LONDON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Queen Elizabeth II's 101-year-old mother, who has not made an official public appearance in three months, has told aides she is determined to attend the funeral of her younger daughter, Princess Margaret, but a final decision may not be made until the last minute.
Sources close to the royal family said doctors were concerned the Queen Mother, also named Queen Elizabeth, still was suffering from a chest cold that has persisted since before Christmas and that she might be too frail to make the journey.
One Buckingham Palace source confirmed to United Press International on Tuesday, however, that "certainly she will be at the funeral if she possibly can."
The funeral for Princess Margaret, who died last Saturday at the age of 71, is scheduled for Friday at Windsor, about 25 miles west of London. News reports said one possibility was that the queen mother might be flown by helicopter from Sandringham, north of London, directly to Windsor without stopping in the capital.
"We won't know anything for a day or two on how she will travel from Sandringham," the palace source said. "She is a remarkable lady and is doing extraordinarily well."
The queen mother, who was born when Queen Victoria, Princess Margaret's grandmother, was on the British throne, has been in declining health after a series of ailments in recent years and hasn't made an official appearance in public since November.
The British Broadcasting Corp. said it had learned that, in a break with royal tradition, Princess Margaret's body will be cremated and her ashes placed in the vault of her father, King George VI, at St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.
Buckingham Palace declined comment on the report by the BBC's usually reliable royal reporter and said in accordance with the wishes of the princess's two children, further details of their mother's funeral would not be made public until later in the week.
The BBC correspondent, Jennie Bond, said it is "extremely unusual for a member of the royal family to be cremated," but that she had been told Princess Margaret, in setting out "in some detail" the form her funeral should take, had specifically asked for cremation.
