It’s a sad time for the royal family. Queen Elizabeth II is mourning her 14-year-old corgi, Willow. The dog was euthanized at Windsor Castle on Sunday, April 16, after a long battle with cancer, according to the DailyMail.com. Willow is survived by the queen’s two other dogs, her two corgi-dachshund mixes, Vulcan and Candy.
The queen, 91, is taking the death of her beloved pooch “extremely hard,” since Willow was the last descendant of her first corgi, Susan, insiders told the DailyMail.com. The British monarch has had a long line of royal corgis by her side, and Willow was the 14th generation from Susan, the dog she received as a gift on her 18th birthday.
“She has mourned every one of her corgis over the years, but she has been more upset about Willow’s death than any of them,” a Buckingham Palace source told the publication. “It really does feel like the end of an era.” Buckingham Palace declined to give a comment to CNN on the dog’s passing, saying it was a “private matter.”
Willow appeared in the 2012 London Olympics opening sketch alongside the queen and Daniel Craig as James Bond, and was also featured in the queen’s portrait for her 90th birthday in 2016.
The queen wasn’t the only member of the family to have a strong bond with her pooches. Back in November 2017, when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement, the young royal revealed that his bride-to-be was getting along swimmingly with the family’s beloved pets. “The corgis took to you straight away,” Harry, 33, told the BBC during their first joint interview. “I’ve spent the last 33 years being barked at; this one walks in, absolutely nothing.”
“That’s true,” Markle, 36, said. “Just laying on my feet during tea, it was very sweet.”
The Suits alum will soon be adding two of her own four-legged friends to the family. “I have two dogs that I’ve had for quite a long time, both my rescue pups,” she said at the time. “One is now staying with very close friends and my other little guy is — yes he’s in the U.K. He’s been here for a while.”
A U.K. government spokesperson exclusively told Us Weekly in November that before making the big move, both of Markle’s dogs would “have to be microchipped, given a rabies vaccination, plus a blood test 30 days after the rabies vaccination to show it has worked.” In addition, “the dogs will also have to be treated against tapeworm and provide paperwork for all of these vaccinations.”
