The Royal Tree House Scandal: How Elizabeth Became Queen While Filming Elephants and Nobody Could Find Her to Tell Her

On February 6, 1952, a 25-year-old woman became Queen of the United Kingdom while sitting in a tree house in Kenya watching wildlife. Princess Elizabeth and her husband Prince Philip were staying at Treetops, a hotel built into the branches of a giant fig tree overlooking a watering hole in Aberdare National Park, when her father King George VI died in his sleep at Sandringham House back in England. The young princess had climbed up a ladder into the trees as one monarch and would descend—though she didn't yet know it—as another. The delicious irony was that while the British Empire was frantically trying to reach her with the news, Elizabeth was occupied filming elephants and other game with her movie camera, blissfully unaware that she was already Queen. The remote location had no telephone, and it took several hours for word to reach the royal party. Her husband Philip finally broke the news to her that afternoon after they'd returned to their hunting lodge, Sagana. Her private secretary, Martin Charteris, later had to ask her what name she wanted to use as monarch—a necessary question since monarchs can choose their regnal names. She looked at him with some surprise and replied simply, "My own name, of course. What else?" The trip's host, hunter Jim Corbett, later wrote in the Treetops logbook: "For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess and after having what she described as her most thrilling experience, she climbed down from the tree the next day a Queen." This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.