Royal families have long been known for carefully controlling their public image, often keeping anything deemed unseemly out of sight. But few stories illustrate this better than the fate of Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon, two of Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousins, who spent most of their lives in an institution, forgotten by all but the hospital staff. For decades, their very existence was obscured, their deaths unnoticed by the wider world—until a 1987 exposé in The Sun revealed their tragic