Queen Elizabeth II has died at her Balmoral estate in Scotland, at age 96, Buckingham Palace said Thursday. She served as the constitutional monarch of the United Kingdom for 70 years, making her the longest-ruling monarch in British history.
Her reign spanned a remarkable arc in British history and was defined by duty to country and considerable family pain. Her death is a major milestone for the country, triggering an outpouring of national affection and grief.
It also comes at a time when the U.K. is transitioning from a deeply controversial prime minister, Boris Johnson, to a new one, Liz Truss, who just took over the job this week. The country faces skyrocketing inflation and the challenge of the biggest war in Europe since 1945.
Elizabeth was born into an empire on which the sun never set and was the country’s last major figure with a connection to World War II, a searing, ultimately triumphant experience that, for some, continues to define the nation. On V-E Day in 1945, Elizabeth, then 19, described slipping out of Buckingham Palace to join the jubilant crowds.
“I remember lines of unknown people, linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief,” she recalled. “It was one of the most memorable nights of my life.”
Later, Elizabeth watched as Britain lost most of its colonies and much of its power. There were many personal lows, including the divorces of three of her four children; the death of her former daughter-in-law Diana; and a sex scandal involving her son Prince Andrew. Late in her reign, her grandson Prince Harry left the family and England to settle in California with his American wife, Meghan Markle.
Through it all, though, the queen worked to honor a pledge she made when was just 21: “I declare before you that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service, and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
Through the ups and downs of her tenure, her hard work and longevity won her deep admiration across the United Kingdom.
Born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor in London in 1926, her ascension to the throne was an accident of history. In 1936, her uncle, King Edward VIII abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American woman. Elizabeth’s shy, stammering father assumed the throne as George VI, placing her next in line.
When World War II erupted three years later, Princess Elizabeth began performing official royal duties and delivered the first of many broadcasts, billed as addresses to the children of the British Empire.
In 1947, at age 25, she married Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, a dashing naval officer and distant cousin with whom she’d fallen in love in her early teens.
While traveling in Kenya five years later, Elizabeth received grim news from home that her father, who suffered from heart disease and cancer, had died in his sleep. A year later, her lavish coronation in Westminster Abbey drew a global TV audience.
Elizabeth made a glamorous young queen in the gray, postwar years — but also a remote one. Occasionally, she appeared to drop her guard and allowed TV cameras into her home. She spoke of her embrace of the predictability of royal life and how younger family members chafed under its strictures.
“If you live this sort of life, which people don’t very much,” she said with a laugh,
“You live very much by tradition and by continuity. I find that’s one of the sad things, that people don’t take on jobs for life, they try different things all the time.”
