LONDON –
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Canada’s head of state and a rock of stability for much of a turbulent century, died on Thursday after 70 years on the throne. She was 96 years old.
The palace announced that he died at Balmoral Castle, his summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to his side after his health deteriorated.
A link to the almost extinct generation that fought in the Second World War, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known, and her name defines an era: the modern Elizabethan era.
His 73-year-old son, Prince Charles, automatically becomes king, although the coronation may not take place for months. It is not known if he will be called King Charles III or some other name.
The BBC played the national anthem, “God Save the Queen”, over a portrait of her in full regalia when her death was announced, and the flag at Buckingham Palace was lowered to half-mast when ‘the second Elizabethan age was ending.
The impact of his loss will be huge and unpredictable, both for the nation and for the monarchy, an institution that helped stabilize and modernize decades of enormous social change and family scandals.
The queen’s life was indelibly marked by the war. As Princess Elizabeth, she made her first public broadcast in 1940 when she was 14, sending a war message to children evacuated to the countryside or abroad.
“We children of the house are full of joy and bravery,” he said with a mixture of stoicism and hope that would echo throughout his reign. “We are trying to do everything we can to help the gallant soldiers, sailors and airmen. And we are also trying to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, each of us, that all will be well in the end.”
From February 6, 1952, Elizabeth reigned over a Britain that was rebuilt after the war and lost its empire; joined and then left the European Union; and transformed from an industrial powerhouse to an uncertain 21st century society. It endured 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, becoming an institution and an icon: a fixture and a reassuring presence even for those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.
He became less visible in his later years as age and frailty curtailed many public appearances. But she remained firmly in control of the monarchy and at the center of national life as Britain celebrated its platinum jubilee with days of pageantry and pageantry in June 2022.
In the same month, she became the second longest-reigning monarch in history, behind the 17th-century French king Louis XIV, who took the throne at the age of 4. On 6 September 2022, he presided over a ceremony at Balmoral Castle to accept the resignation. of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and appoint Truss as his successor.
When Elizabeth was 21, almost five years before she became Queen, she promised the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth that “my whole life, whether long or short, shall be devoted to your service”.
It was a promise he kept for more than seven decades.
Despite Britain’s complex and often strained ties to its former colonies, Elizabeth was widely respected and remained head of state in more than a dozen countries, from Canada to Tuvalu. He led the Commonwealth of 54 nations, built around Great Britain and its former colonies.
Married for more than 73 years to Prince Philip, who died in 2021 aged 99, Elizabeth was the matriarch of a royal family whose problems were the subject of worldwide fascination, amplified by fictional accounts such as the television series “The Crown”. He is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Through countless public events, he probably met more people than anyone else in history. His image, which adorned stamps, coins and banknotes, was one of the most reproduced in the world.
But his inner life and views remained mostly an enigma. Of his personality, the public saw relatively little. A horse owner, she rarely looked happier than during Royal Ascot race week. He never tired of the company of his beloved Welsh corgi dogs.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21, 1926, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. She was not born to be queen: her father’s older brother, Prince Edward, was destined for the crown, to be followed by any children he had.
But in 1936, when she was 10, Edward VIII abdicated to marry twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, and Elizabeth’s father became King George VI.
Princess Margaret recalled asking her sister if this meant Elizabeth would one day be queen. “‘Yes, I suppose so,'” said Margaret, quoting Elizabeth. “She didn’t mention it again.”
Elizabeth was barely a teenager when Britain went to war with Germany in 1939. While the King and Queen stayed at Buckingham Palace during the Blitz and toured the bombed-out boroughs of London, Elizabeth and Margaret spent most part of the war at Windsor Castle, west of the capital. Even there, 300 bombs fell on an adjacent park and the princesses spent many nights in an underground shelter.
In 1945, after months of campaigning for her parents’ permission to do something for the war effort, the heir to the throne became Second Lieutenant Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. He enthusiastically learned to drive and service heavy vehicles.
On the night the war ended in Europe, May 8, 1945, she and Margaret managed to blend in unrecognized with celebrating crowds in London, “swept away by a tide of happiness and relief,” as she put it. on the BBC decades later, describing it as “one of the most memorable nights of my life”.
At Westminster Abbey in November 1947 she married Royal Navy officer Philip Mountbatten, a prince of Greece and Denmark whom she had first met in 1939 when she was 13 and he 18. The Great Post-war Britain was experiencing austerity and rationing, so street decorations were limited and no public holidays were declared. But the bride was allowed an additional 100 ration coupons for her dependents.
The couple lived for a time in Malta, where Philip was stationed, and Elizabeth enjoyed an almost normal life as a navy wife. The first of their four children, Prince Charles, was born on 14 November 1948. He was followed by Princess Anne on 15 August 1950, Prince Andrew on 19 February 1960 and Prince Edward on 10 March 1964.
In February 1952, George VI died in his sleep aged 56 after years of ill health. Elizabeth, on a visit to Kenya, was told that she was now Queen.
His private secretary, Martin Charteris, later recalled finding the new monarch at his desk, “sitting upright, without tears, painting a little, fully accepting his fate”.
“In a way, I had no learning,” Elizabeth reflected in a 1992 BBC documentary that opened a rare insight into her emotions. “My father died too young, so it was very sudden to take over and do the best job possible.”
His coronation took place more than a year later, a grand spectacle in Westminster Abbey watched by millions through the still new medium of television.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first reaction to the king’s death was to complain that the new queen was “just a child”, but within days he was won over and eventually became an ardent admirer.
In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the Queen is head of state but has little direct power; in his official actions he does what the government orders. However, she was not without influence. He once commented that there was nothing he could legally do to block the appointment of a bishop, “but I can always say I’d like more information. That’s an indication the prime minister won’t be lost.”
The extent of the monarch’s political influence occasionally led to speculation, but not much criticism while Elizabeth was alive. Charles, who has expressed strong opinions on everything from architecture to the environment, may prove more controversial.
She was required to meet weekly with the Prime Minister, and was generally found well-informed, inquisitive and up-to-date. The only possible exception was Margaret Thatcher, with whom his relations were said to be cool, if not frosty, although neither woman ever commented.
The Queen’s views in those private meetings became a subject of intense speculation and fertile ground for playwrights such as Peter Morgan, author of the play “The Audience” and the hit TV series “The Crown “. Those semi-fictionalized accounts were the product of an era of declining deference and rising celebrity, when the problems of the royal family became public property.
And there was a lot of trouble within the family, an institution known as “The Firm.” In Elizabeth’s early years on the throne, Princess Margaret caused national controversy through her romance with a divorced man.
In what the Queen called the “annus horribilis” of 1992, her daughter Princess Anne divorced, Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated, and so did Prince Andrew and his wife Sarah . That was also the year that Windsor Castle, a residence she preferred to Buckingham Palace, was badly damaged by fire.
Charles and Diana’s public split – “There were three of us in that marriage,” Diana said of her husband’s relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles – was followed by the shock of Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris in 1997 .For once. , the queen appeared out of step with her people.
In the midst of unprecedented public mourning, Elizabeth’s failure to make a public display of grief struck many as callous. After several days, he finally made a televised address to the nation.
The dent in its popularity was brief. She was already a kind of national grandmother, with a stern look and a…