Every year on May 8, the U.K. celebrates VE Day, a holiday that marks the end of World War II in Europe. All week long, members of the royal family have been attending different events in honor of VE Day’s 80th anniversary, including King Charles, who made a speech that included a sweet anecdote about how much his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, loved the holiday.
As People reported, Charles addressed the crowd at the VE Day 80: A Celebration to Remember concert in London on Friday, May 9, looking back on the very first VE Day on May 8, 1945, when the war came to an end.
At the time, Queen Elizabeth was known as Princess Elizabeth, daughter to King George VI, and she was just a teenager… and acting surprisingly similar to “normal” teenagers, despite the fact that she would become queen less than a decade later.
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“The celebration that evening was marked by my own late mother who, just 19 years old, described in her diary how she mingled anonymously in the crowds across central London and, in her own words, ‘walked for miles’ among them,” Charles told his audience.
He then went on to read a diary entry aloud that 19-year-old Elizabeth had written about how the celebration continued on into a second day. According to Charles, she wrote, “Out in the crowd again. Embankment, Piccadilly. Rained, so fewer people. Conga-ed into house. Sang till 2 a.m. Bed at 3 a.m.!”
Though Charles admitted that he “rather doubted” he’d have the kind of energy to celebrate the way his mom had that year, it was a sweet way to remember her, and to include her in a holiday that seemed dear to her heart.
Now, that just leaves one question: What else did the queen write about in her diary?
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