Queen Elizabeth II Wiki
Queen Elizabeth II Biography
Who was Queen Elizabeth II ?
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability for much of a turbulent century, died on Thursday after 70 years on the throne. She was 96.
Elizabeth II is the Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother, King Edward VIII, making Elizabeth the heir presumptive. Wikipedia
The palace announced that she died at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family rushed to her side after her health deteriorated.
A link to the nearly vanished generation that fought in World War II, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known.
Who announced the queen’s death?
Where is Queen Elizabeth II today?
Born
Her son Prince Charles
Her son Prince Charles, 73, automatically becomes king, though the coronation may not take place for months. It was not immediately known if he will be called King Carlos III or some other name.
The BBC played the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” over a portrait of her in all her regalia when her death was announced, and the flag over Buckingham Palace was lowered to half-staff as the second Elizabethan era came to an end. finish.
The impact of her loss will be huge and unpredictable, both for the nation and for the monarchy, an institution she helped stabilize and modernize through decades of great social change and family scandal.
FILE - Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II looks on during a visit to officially open the new building at Thames Hospice, Maidenhead, England, July 15, 2022.
Life
The queen’s life was indelibly marked by the war. As Princess Elizabeth, she made the first public broadcast of herself in 1940 when she was 14 years old, sending a message of war to children evacuated to the countryside or abroad.
“We, the children at home, are full of joy and courage,” she said with a mixture of stoicism and hope that she would reverberate throughout her reign. “We are trying to do everything we can to help brave soldiers, sailors and airmen. And we are also trying to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, each one of us, that everything will be alright in the end.”
From February 6, 1952, Elizabeth reigned over a Great Britain that rebuilt itself from the war and lost her empire; she joined the European Union and then left it; and transformed from an industrial power to the uncertain society of the 21st century. She endured 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, becoming an institution and an icon, a fixed point and reassuring presence even to those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.
She became less visible in her later years as her 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 parties and parades in June 2022.
The same month she became the second-longest-reigning monarch in history, behind 17th-century French King Louis XIV, who took the throne at age 4. On September 6, 2022, she presided over a ceremony at Balmoral Castle to accept her resignation. of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and appointing Truss as her successor.
When Elizabeth was 21, nearly five years before she became queen, she promised the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth that “all my life, long or short, shall be devoted to her service.”
It was a promise she 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. She led the 54-nation Commonwealth, built around Britain and her 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 troubles were the subject of worldwide fascination, amplified by fictional accounts such as the television series “The Crown.” She is survived by four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Through countless public events, she probably met more people than anyone in history. Her image, which adorned stamps, coins and banknotes, was one of the most reproduced in the world.
But her inner life and her opinions remained largely an enigma. Of her personality, the public saw relatively little. A horse owner, she rarely looked happier than she did during Royal Ascot race week. She never tired of the company of her 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 a queen: her father’s older brother, Prince Edward, was destined for the crown, to be followed by any sons he bore.
Family
And there were many problems within the family, an institution known as “The Firm”. In Elizabeth’s first years on the throne, Princess Margaret sparked a national controversy over her affair 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, as did Prince Andrew and his wife Sara. 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 separation — “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 1997 Paris car crash. time. , the queen seemed to be 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, she finally made a televised address to the nation.
The dent in her popularity was brief. She was now a kind of national grandmother, with a stern look and a twinkling smile.
Despite being one of the richest people in the world, Elizabeth had a reputation for being frugal and common sense. She was known as a monarch who turned out the lights in empty rooms, a peasant girl who was unfazed by strangling pheasants.
A newspaper reporter who went undercover to work as a palace footman reinforced that realistic image, capturing images of real Tupperware on the breakfast table and a rubber ducky in the bathroom.
Her sangfroid was unaffected when a young man pointed a gun at her and fired six blanks as she rode past in 1981, or when she discovered a disturbed intruder sitting on her bed at Buckingham Palace. in 1982.
The queen’s image as an example of ordinary British decency was lampooned by Private Eye magazine, which called her Brenda. Anti-monarchists nicknamed her “Mrs. Windsor. But the republican cause gained limited traction while the queen was alive.
At her Golden Jubilee in 2002, she said the country could “look back with measured pride on the history of the last 50 years.”
“It’s been a pretty remarkable 50 years by any standards,” she said in a speech. “There have been ups and downs, but anyone who can remember what things were like after those six long years of war appreciates the immense changes that have been achieved since then.”
A reassuring presence at home, she was also an emblem of Britain abroad: a form of soft power, consistently respected, regardless of the whims of the country’s political leaders on the world stage. It felt appropriate for her to attend the opening of the 2012 London Olympics along with another icon, James Bond. Through a bit of movie magic, she seemed to parachute into the Olympic Stadium.
In 2015, she surpassed the 63-year, seven-month, and two-day reign of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, to become the longest-serving monarch in British history. She continued to work well into her tenth decade, though Prince Charles and her eldest son, Prince William, increasingly took over the visits, ribbon cuttings and investitures that make up the bulk of the duties. real.
The loss of Philip in 2021 was a huge blow, as she poignantly sat alone at her funeral in Windsor Castle chapel due to coronavirus restrictions.
And the family problems continued. Her son, Prince Andrew, became embroiled in the sordid story of sex offender businessman Jeffrey Epstein, an American businessman he had been friends with. Andrew denied allegations that he had sex with one of the women who said Epstein was trafficking her.
The queen’s grandson, Prince Harry, walked away from Britain and his royal duties after marrying American actress Meghan Markle in 2018. He claimed in an interview that some members of the family, but not the queen, had been less than welcoming to his wife.
He enjoyed robust health well into his 90s, although he did use a cane in one appearance after Philip’s death. In October 2021, he spent a night in a London hospital for tests after canceling a trip to Northern Ireland.
A few months later, he told guests at a reception, “As you can see, I can’t move.” The palace, tight-lipped over the details, said the queen was experiencing “episodic mobility problems”.
George VI died in his sleep at the age of 56
In February 1952, George VI died in his sleep at the age of 56 after years of poor health. Elizabeth, on a visit to Kenya, was told that she was now queen.
Her private secretary, Martin Charteris, later recalled finding the new monarch at her desk, “sitting upright, tearless, a little flushed, fully accepting her fate.”
“In a way, I didn’t have an apprenticeship,” Elizabeth mused in a 1992 BBC documentary that opened up a rare view of her emotions. “My father died too young, so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on and doing the best job possible.”
Her coronation took place more than a year later, a grand spectacle in Westminster Abbey seen 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 girl”, but he was convinced within days and eventually became an ardent fan.
In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the queen is the head of state but she has little direct power; In her official acts, she does what the government orders. However, she was not without influence. She reportedly once commented that there was nothing she could legally do to block the appointment of a bishop, “but I can always say I would like more information. That is an indication that the prime minister will not fail.”
The extent of the monarch’s political influence occasionally provoked speculation, but not much criticism while Elizabeth was alive. The views of Charles, who has expressed strong views on everything from architecture to the environment, could prove more contentious.
She was required to meet weekly with the prime minister and was generally found to be knowledgeable, inquisitive and up-to-date. The only possible exception was Margaret Thatcher, with whom her relations were said to be cold, if not icy, though neither woman commented.
