The Queen of England is one of the latest celebrities to have suffered the loss of her husband, Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, who died at the age of 99 on April 9. Since then, Elizabeth II is one of the most popular widows in the world, after more than 73 years of marriage, a period in which she came to describe the Duke as her “constant strength and guide.”
The British monarch opens a range of famous women who have lost their partners and who regain relevance coinciding with the International Day of Widows, established by the United Nations on June 23.
Among them, Vanessa Laine Bryant, the wife of the late NBA basketball player Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter accident with her daughter Gigi and seven others on January 26, 2020, near her home in Los Angeles.
“There are not enough words to describe our grief at this time,” the widow of the Los Angeles Lakers star wrote in an Instagram post days after his death.
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“It comforts me to know that Kobe and Gigi knew they were so deeply loved. We were incredibly blessed to have them in our lives. I wish they were here with us forever. “
Kobe Bryant’s widow’s grief has manifested itself on repeated occasions that Vanessa has appeared in public or used social media to remember her beloved husband and little Gigi.
Micheline Roquebrune, widow of Scottish actor Sean Connery, who died at the age of 90 on October 31, remembered her husband with whom she shared more than four decades of her life as “a wonderful model of man” with whom she shared “a wonderful Life”.
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Historical widows
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The cases of Elizabeth II, Vanessa Bryant and Micheline Roquebrune are the most famous examples of famous people who have lost their partners in recent months, but there are many widows whose fame has transcended borders.
Jaqueline Kennedy, single Bouvier, will always be remembered as the “widow of America”, after becoming the widow of the president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in 1963, and years later, in 1975, of the Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis,
In Hollywood, American actress Lauren Bacall carried the label “Hollywood widow” for decades, following the death of actor Humphrey Bogart in 1957.
Carolina de Monaco does not forget the fact that she was the widow of Stefano Casiraghi, who died in an accident in a nautical race in 1990, although she later married Ernesto de Hannover.
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The label “widow of Spain” continues to appear on the singer Isabel Pantoja, although the death of her husband, the bullfighter Francisco Rivera “Paquirri”, dates back to 1984. By then, Yoko Ono was already a famous widow, after the murder of his partner, the “Beatle” John Lennon in 1980.
Courtney Love will always be the widow of the American singer, musician and composer Kurt Cobain, who died in 1994. The world of song also remembers other illustrious women who have been widowed, such as the Canadian Celine Dion, married to her representative René Agnelli for 22 years until his death in 2016.
That same year, the famous singer David Bowie died, married to the Somali woman, Imam, who at 65 still works as a model and maintains a vivid memory of her husband.
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Nicoletta Mantovani, Luciano Pavarotti’s widow, has not forgotten her husband since his death in 2007. Mantovani has participated in various tributes and in the production of a documentary on the life of the Italian tenor in 2019, directed by Ron Howard . “Luciano was a person who loved life in all its aspects and managed to attract the best of all. He always looked for the positive even in people with the most negative attitude, ‘if you want to grow, look for the beautiful’, he used to say,” he revealed then the widow.
The death of Steve Jobs, co-founder and president of Apple, in 2011 allowed him to know something more about his wife, Laurene Powell, who in recent years often appears on the Forbes list of the richest women in the world.
Cases that serve to pay tribute to the more than 258 million widows around the world, according to the United Nations, whom they remember on June 23, the day established in 2011 to shed light on the problems of this great group.
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