jubbly weekend in June. As a “well-placed source” at the Palace told the Daily Mail, “It could still happen but it is by no means guaranteed that we will see the Queen on the balcony during the Jubilee.”

The balcony, elevated, bolstered, and draped in royal garb as it may be, isn’t the stalwart companion it claims to be. Sure it’s there for her in times of coronations, doomed weddings, and jubblies. But as you may know from reading Gawker’s extensive Royal coverage, the Queen leans on a humbler mechanism for day-to-day tasks: Her late husband Philip’s walking stick. The ivory handled stick has been a constant, calming force for the Queen, holding her upright while keeping the memory of Philip’s Nazi relatives alive.

There he is.

Sticks have long had a venerated place in the Royals’ lives. The late Queen Mother, in her signature garish, “look at me, bitch!!” fits, used a similar stick or two to remain erect.

Here’s the future King Edward VII with a similar medical twig in 1964.

It seems alarming that the palace would snub the stick, who has been working so hard. Why are they erasing the stick from the narrative? What does the stick know that we don’t? Anyway, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Stick acted rashly in response to this news. I hope Harry and Meghan Markle have an extra room in Montecito.