Queen Elizabeth II, one of the most iconic figures of both the 20th and 21st centuries, has died. She was 96.
“The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon,” Buckingham Palace announced in an official statement on Thursday.
The statement continued, “The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”
“I cannot lead you into battle,” the Queen, summing up her role in a 1957 Christmas broadcast, once told her subjects. “I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else: I can give my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”
Queen Elizabeth.Chris jackson/PA
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But the loss was most profound for her large family, including her four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Prince Charles, Prince William, Prince George, Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Harry and James Viscount Severn Trooping the Colour ceremony in 2015.Tim Rooke/REX Shutterstock
The Queen’s death comes after a year of various health issues. In October 2021, she stepped out with a walking cane. The same month, she canceled a scheduled trip to Northern Ireland under medical advice from her doctors andspent a night in the hospital.
The Queen also decided not to appear at the Remembrance Day ceremony in November due to asprained backand did not celebrate a traditional Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham, partially due to the uptick in COVID-19 cases around the holidays.
Shetested positive for COVID-19in February. She was being monitored for mild cold-like symptoms while continuing to carry on light duties, according to Buckingham Palace.
After the Queenappointed Liz Truss as the new prime minister of the United KingdomatBalmoral Castlein Scotland on Tuesday, September 6, Buckingham Palace announced the following day that the Queen would not preside over a scheduled Privy Council meeting so she could rest.
Queen Elizabeth on her final engagement - September 2022.Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Although the Queen did not attend every event during her Platinum Jubilee weekend in June, celebrating her historic 70-year reign, she appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony on two occasions.
Later in the day, the Queen appeared at Windsor Castle tolight the Platinum Jubilee beacon.Queen Elizabethalsostarred in a pre-recorded sketchfeaturing Paddington Bear that kicked off the Platinum Party at the Palace.
Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth, Prince George, Prince William and Princess Charlotte.Chris Jackson - WPA Pool/Getty
Unlike her famous forbears, however, Elizabeth was never meant to be Queen. She inherited the throne at just25 years old in February 1952upon the death of her father, King George V — who himself had been a surprise monarch when his brotherEdward VIII abdicatedamid scandal in 1936.
By then, she andPrince Philipwere already the parents of two young children, Prince Charles andPrincess Anne.Prince AndrewandPrince Edwardfollowed in 1960 and 1964.
WATCH:Queen Elizabeth, the Longest-Reigning British Monarch, Dies at 96
The dramatic story of her ascension to the throne became the focus of renewed public interest with the premiere of the hugely successful Netflix seriesThe Crown.
In 2011, during a glittering state dinner at Buckingham Palace for then-U.S. President Barack Obamaand his wifeMichelle, the President summed up her longevity and place in history.
“This dinner is a humble reminder of the fleeting nature of presidencies and prime ministerships,” President Obama said in his toast. “Your Majesty’s reign has spanned about a dozen of each — and counting. That makes you both a living witness to the power of our alliance and a chief source of its resilience.”
A Carefree Childhood
Future King and Queen, George, Duke of York (1895–1952) and Elizabeth, Duchess of York (1900–2002), holding their first child, future monarch Princess Elizabeth at her christening ceremony.Central Press/Getty
Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, known to her family asLilibet(a name the Queen’s grandson,Prince Harry, and granddaughter-in-law,Meghan Markle, would later choose for their daughter), came into the world on April 21, 1926, the elder daughter of the then-Duke and Duchess of York. (Her sisterMargaretwas born four years later.) The young princess enjoyed an idyllic childhood of homeschooling and long summer holidays playing in the heather in Scotland.
Elizabeth’s father, the soon-to-be King George VI, famously described dutiful Elizabeth as his “pride” and fun-loving Margaret as his “joy.”
Princess Margaret (left) and Princess Elizabeth in 1933.AFP/Getty
Another childhood fixture would also carry through to adulthood: her love of horses, which she owned both for pleasure and racing androde into her 90s.
But the simple years were not to last long. By the time she was just 10, Elizabeth knew her destiny — when her uncle Edward abdicated after just a few months on the throne in orderto marry his American lover, Wallis Simpson.
“Does that mean that you will have to be the next Queen?” her younger sister Margaret is said to have asked when the family learned of King Edward’s abdication.
“Yes, someday,” Elizabeth said. “Poor you,” came the reply.
Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) and her then-fiancé Philip Mountbatten at Buckingham Palace after their engagement was announced on July 10, 1947.Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty
In her teens, the future Queen spotted the man she was to marry. Just 13 when she met the dashingPrince Philip, she wrote to him for several years before they began courting formally.
Many observers say the first signal that the two were destined for a future together came when a picture emerged of them at the wedding of their mutual cousin, Lady Patricia Mountbatten, in October 1946. They were spotted in the doorway of the Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, and as Elizabeth removed her coat, Philip looked on smiling, with his eyes locked on hers.
He was a handsome prince five years her senior, and Elizabeth a fresh-faced beauty. “Patricia Mountbatten said, ‘She has such beautiful skin,'” says biographer Sally Bedell Smith. “And Philip said, ‘She’s like that all over.’ There was a physical attraction!”
As their relationship grew, the two started spending more time together, especially when Philip accepted a job at an officers’ school in England and was able to visit with greater frequency.
“He’d spend weekends with us, and when the school was closed he spent six weeks at Balmoral,” Elizabeth wrote in a 1947 letter to author Betty Shew that went up for auction in April 2016. “It was great luck his getting a short job first then!”
Further into their relationship — but before their engagement — they would drive out in his sports car together.
“Philip enjoys driving and does it fast!” Elizabeth wrote. “He has his own tiny M.G. which he is very proud of — he has taken me about in it, once up to London, which was great fun, only it was like sitting on the road, and the wheels are almost as high as one’s head.”
A Wedding for the Ages
Then-Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh (styled Prince Philip) on their wedding day in 1957.Hulton Archive/Getty
On November 20, 1947, the pair married ina spectacular ceremonyat London’s Westminster Abbey — the same place wherePrince William would wed Kate Middleton in 2011.
And just like William and Kate, a young Princess Elizabeth andPrince Philipbrought smiles and celebrations to the nation — something that was certainly needed just two years after the end of World War II.
At the time of their wedding, which was the first major event following the end of the war, millions of Britons were living in the aftermath of the bomb-damaged cities and coping with food rations.
“With her bridal dress and tiara on her wedding day, she was a knockout,” one of her bridesmaids, Pamela Hicks, previously told PEOPLE. “And, of course, Philip was every girl’s dream Viking prince.”
Sweet Newlywed Years Overseas
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip with children Princess Anne and Prince Charles.Getty
After their wedding, Elizabeth and Philip spent around two years from 1949 to 1951living in Maltawhile he was based there in the Royal Navy.
The blissful time was the “most ‘normal’ of her entire life,” biographer Ben Pimlott once noted. Their then-private secretary Mike Parker said it was a “fabulous period.”
It was, Pimlott wrote inThe Queen, a “haven of comparative privacy and freedom from official duties.” She was happy being a service wife (albeit one with a retinue of servants) while she left her son,Prince Charles, then 1, in the charge of the royal nursery and his maternal grandparents, King George VI andQueen Elizabeth, back in Sandringham.
She announced she was pregnant with daughter Princess Anne in April 1950 and headed home to Clarence House in order to give birth in August that year.
Rise of a Young Queen
Queen Elizabeth on her Coronation Day.Cecil Beaton. Royal Collection Trust/ Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015
But tragedy struck the young couple less than two years later when King George VI died at just 56 of lung cancer on February 6, 1952. Philip broke the news to his young wife while they were on safari in Kenya.
The death would become known as Ascension Day for Elizabeth, marking the beginning of her reign — and thrusting her new husband into the role he would play for the rest of his life: the consort to the Queen of England. (In 1957 Elizabeth granted him the title of prince that he had given up to marry her.)
Her coronationtook place the following year, on June 2, 1953, in Westminster Abbey. But the post-war landscape was vastly different for Britain, and the once-vaunted British Empire evolved gradually, sometimes painfully, into the Commonwealth of Nations.
The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attend the Queen’s Diplomatic Reception at Buckingham Palace in London on December 8, 2016.MEGA
There can be few world figures who have met as many leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries, and fewer still to have shared as many secrets and insights with them. And yet through the decades, she offered little or no evidence of her opinions on state matters or on the political decisions and issues of the day, even during thecontroversial Brexit votein June 2016.
