https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/10/30/queen-elizabeth-spanish-king-scandals/

Queen Elizabeth II chided Spain’s former king Juan Carlos for relinquishing his throne, telling the disgraced monarch: “A king dies with his boots on.”

Juan Carlos recounts the anecdote in his memoirs, due to be published in France next week, according to Figaro Magazine, which interviewed the exiled former king at his home in Abu Dhabi.

Juan Carlos and Elizabeth II were distant cousins – their shared great-great-grandmother was Queen Victoria.

In the Le Figaro interview, Juan Carlos said he consulted his relative about his plan to abdicate the throne of Spain to his son, Felipe VI.
In his memoirs, Juan Carlos recounts that Elizabeth II did not agree with his decision. “It is not done!” she said, according to Juan Carlos. “A king dies with his boots on.” He said he replied: “It has been done in the Netherlands.”

Posted by ButIDigress79

14 comments

  2. I suppose he cited the Netherlands as an example because round have been rude to refer to Edward VIII

  3. Kinda explains her attitude on Andrew a bit! Fuck everyone I’m the monarch

  4. I mean, with all the scandal and upheaval the British royals had when her uncle abdicated, even though it was for the best that jerk wasn’t King, is it any surprise she would view abdication as a bad thing?

  5. the queen silenced Virginia, protected andrew, and used tax payer money to pay off her family – her legacy is forever ruined

  6. One of her sons was raping trafficked minors, one was having a very open affair with a married woman, her husband was having sex with the mother of her daughter in law, multiple of her kids and their wives were running cash for access schemes. There is nothing this woman wouldn’t have covered up to keep her family on the throne.

  7. Of course, she had the old aristocratic actitude towards being a Monarch, that is self evident, after all she refused to abdicate and died in her office. Same reason Maximilian of Mexico refused to leave Mexico despite having the oportunity to do so, after he spoke with his family. If i don’t remember wrong his own mother told him it would be more disgrateful to abdicate and flee, to be good habsburg and die. Another example is Empress Theodora and her speech to Justinian: “the purple shroud makes a noble tomb” to stay and deal with the riots.

    It used to be called aristocratic honor to instead of fleeing, to deal with the consequences.

  8. If Juan Carlos listened to her, the Spanish royals would’ve never recovered. Abdicating when he did was the right call. Felipe was unscathed from the scandals brought on by his dad, Juan Carlos and sister, Cristina. Felipe was more than ready to ascend the throne. The proof is here and now: 10+ years later as King and Felipe has proven to be a very good monarch. He’s had his share of crises, too, like the Catalonia secessionist protests, and his speech calling for unity in Spain really gained him a lot of respect. 

  9. I get where she was coming from, her uncle clearly had a massive impression on her idea of duty, but I gotta say this was a different beast: Felipe was always going to inherit, this just moved up the timeline, in comparison to her father who never expected to wear the crown.

  11. What a truly selfish thing to say.  Juan Carlos clinging to his throne would have been the end of the Spanish monarchy (and deservedly so, his financial crimes are incredibly shameful).  What happened to QE2’s so-called sense of duty?

  12. Why has nobody mentioned the possibility that he just made it up? He’s long established himself as dishonest in all his personal dealings.

  13. The comments in here are insane. Yes, if King Juan Carlos had followed Queen Elizabeth’s advice it probably would have been the end of the Spanish monarchy. However, the experience she was pulling from was her own trauma she and her family faced as a result of her own uncle’s abdication, and the near destruction that it wrought on the British monarchy. Queen Elizabeth’s views on abdication were very well known. It was never an option. So yeah, it was bad advice in this context, but if it’s true, she just gave him her informed opinion as one of the few people in the world to have been directly affected by an abdication? In her mind, it wouldn’t really have mattered what the scandal was – you just don’t abdicate

  14. It seems she deeply resented having to be queen. It’s clear her grandmother deeply resented her second son having to take the throne, and I think that was passed down.

    The happiest QEII ever was were the years she and Philip spent in Malta. She wanted to be a wife and mother in a country home, not queen. It explains why she was such a terrible mother after she became queen. She let “duty” take over her mothering instincts and always regretted it. She blamed Edward VIII for all her problems and those of her children.

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