When Elizabeth II found out she had cancer, she decided to accept her fate. She only needed a year to see it

Paul Burrell, who used to work for the royal family, wrote a book about his life called The Royal Insider. In the book, he also spoke about the time when Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain was diagnosed with an illness that would eventually kill her. An extract from the book was published by the Daily Mail on 9 September. A secret that only people from the "circle of trust" knew. Burrell says that Queen Elizabeth II learned that she had cancer "just a few months" after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, who died in April 2021. The former butler says that the news was very upsetting for the Queen, but she didn't tell anyone outside her "trusted circle", which included "pages, servants and dressers". There were two reasons why the Queen didn't say anything. Doctors said Queen Elizabeth II would live until the end of 2021, but no one in the family knew about this. The author of the book says that the Queen did not want her family and friends to worry about her illness, and she also didn't want her illness to make it easier for someone else to become regent. When she found out she had cancer, the Queen asked her doctors to do everything they could to help her celebrate her platinum jubilee. The Platinum Jubilee was the 70th anniversary of the Queen's coronation. To stay healthy, the Queen got blood transfusions and did everything the doctors told her, like giving up her favourite drinks and instead having apple and tomato juice. The whole time, she knew that she was dying. On 2 June 2022, the UK celebrated the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's reign with a four-day party. To celebrate the holiday, the country has declared four days off. This meant that Elizabeth II became the first British Queen to celebrate a platinum jubilee. Queen Elizabeth II died on 8 September 2022, at the age of 96. She had lived for three more months after her platinum jubilee. Burrell writes in her memoirs that in the last days of her life, the Queen felt very ill and was almost always lying in bed. She refused to have more treatment. The death certificate says that the Queen of Great Britain died "of natural causes." The writer of a new biography of the Queen, called "Elizabeth: In Her Own Words", Gyles Brandreth, said that she died of a rare form of bone marrow cancer. Boris Johnson, who used to be the British Prime Minister, also says that Queen Elizabeth II had bone cancer in the last years of her life. This was reported in the autumn of 2024 by Politico, referring to an excerpt from Johnson's memoirs called Unleashed.