Published On: Tue, Apr 21st, 2020

Happy birthday! Queen celebrates STRANGEST birthday yet – with jarring changes | Royal | News

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The monarch, who has turned 94, is social distancing at Windsor Castle with Prince Philip, 98. She has been forced to cancel her usual celebrations due to the coronavirus crisis.

A Buckingham Palace source said the Queen’s birthday will not be marked in any special way.

There will be no birthday gun salutes in what is believed to be a first.

Usually a 21-gun salute is fired by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery from either Hyde Park or Green Park, followed by a 62-gun salute at the Tower of London by the Honourable Artillery Company.

The source said: ”There will be no gun salutes – Her Majesty was keen that no special measures were put in place to allow gun salutes as she did not feel it appropriate in the current circumstances.”

The Queen’s official birthday is celebrated in June with Trooping the Colour.

But the ceremony has also been cancelled in its traditional form this year.

The bells of Westminster Abbey will also stay silent on her birthday for the first time in more than a decade.

READ MORE: Prince Philip addresses nation over coronavirus outbreak

Prince Charles, 71, who has recovered from coronavirus, is at his Scottish residence Birkhall with the Duchess of Cornwall, 72.

Prince William and Kate are staying at Amner Hall in Norfolk with their three children.

And Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who quit royal duties on March 31, are starting their new life in Los Angeles.

The Queen – the nation’s longest reigning monarch – has been a source of stability during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a rare televised address to the nation, she told Britons: “We will meet again.”

And in her first ever Easter Message, the Queen said: “We know that coronavirus will not overcome us.”

Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born at 2.40am on April 21 1926.

She was the first child of the then-Duke and Duchess of York, later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

She was never expected to be a monarch when she was born, but the abdication of her uncle Edward VIII in 1936 put her father on the throne.

She wed Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in 1947, and became Queen at the age of 25 when George VI died from lung cancer in 1952.

Elizabeth II, who has been monarch for more than 68 years, is Head of State, the Armed Forces and the Commonwealth.

She is less than two years away from her platinum jubilee of 70 years on the throne.

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