After two and a half years of researching and writing on royal mourning and widow Queens w/r/t Queen Victoria, it's strange to see the day my PhD subject is relevant to major news with Prince Philip's death today.

I don't have something to say prepared - maybe I should have.

There's not much precedent for Elizabeth II to follow. Only two British Queens - Queen Anne and Queen Victoria - were widowed before her (plus Mary, Queen of Scots, if you count her, which I do). All these women lost their husbands in very different circumstances..

...and at very different life stages. Mary was first widowed as a beautiful childless teenager, living as a consort in the only country she'd known as home. She had little choice but to return to Scotland, where she was already central to a centuries-old conflict, and to marry...

for political stability & heirs. Her first widowhood was visually iconic but quickly cut short. Centuries later, her chosen style of widow's cap would still be named after her - the Marie Stuart cap.

Her second widowhood, aged 24, did not work out well - a possible murder, a possible sexual assault, imprisonment, a beheading. The details of the history are well known, if still controversial. In any case, this widowhood was even more brief than the last one.