Although she bonded with many of her fellow figureheads and elected politicians — South Africa’sNelson Mandelawas a favorite — it was said that she and Britain’s only female Prime Minister,Margaret Thatcher, weren’t close.
“There is nowhere on this planet, that I can think of, that she hasn’t been in the last 90 years,” her grandsonPrince Harrysaid in 2016’sOur Queen at Ninety. Her tireless globe-trotting added quite a bit of pressure to the younger members of her family, Harry added. “Sometimes it’s quite hard, if you go to a place that she hasn’t visited for maybe 20, maybe 15 years. And you just think to yourself,How can I fulfill this expectation that comes with being a member of her family?”
Personal Tragedies
Prince Charles and Princess Diana on their wedding day on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth and royal wedding participants.Tim Graham Picture Library/AP
Then in 1997 came the intense shock ofPrincess Diana’s death in a Paris car crash— a world-shaking event that the stoic Queen was ill-equipped to navigate publicly. Diana’s grieving sons William and Harry were secluded in the highlands of Scotland with her, the family protecting them in their insurmountable grief.
And yet the public soon wondered why the flag at Buckingham Palace wasn’t lowered to half-staff, and then called for the Queen andPrince Philipto head south from Scotland to London. “Show Us You Care” cried a memorable headline in theSunnewspaper; 2006’sThe Queenwould go on to portray the events surrounding Her Majesty’s reaction to the death, withHelen Mirrenearning an Oscar for her characterization of the emotionally removed monarch.
Her Twilight Years
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte, Prince George, Prince William, Prince Harry and Queen Elizabeth.Samir Hussein/WireImage
But time would soften even the ever-unflappable royal. When Charles wed his longtime love,Camilla Parker Bowles, in alow-key2005 ceremony, the Queen welcomed her into the royal family with open arms.
More joy would follow withthe spectacular weddingof her grandsonPrince WilliamtoKate Middletonin April 2011, introducing new energy to the family — and bringing a bright new smile to the Queen’s face. Confident that the couple wed for love and that the relationship is built on solid ground, she beamed throughout the historic day — a sign, palace insiders have told PEOPLE, of her contentment that the line of succession had been secured.
With the arrival of the young couple’s children,Prince Georgein 2013,Princess Charlottein 2015 andPrince Louisin 2018, the line was cemented still further. Shecelebrated with a portrait commemorating four generations of royal heirsin 2016.
Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle in 2018.Mark Cuthbert/UK Press via Getty Images
She welcomedMeghan Markle— the first biracial member of the modern royal family — into the fold after her grandson, Prince Harry,introduced his beloved granny to his future wife in the fall of 2017. The Queen celebrated their nuptials on May 19, 2018, and hosted their luncheon reception at Windsor Castle immediately following the ceremony. She and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex later shared amemorable “away day” together via the royal train.
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WhenMeghan and Harry stepped back from senior royal dutyin January 2020, the Queen released a statement, saying in part, “My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family. Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.”
The royal family sustained the loss of another senior member from official duty when Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son stepped down in November 2019 following a disastrous BBC interview regarding hislongstanding friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Andrew.Chris Jackson/Getty
Through everything, the Queen relied on the stalwart support of her husband,Prince Philip, until his death in April 2021.
“Regardless of whether my grandfather seems to be doing his own thing, sort of wandering off like a fish down the river, the fact that he’s there — personally, I don’t think that she could do it without him,“Prince Harry told the BBC in 2012.
In the last years of her life,her leadership during the global COVID-19 pandemicevoked her steadiness during wartime.
“While we have faced challenges before, this one is different,” she added. “This time we join with all nations across the globe in a common endeavor, using the great advances of science and our instinctive compassion to heal. We will succeed — and that success will belong to every one of us.”
As the broadcast came to a close, the Queen reiterated that the tough times will not last forever.
“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again,” she said. “But for now, I send my thanks and warmest good wishes to you all.”
A Lifetime of Service, a Legacy for the Future
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.Danny Martindale/WireImage
As she approached her 90th birthday, her grandson William praised her “kindness and sense of humor, her innate sense of calm and perspective, and her love of family and home.”
Writing in a foreword to 2015’sElizabeth II: The Steadfast, he added, “All of us who will inherit the legacy of my grandmother’s reign and generation need to do all we can to celebrate and learn from her story. Speaking for myself, I am privileged to have the Queen as a model for a life of service to the public.”
source: people.com
