“Well, we never discussed it at a later date, and I have no right to try to force her into continuing to bring on young puppies if she doesn’t want to. That isn’t my right. But it still concerns me. Because I want her to believe in her existence until she’s no longer here, because she’s just too important to the world to contemplate checking out. For me, the Queen can’t die.”

To Roberts, the corgis exemplify the Queen’s greatness as a leader in one specific way, distinct from the sense of continuity that many claim to be the essence of her significance. “The dogs are so critical, and the horses, the cows, and the other animals, the wild deer and the stags of Scotland—they all play into it, because in my opinion the Queen created an avenue by which people could include animals as a part of our social structure,” Roberts says.

If this sounds anodyne, an affirmation of an apparently eternal value of the old islands, it should be noted that full respect for animals is a modern phenomenon, as malleable as any value. Diplomats who visited the court of Elizabeth I were entertained with spectacles of baiting, in which a bull or bear tied to a stake was set upon by dogs, for fights to the death. This practice was not outlawed until 1835, two years before Victoria took the throne. At that time, dogs were categorized in fewer than four dozen types, usually according to the kind of work they did and area of origin. By the time Victoria died, dogs were classified in hundreds of breeds, with an increasing emphasis on the details of their physical appearance.

Subsequent progress has purified this course of evolution. In the decades of Elizabeth’s lifetime, as Britain’s economy has shifted from a foundation in agriculture and manufacturing to dependence on services such as finance and tourism, the corgi has made a similar change. It has evolved from a scrappy working dog, all but unknown outside Wales, into an ornamental breed, more prized in faraway countries than in its homeland.

Precisely why she gave her heart to corgis is the Queen’s own secret. But the observations of one close family member suggest that she is at least as enchanted by those aspects of the breed that can’t be tamed as by its domesticity. Her first cousin Lady Margaret Rhodes says that the Queen loves to take long walks on the heath in Scotland with the corgis. “They’re often rather unruly, the dogs. They chase rabbits like mad,” Rhodes says. “There are a lot of rabbits around Balmoral, certainly, and the Queen gets excited with the dogs chasing the rabbits, egging them on. Telling them to keep going—’Keep on going!’ ” For this last phrase, the 90-year-old raises her voice to imitate a holler.

Britain’s corgi population has plummeted in recent years, with birth rates down by half just since 2006. This past winter, in February, Pembrokes appeared for the first time on the Kennel Club’s list of vulnerable breeds, “at risk of disappearing from our streets and parks.” Explaining the quandary, one dog breeder lamented that the corgi “is seen as an old person’s dog.” That same month, Nancy Fenwick died. By royal protocol, the monarch does not attend staff funerals, but Prince Andrew arrived at Fenwick’s memorial service accompanied by the Queen.

For what turned out to be (assuming the Queen has no unexpected change of heart) the Windsor kennel’s final litter of corgis, Nancy Fenwick had contacted a breeder the Queen had worked with for decades. Right around the one-year anniversary of the Queen Mum’s death, the Windsor bitch named Linnet was bred with one of Leila Moore’s dogs, and about three months later she gave birth.

All eight of her puppies, born July 9, 2003, were registered with botanical names. Most were household words for common English plants: Holly, Willow, Bramble, Laurel, Jasmine, Cedar, Rose. Just one name in the batch was more obscure: Larch, after a tree that, though a conifer, is deciduous. The larch has needles that turn brilliant gold before they fall in autumn. It can live for 250 years.

“Do you know corgis?” asks Daphne Slark, her blue eyes narrowing. “They’ve got tremendous personalities, and they’re very, very clever. Sometimes they could be a bit naughty—you know, quick!” When arthritis got to where she couldn’t manage walking them anymore, she had to give her corgis up. “But I miss them terribly,” she says. Miss what exactly?, I ask.

“Their brightness of things.”