![]() In Elizabeth’s first years on the throne, Princess Margaret provoked a national controversy through her romance with a divorced man. Her views in those private meetings became a subject of intense speculation and fertile ground for dramatists like Peter Morgan, author of the play “The Audience” and hit TV series “The Crown.” Those semi-fictionalized accounts were the product of an era of declining deference and rising celebrity, when the royal family’s troubles became public property. The monarch held weekly meetings with them, and they generally found her well-informed, inquisitive and up to date. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s first reaction to the king’s death was that the new queen was “only a child,” but he was won over within days and eventually became an ardent admirer.Ĭhurchill was the first of 15 prime ministers in her reign. Her coronation took place more than a year later at Westminster Abbey, a spectacle viewed by millions through the still-new medium of television. “My father died much too young, and so it was all a very sudden kind of taking on, and making the best job you can.” “In a way I didn’t have an apprenticeship,” Elizabeth reflected in a BBC documentary in 1992. Elizabeth, visiting Kenya, was told that she was now queen. In February 1952, George VI died in his sleep after years of ill health at age 56. Besides those four children, she is survived by eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. He was followed by Princess Anne followed on Aug. ![]() Their first child, Prince Charles, was born on Nov. She later described it as “one of the most memorable nights of my life.”Īt 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. On the night the war ended in Europe, May 8, 1945, she and Margaret mingled, unrecognized, with celebrating crowds in London. In 1945, eager to do something for the war effort, the heir to the throne joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, where she enthusiastically learned how to drive and service heavy vehicles. The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow. The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. Elizabeth and Margaret spent most of it at Windsor Castle, spending many nights in an underground shelter as bombs fell. “She didn’t mention it again.”Įlizabeth was barely in her teens when Britain went to war with Germany in 1939. ”‘Yes, I suppose it does,’” Margaret quoted Elizabeth as saying. Princess Margaret recalled asking her sister whether this meant that Elizabeth would one day be queen. She was not born to be queen - her father’s elder brother, Prince Edward, was destined to take the crown, to be followed by any children he had.īut in 1936, when she was 10, Edward VIII abdicated to marry twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, and Elizabeth’s father became King George VI. She endured through 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Liz Truss, becoming an institution and an icon - a fixed point and a reassuring presence even for those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.Įlizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21, 1926, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. The only monarch most Britons have ever known, Elizabeth reigned for 70 years over a country that rebuilt from war and lost its empire joined the European Union and then left it transformed from industrial powerhouse to uncertain 21st century society. It was a promise she kept across more than seven decades. In 1947, almost five years before she ascended the throne, the 21-year-old Elizabeth promised the people of Britain and the Commonwealth that “my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.” ![]() In October of that year, she was hospitalized for a night in London for tests, and thereafter her public appearances grew scarcer. The queen enjoyed robust health well into her 90s, although she was seen using a cane in one appearance after the death of Philip, her husband of 73 years, in April 2021. It is not known whether he will choose to call himself King Charles III or some other name. With the death of the queen, her 73-year-old son Charles automatically becomes monarch, even though the coronation might not take place for months. The BBC played the national anthem over a portrait of the queen in full regalia. She was 96.īuckingham Palace said she died at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to be by her side. Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a symbol of stability across much of a turbulent century, died Thursday. ![]()
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