London ? There will be a face — and four paws — missing from beneath the queen’s table this Christmas.

As the royal family gathered Wednesday to celebrate the holidays, Queen Elizabeth II was mourning the death of one of her beloved corgis, mauled by a terrier with a violent past owned by her daughter Princess Anne.

Buckingham Palace would not comment on the widely reported attack, which has cast a pall over the family’s holiday celebrations. An unidentified “royal insider” told The Sun newspaper that the queen was devastated by the dog’s death.

British newspapers said Pharos the corgi was hurt in an altercation with Dotty the bull terrier Monday at the royal family’s Sandringham estate. The 77-year-old queen, recovering from recent knee surgery, hobbled to the scene to find Pharos badly injured.

The corgi was treated by royal vets but had to be put down, reports said.

Dotty was in the news — and her royal owner in court — last year after she attacked two children in a park. But Colette Case, a prominent London pet behavior consultant, said the event “could have happened in any household.

“Corgis are very feisty dogs and are known for getting themselves into scrapes and scraps,” she said.

Princess Anne, daughter of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, stands with her English bull terriers at her Gloucestershire, England, home in this 1996 file photo. One of the Queen's corgis died Tuesday after being attacked by an English bull terrier owned by Princess Anne.

The queen is a noted corgi fancier and has owned more than 30 of the petite Welsh cattle dogs, starting with Susan, who was given to her on her 18th birthday in 1944.

Her affection for the breed is well known. Photographs of Buckingham Palace published in the Daily Mirror tabloid last month, taken by a reporter posing as a royal footman, showed a Tupperware container of dog biscuits on the queen’s breakfast table.

The dogs often sneak into official palace functions, including a reception for President Bush last month. Newspaper reports said the queen hangs out Christmas stockings packed with doggie treats for all of her canine companions.

The death of Pharos leaves the queen with eight corgis and dorgis.

Dotty has been in the dog house before. In April 2002, she bit two children, aged 7 and 12, as they walked in Windsor Great Park.

Princess Anne was fined $880 — the first time in the modern age that a senior member of the British royal family had been convicted of a criminal offense.