The Queen Mother was described as "chirpy" last night, despite having broken her collar bone in a fall at her London home.
Well-wishers arrived at the gates of Clarence House after a spokeswoman confirmed the Queen Mother had tripped and fractured her left collar bone while preparing to leave for Windsor last Friday afternoon.
The Queen Mother, who was 100 in August, was alone when she fell for the second time in a week. Doctors decided the fracture did not need plaster and she was not brought to hospital.
Saying she was now sitting up in bed, the spokeswoman said she was "reasonably comfortable" and had "cancelled her engagements for the moment".
The centenarian Royal and veteran of two hip-replacement operations was to visit the Field of Remembrance at St Margaret's churchyard, Westminster, on Thursday ahead of Sunday's Remembrance Service at the Cenotaph in honour of the dead of two world wars.
Just last Tuesday night the Queen Mother tripped on a long evening dress as she was getting into her Daimler after a Garden Society dinner. While eyewitnesses suggested she had hit her head on the floor of the limousine, Clarence House insisted she was unhurt.
Explaining Friday's fall, the spokeswoman said yesterday: "The Queen Mother was on her own when she tripped and fell. Had there been someone with her, they probably could have stopped her fall. But her majesty spends most of her time on her own. There is always someone close by but her majesty has a life of her own and is not kept under constant watch."
She continued: "Her majesty is reasonably comfortable and has cancelled her engagements for the time being. Everybody is aware that she is 100 years old and they keep things out of her way, so she probably didn't trip on anything in particular."
Outside Clarence House Ms Sheila Bainbridge, from Poplar, East London, said: "When I heard the news I knew I would be passing . . . and I had to wish her all the best. She is everyone's favourite royal and any fall at her age must be quite serious."
After visiting his grandmother Prince Charles said: "She is in remarkably good form, thank you very much."
Family from near and far gathered yesterday at the bedside of Denmark's ailing 90-year-old Queen Mother Ingrid, the grand old lady of a royal household untainted by scandal.
The condition of the Swedish-born Queen Mother, popular and respected in her adopted home country, was showing no further change following a deterioration in recent days, the palace told the national Ritzau news agency.