Officially Elizabeth II, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth Defender of the Faith, queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from February 6, 1952. Elizabeth celebrated her “Diamond Jubilee,” marking 60 years
on the throne. On September 9, 2015, she surpassed Victoria’s record reign of
63 years and 216 days.The celebration plans were formally unveiled in full by
Buckingham Palace on 10 January 2022.
"I hope this Jubilee will bring together families and
friends, neighbours and communities."
- The Queen
The Queen has ruled for longer than any other Monarch in
British history,
becoming a much loved and respected figure across the globe.
Her extraordinary reign has seen her travel more widely than any other monarch,
undertaking many historic overseas visits. Known for her sense of duty and her
devotion to a life of service, she has been an important figurehead for the UK
and the Commonwealth during times of enormous social change. |
The Queen is celebrating her 96th birthday
in Sandringham |
Her Majesty continues to carry out a full programme of
engagements, from visits to charities and schools, to hosting visiting Heads of
State, to leading the nation in Remembrance and celebratory events - all
supported by other members of the Royal Family.
The Queen sees public and voluntary service as one of the
most important elements of her work. The Queen has links - as Royal Patron or
President - with over 600 charities, military associations, professional bodies
and public service organisations. These vary from well-established
international charities to smaller bodies working in a specialist area or on a
local basis only.
How Elizabeth II became queen of the United Kingdom.
Elizabeth was the elder daughter of Prince Albert, duke of
York, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. As the child of a younger son of
King George VI, the young Elizabeth had little prospect of acceding to the
throne until her uncle, Edward VIII (afterward duke of Windsor), abdicated in
her father’s favour on December 11, 1936, at which time her father became King
George VI and she became heir presumptive. The princess’s education was
supervised by her mother, who entrusted her daughters to a governess, Marion
Crawford; the princess was also grounded in history by C.H.K. Marten, afterward
provost of Eton College, and had instruction from visiting teachers in music
and languages. During World War II she and her sister, Princess Margaret Rose,
perforce spent much of their time safely away from the London blitz and
separated from their parents, living mostly at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and
at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, and Windsor Castle.
Early in 1947 Princess Elizabeth went with the king and
queen to South Africa. After her return there was an announcement of her
betrothal to her distant cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten of the Royal
Navy, formerly Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark.
The marriage took place in
Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.
https://fb.watch/fuRo7jvSsq/
On the eve of the wedding her father,
the king, conferred upon the bridegroom the titles of duke of Edinburgh, earl
of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. They took residence at Clarence House in
London. Their first child, Prince Charles (Charles Philip Arthur George), was
born November 14, 1948, at Buckingham Palace.
Accession to the throne
In the summer of 1951 the health of King George VI entered
into a serious decline, and Princess Elizabeth represented him at the Trooping
the Colour and on various other state occasions. On October 7 she and her
husband set out on a highly successful tour of Canada and Washington, D.C.
After Christmas in England she and the duke set out in January 1952 for a tour
of Australia and New Zealand, but en route, at Sagana, Kenya, news reached them
of the king’s death on February 6, 1952. Elizabeth, now queen, at once flew
back to England.
The first three months of her reign, the period of full
mourning for her father, were passed in comparative seclusion. But in the
summer, after she had moved from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace, she
undertook the routine duties of the sovereign and carried out her first state
opening of Parliament on November 4, 1952. Her coronation was held at
Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953.
Beginning in November 1953 the queen and the duke of
Edinburgh made a six-month round-the-world tour of the Commonwealth, which
included the first visit to Australia and New Zealand by a reigning British
monarch. In 1957, after state visits to various European nations, she and the
duke visited Canada and the United States. In 1961 she made the first royal
British tour of the Indian subcontinent in 50 years, and she was also the first
reigning British monarch to visit South America (in 1968) and the Persian Gulf
countries (in 1979).
During her “Silver Jubilee” in 1977, she presided at a
London banquet attended by the leaders of the 36 members of the Commonwealth,
traveled all over Britain and Northern Ireland, and toured overseas in the
South Pacific and Australia, in Canada, and in the Caribbean.
