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RIP Queen Elizabeth II [1]
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Date: 2022-09-08
On February 6th, 1952, King George VI, the King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth, and the last Emperor of India died. His elder daughter, the 25-year-old-Elizabeth, became the Queen. Her subsequent coronation was the first one broadcast. And what had been an insular and distant institution was now open to very public scrutiny.
At the time of her ascension, Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister and Harry Truman the US President. Fourteen Presidents and 15 Prime Ministers later, the 96-year-old Elizabeth was still on the throne. She was the longest-serving Head of State. Hassanal Bolkiah, who became the leader of Brunei in 1967, now has that honor.
Elizabeth was in Balmoral, Scotland, on her annual summer vacation, but she was still working. Two days ago, in her last official duty, she asked Liz Truss, the new Conservative party leader, to form a government on her behalf - the 19th time she had asked a Prime Minister to do so.
None of this was expected. When she was born on April 21nd, 1926, she was the first child of the younger son of George V. Her uncle was the future Edward VIII. And had things progressed, as expected, he would have married some suitable English or European aristocrat and continued the line with Elizabeth enjoying a secluded life dedicated to her own interests (think Princess Anne). Note: Had Edward had no progeny under that arrangement, Elizabeth would have become the Queen in 1972.
But in an act foreshadowing her grandson Prince Harry’s choice, Edward married an American divorcée. The British government forced him to abdicate. And his younger brother, a stutterer with a loathing for public speaking, was handed the unexpected crown as he became George VI. The young Princess was now the heir apparent.
Three years later the UK was at war with the Nazis and other Axis powers. London suffered through the Blitz as the Royals remained in Buckingham Palace to show solidarity with other Londoners. Elizabeth did her bit as a teenager by working as a mechanic on Army trucks.
In 1947, at 21, she married the dashing, irascible, and free-speaking Prince Phillip of Greece and Denmark — who would be granted the style of Royal Highness and was made the Duke of Edinburgh. Their marriage lasted 73 years.
In 1948, she gave birth to her eldest son and heir Charles, who had been heir apparent for 70 years, a record — beating the previous mark of 59 years set by his great, great grandfather Edward VII, who lived a life of hedonic excess while waiting for his mother Victoria to shuffle off. In 1901, she did. At her death, Victoria was the UK’s longest-serving British monarch, with 63 years on the throne. Elizabeth is the new title holder at 70 years.
Three more children would follow — Anne in 1950, Andrew in 1960, and Edward in 1964. Now the Queen has eight grandchildren aged 14 to 44 and 12 grandkids aged 1 to 14.
Elizabeth was in Kenya representing her father when she received news of George VI’s death. Since then, she visited 120 other countries. It is hard to imagine that another head of state has come close to that number. Her first foreign visit was to Panama in 1953. And her last, in 2015, to Germany,
It was to former West Germany that she paid her first official state visit in 1965 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of WWII and the reemergence of Germany as an economic powerhouse. The last state visit there by a British monarch was in 1913, the year before WWI.
In a reflection of the interconnectedness of the European ruling class, Prince Phillip’s three sisters all married German princes. But as the enmity with Germany was still fresh, George VI banned them from attending Phillip's wedding to Elizabeth. Phillip was a member of the Mountbatten family, which had changed its name from Battenburg to play down its German roots. And before the British monarch adopted the name of Windsor, it had, until 1917, been the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Despite the loss of the Empire and the independence of many former colonies, Elizabeth was still the titular Head of State of 15 countries. She was also the symbolic head of the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth of Nations) - a league of independent states bound together by the fact they had once been governed by the British. The most notable expression of this unity is in the quadriennial Commonwealth games — essentially a mini-Olympics.
For 70 years, the British have only known one monarch. And as bad as things got, she was always there. On the money. On the stamps. It was the Royal Mail, the Royal Navy, and even lock-up was Her Majesty's Prisons
But now the UK faces a void that will leave even the anti-monarchy British republicans with a sense of loss.
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