- Nerissa Bowes-Lyon and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, first cousins of Queen Elizabeth, were secretly incarcerated in the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Mental Defectives in 1941.
- The scandal, uncovered after Nerissa's death in 1986, was the subject of a 2011 documentary.
- In The Crown season 4 episode 7, Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham Carter) learns of Nerissa and Katherine.
- Here's the real story of the Queen's hidden cousins.
In episode 7 of The Crown season 4, "The Hereditary Principle," viewers are introduced to two lesser-known royal relatives: Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, first cousins of Queen Elizabeth and daughters of the Queen Mother's older brother John Bowes-Lyon. But Nerissa and Katherine aren't living in a tony royal residence; they reside in a drab mental health facility. When we meet the sisters in the series' fictionalized story, they're watching a red carpet appearance of the Queen's on TV. As "God Save the Queen" plays onscreen, Nerissa and Katherine rise and salute in excitement, as an orderly feeds them medication.
According to one of the people who cared for the Bowes-Lyon siblings back then, the scene is rooted in truth: In The Queen's Hidden Cousins, a 2011 documentary from Britain's Channel 4, their former nurse Onelle Braithwaite remembers seeing a jubilant Nerissa and Katherine waving and saluting in front of the television as the Queen arrived at Princess Diana and Prince Charles's 1981 wedding.
"I remember pondering with my colleague how, if things had been different, they would surely have been guests at the wedding," Braithwaite said.
Here is the real story of Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, and how their lives were largely kept secret until shortly after Nerissa's grave was discovered following her death in 1986.
Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon were placed in an asylum in 1941.
Nerissa and Katherine lived in the Bowes-Lyon family home in Scotland until 1941. According to a 1987 report from Canadian outlet Maclean's, it was their mother Fenella Bowes-Lyon who decided to place them in full-time care in the English town of Redhill in the county of Surrey (their father John had died in 1930). The facility's name at the time, Royal Earlswood Asylum for Mental Defectives, reflects the unenlightened culture of shame surrounding those with mental illness and disabilities.
At the time the sisters were committed to the Royal Earlswood, Nerissa was 22 and Katherine was 15; Katherine and her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, were both born in 1926. Nerissa's medical records there, according to the documentary via the Daily Mail, stated that she made "unintelligible noises all the time," and "can say a few babyish words."
They were wrongly believed to be dead the whole time.
As of 1963, Burke's Peerage, considered an authority on British royal genealogy, had Nerissa and Katherine recorded as deceased since 1961 (Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth read it in Burke's for themselves on The Crown).
Upon the scandalous discovery of their long lives at the Royal Earlswood, the sisters' niece, Lady Elizabeth Anson, claimed that their mother Fenella didn't intentionally report her daughters as dead (when they were in fact hospitalized). Rather, Lady Elizabeth said, Fenella was "a very vague person" who hadn't filled out Burke's Peerage documentation "properly or completely."
There's no record of Princess Margaret—or anyone—visiting them since the early 1960s.
On The Crown season 4, Princess Margaret drives to the hospital where Nerissa and Katherine live, sending in her friend Derek "Dazzle" Jennings to check on them. In The Queen's Hidden Cousins, their nurses claim there was no record of anyone visiting Nerissa and Katherine after the 1960s. They also alleged that the sisters didn't receive any presents or cards on occasions such as birthdays. "They never received anything at Christmas either, not a sausage," said one nurse.
Both Lady Elizabeth Anson and sources tied to Buckingham Palace have refuted this. "The Queen is very, very upset at the thought that this program is being made which is just not true," an unnamed "close confidante" to the royal said in remarks published in the British tabloid the Express in 2011.
"Both Katherine and Nerissa were visited regularly by their family but neither could speak, and throughout their lives had the thinking age of four years old," the anonymous source alleged. “They were unable to recognize visitors, often becoming hugely distressed as they struggled to work out who was with them. They also both regularly received presents, especially at Christmas, a fact disputed in this supposedly factual documentary. Neither sister knew who the presents were from but they enjoyed the moment of receiving a lovely gift." How the Queen's proxy knew that the sisters enjoyed receiving the gifts was not clear.
Nerissa Bowes-Lyon's grave was marked by a plastic tag.
The public was made aware that the Bowes-Lyon cousins had been alive and residing at the Royal Earlswood after Nerissa Bowes-Lyon died in 1986. Her grave near the hospital was discovered by journalists; it was a plastic marker with her name and a serial number. Per the documentary, an anonymous donor paid for a proper gravestone after the news broke.
The Queen knew about the Bowes-Lyon sisters.
The discovery that two royal cousins lived that way in secret was a scandal for Buckingham Palace; a spokesman said at the time that the Queen knew about Nerissa and Katherine's situation, but it was "a matter for the immediate (Bowes-Lyon) family."
The revelation that three more of the Queen's cousins had also been placed in the Royal Earlswood made headlines in 1987 as well. The Los Angeles Times reported that the daughters of Harriet Fane, Katherine and Nerissa's mother Fenella's sister, had committed her three daughters Edonia Elizabeth, Rosemary Jean, and Etheldreda Flavia Fane on the very same day (suggesting the two sisters made a joint decision about what to do with their children).
There's an insane conspiracy theory that Katherine Bowes-Lyon was the "real Queen."
Katherine died in 2014 at age 87; she and her living cousins were eventually relocated to another facility in 1996. But we'd be remiss not to mention a conspiracy theory that posits a (wholly unfounded) idea: That the woman we know as Queen Elizabeth is actually Katherine Bowes-Lyon—and thus, she is the real Queen. Wha?
This switched-at-birth fantasy hinges on little more than the fact that Queen Elizabeth and Katherine were born 10 weeks apart in 1926. In this version of events, the Queen's parents allegedly realized their own daughter had been born with severe mental disabilities, and soon made the swap to save face. Elizabeth was a bit further down the line of succession when she was born; her uncle Edward VIII didn't abdicate and pass the throne to Elizabeth's father George VI until 1936—making it even less likely the Bowes-Lyon family would agree to switch.
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Samantha Vincenty is the former senior staff writer at Oprah Daily.
