The late Queen Elizabeth II was more relatable than she was typically given credit for - Jayne Dowle

Already, less than four years before her death at Balmoral, the hold the late Queen held over the nation – even for those with little or no interest in the monarchy – can feel like a distant memory. The world is a very different place.

So much has happened since, not least the disgrace her second son, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has brought to his family.

Yet, even though the privileges and powers Andrew enjoyed before being stripped of his official titles and duties have called into question just how much his late mother indulged him, his shame has – on balance – not dimmed her light.

As her heir, the King said in tribute to his mother: “Much about the times we now live in I suspect may have troubled her deeply”, without revealing exactly what he was referring to.

We can only conjecture; family strife, with Andrew arrested on his 66th birthday, and currently under investigation for misconduct in public office, Prince Harry still estranged and both the King and the Princess of Wales tackling cancer, the government in disarray, the geopolitical situation and war now in the Middle East. President Trump. It’s been said that Her Majesty was not a huge fan and found him “rude”.

The King is off to the USA on a state visit to meet Trump next week; we can only imagine what his mother would have done faced with the circumstances. She would probably have stiffened her lip and got on with it, keeping her own counsel as ever.

Throughout her reign, the Queen’s purpose was to rise above scandal and controversy and to provide a figurehead on which we could rely. This is not sentimental rose-tinted remembering; it meant something.

Almost half of us, 44 per cent, admit to shedding tears at the news of her death, on September 8, 2022. According to a YouGov poll, that was 55 per cent of women and 32 per cent of men.

At the time, the registrar at the Royal College of Psychiatrists spoke of people feeling “shocked, anxious, or fearful about changes they don’t feel prepared for, or deep feelings of loss and sadness”.

People conversed in hushed voices as they went about their daily lives. Traffic seemed to slow down, somehow. Social media was awash with hopeful ‘sightings’ of Her Majesty’s image in the clouds, or crashing waves.

Celebrities, including a host of pop stars, from Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John to Dolly Parton, Johnny Rotten and Liam Gallagher, who tweeted a single word - “Gutted” – expressed their sincere condolences.

It was as if by some collective force we knew that this really was the end of an era. Whether willingly or not, we afford a special sense of protection to prominent Royals, and find ourselves thrown when they suffer the same inevitable mortality as the rest of us.

And yet, there was something more personal and relatable about the late Queen than she was typically given credit for, especially for women perhaps.

The wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother who assured us in that famous Covid pandemic TV broadcast, “we will meet again”, was not just the head of the Royal family, but sometimes felt like a member of our own too.

Most of us never met her, but many of us would remember seeing her from afar on a visit – my generation still talk about the day she came to Barnsley in the 1970s – or being touched by a revealing glimpse of her warmer side.

In his tribute, the King remarked that many people might remember the late Queen from “a fleeting personal encounter, a smile, a kind word that lifted spirits … or for that marvellous twinkle of the eye when sharing a marmalade sandwich with Paddington Bear in the final months of her life.”

You didn’t have to be a monarchist, or even a royalist, to recognise that this woman also represented something far larger than her diminutive self.