On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, her son Prince Charles
became heir apparent; he was named prince of Wales on July 26, 1958, and was so
invested on July 1, 1969.
The queen’s other children were Princess Anne (Anne
Elizabeth Alice Louise), born August 15, 1950, and created princess royal in
1987; Prince Andrew (Andrew Albert Christian Edward), born February 19, 1960,
and created duke of York in 1986; and Prince Edward (Edward Anthony Richard
Louis), born March 10, 1964, and created earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn in
1999. All these children have the surname “of Windsor,” but in 1960 Elizabeth
decided to create the hyphenated name Mountbatten-Windsor for other descendants
not styled prince or princess and royal highness. Elizabeth’s first grandchild
(Princess Anne’s son) was born on November 15, 1977.
Queen Elizabeth II’s children would normally have borne
their father’s surname, Mountbatten (which itself had been Anglicized from
Battenberg). However, in 1952, soon after her accession, she declared in
council that her children and descendants would bear the surname Windsor. That
decision was modified (February 8, 1960) to the effect that issue other than
those styled prince or princess and royal highness should bear the name
Mountbatten-Windsor.
The marriage of Charles and Diana, (later the Prince and
Princess of Wales), took place on 29 July 1981, marking a highpoint in the
popularity of the Royal Family. It was seen by a global television audience of
750 million in 74 countries.
In 2002 Elizabeth celebrated her 50th year on the throne. As
part of her “Golden Jubilee,” events were held throughout the Commonwealth,
including several days of festivities in London. The celebrations were somewhat
diminished by the deaths
of Elizabeth’s mother and sister early in the year.
Beginning in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century, the
public standing of the royal family rebounded, and even Charles’s 2005 marriage
to Camilla Parker Bowles found much support among the British people.
In April
2011 Elizabeth led the family in celebrating the wedding of Prince William of
Wales—the elder son of Charles and Diana—and Catherine Middleton.
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| The wedding of Prince William of Wales |
The following
month she surpassed George III to become the second longest-reigning monarch in
British history, behind Victoria. Also in May, Elizabeth made a
historic trip
to Ireland, becoming both the first British monarch to visit the Irish republic
and the first to set foot in Ireland since 1911. In 2012
The modern monarchy
The queen seemed increasingly aware of the modern role of
the monarchy, allowing, for example, the televising of the royal family’s
domestic life in 1970 and condoning the formal dissolution of her sister’s
marriage in 1978. In the 1990s, however, the royal family faced a number of
challenges. In 1992, a year that Elizabeth referred to as the royal family’s
annus horribilis, Prince Charles and his wife, Diana, princess of Wales,
separated, as did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, duchess of York. Moreover,
Anne divorced, and a fire gutted the royal residence of Windsor Castle. In
addition, as the country struggled with a recession, resentment over the
royals’ lifestyle mounted, and in 1992 Elizabeth, although personally exempt,
agreed to pay taxes on her private income. The separation and later divorce
(1996) of Charles and the immensely popular Diana further eroded support for
the royal family, which was viewed by some as antiquated and unfeeling. The
criticism intensified following Diana’s death in 1997, especially after
Elizabeth initially refused to allow the national flag to fly at half-staff
over Buckingham Palace. In line with her earlier attempts at modernizing the
monarchy, the queen subsequently sought to present a less-stuffy and
less-traditional image of the monarchy. These attempts were met with mixed
success.
In August 2017 Prince Philip officially retired from public
life, though he periodically appeared at official engagements after that. In
the meantime, Elizabeth began to reduce her own official engagements, passing
some duties on to Prince Charles and other senior members of the royal family,
though the pool of stand-ins shrank when Charles’s younger son, Prince Harry,
duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan, duchess of Sussex, controversially chose
to give up their royal roles in March 2020. During this period, public interest
in the queen and the royal family grew as a result of the widespread popularity
of The Crown, a Netflix television series about the Windsors that debuted in
2016.
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