One of the things that seems to keep Queen Elizabeth rolling—indeed, she visibly brightens at the prospect—is spending time in Scotland. She loves her Scottish estate at Balmoral where she is now, as she is every year in August and September. But Scotland—and its ever-present threat to vote to leave the United Kingdom—presents one of the trickiest problems of her reign.

How the Queen feels about this remains one of the many secrets that she conceals behind her well-practiced inscrutability. She knows that if the vote ever goes in favor of an independent Scotland she won’t be banished from the land—the nationalists have said they want their country to remain a monarchy for as long as the people wish, and she would remain head of state, as she is still, at least nominally, in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a fair bet, though, that the Queen doesn’t want to see her kingdom dismembered. She herself represents a congenial mingling of English and Scottish blood. Her mother was the daughter of a Scottish noble, Lord Glamis, descended from one of the royal houses of Scotland. In fact, as Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon the Queen’s mother was the first woman to marry into the royal family who wasn’t from one of the numerous and incestuous branches of the European royal tree.