Queen Elizabeth II: How monarch helped shape modern Wales

“They provide the background for the continuing and keen discussion of proposals for devolution to Scotland and Wales within the United Kingdom.

“I number Kings and Queens of England and of Scotland, and Princes of Wales among my ancestors and so I can readily understand these aspirations.

“But I cannot forget that I was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

That last line, Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas points out, was done to balance her acknowledgement of devolution and said in not so many words, ‘come what may, I am still your Queen’.

Those words were to prove prescient.

Twenty years later in 1997, a referendum returned a narrow majority in favour of devolution in Wales.

Lord Elis-Thomas, who was made the assembly’s presiding officer, was in close contact with the Queen and her advisers regarding the opening ceremony.

On 26 May 1999, the Queen arrived in Cardiff in an open-top carriage along with the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles for the opening at the assembly’s initial home at Crickhowell House.

Inside she signed a special edition of the Government of Wales Act, which symbolised the transfer of powers from Westminster to the assembly.

It would, the Queen said, extend a bridge into the future, a beginning and an opportunity.

“This opening today marks a new and significant direction in the way Wales is governed,” she said. “It’s a moment of renewal true to the spirit of Wales.”

The Queen attended all six opening ceremonies, each ceremony developing as the assembly bedded down in to its new home at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay, which she also opened in 2006.