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Queen Elizabeth II
Obituary
Royal succession
King Charles III
Funeral plans
Life in photos
Queen Elizabeth II: 1926-2022


QUEEN ELIZABETH II, WHO REIGNED OVER THE U.K. FOR 70 YEARS, DIES AT 96


THE MONARCH WAS A CONSTANT AND REASSURING FIGURE AS SHE HELPED LEAD HER COUNTRY
THROUGH A PERIOD OF RADICAL SHIFTS IN THE LATTER HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY.

By Adrian Higgins
September 8, 2022 at 1:32 p.m. EDT

Queen Elizabeth II, photographed in 2013. (Phil Wilkinson/Scotsman/PA Wire/Press
Association Images)
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Queen Elizabeth II, the seemingly eternal monarch who became a bright but
inscrutable beacon of continuity in the United Kingdom during more than seven
decades of rule, died Sept. 8 at Balmoral Castle, her estate in the Scottish
Highlands. She was 96.

Her death, of undisclosed causes, was announced by Buckingham Palace.



In her reign, which began in February 1952 after the death of her father, King
George VI, Elizabeth served as a constant and reassuring figure in Britain and
on the world stage as she helped lead her country through a period of profound
shifts in geopolitical power and national identity.

Full Queen Elizabeth II coverage from The Washington Post

The designs of postage stamps and bank notes changed through the decades, but
they all depicted the same, if aging, monarch. The British national anthem now
shifts to “God Save the King,” but most Britons have only known the other
version, for the queen.

Her son and heir, Charles, summed up the power of her constancy in a rare
television documentary aired in 2012 to mark her 60th year as queen. “Perhaps
subconsciously,” he said, “people feel encouraged, reassured by something that
is always there.”

Her last major constitutional action came on Tuesday, when she accepted the
resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and asked his successor, Liz Truss,
to form a new government.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II died on Sept. 8 after 70 years on the throne.
Here's a look back at her life and legacy as the longest-serving British
monarch. (Video: Alexa Juliana Ard/The Washington Post)

In a monarchy dating back to at least the 10th century with King Athelstan,
Elizabeth’s reign was the longest. In 2015, she broke a record once thought
unassailable, surpassing the 63-year rule of her great-great-grandmother, Queen
Victoria. While Victoria retreated from her regal duties after the early death
of her husband, Prince Albert, Elizabeth — with her outwardly stern demeanor,
iron constitution and abiding handbag — remained fully engaged in her queenly
duties for most of her life, and true to a pledge she made on her 21st birthday.



Then a fresh-faced princess on tour with her parents in South Africa, she
broadcast to British Empire listeners around the globe: “I declare before you
all 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.”

The length of that service, measured against that of other leading figures,
proved astonishing — coinciding with that of 15 British prime ministers, 14 U.S.
presidents and seven popes. As supreme governor of the Church of England,
Elizabeth appointed six archbishops of Canterbury.

She also had to navigate shifting public attitudes toward the royal family as
the increasingly unfettered media laid bare its troubles. The low point came in
1997 with the death in a car accident of her former daughter-in-law, Princess
Diana, and public anger at the queen’s halting response to it.

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It was one of few missteps, and the crisis passed: By the time of her Diamond
Jubilee in 2012, Queen Elizabeth was the subject of a four-day love fest that
included a waterborne procession on the River Thames that rivaled a medieval
pageant. Her approval rating stood at 90 percent. At a service at St. Paul’s
Cathedral, then-Archbishop Rowan Williams said, “We are marking six decades of
living proof that public service is possible, and that it is a place where
happiness can be found.”

By the time of her Platinum Jubilee in 2022 marking her 70 years as queen, the
national celebration had added another dimension, a shared recognition that the
reign was almost over and was of a type that would not be seen again in terms of
its length, pomp and place in a changed British society.

“While we celebrate the mightiness of Elizabeth II’s allegiance to a life of
service, we should also acknowledge that an antiquated version of monarchy must
now pass into history,” wrote journalist and royal watcher Tina Brown in her
2022 book, “The Palace Papers.”

Nothing captured this moment more clearly than the image of the queen at her
husband’s funeral, held in 2021 amid restrictions related to the coronavirus
pandemic. Dressed in black and with her face veiled by a mask, she seemed alone
if not isolated in the oaken pews of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

The ensuing months were marked by increasing frailty, a rare hospitalization and
a covid infection. She was unable to perform long-standing and familiar public
duties.



Into her 90s, she maintained a rigorous calendar of events and appearances. They
numbered more than 400 in her Diamond Jubilee year. Her public life was defined
by these duties, some seemingly trivial, such as handing out symbolic alms,
others mantled with pomp and pageantry — the opening of Parliament or the
hosting of a state dinner.

To an outsider, such recurring events might seem perfunctory, but in their
recurring character, Charles said, they “help to anchor things” in a dynamic
world and, moreover, threaded the monarch through the tapestry of British life.

Her role as queen defined Elizabeth’s life, but her unflagging dedication to the
job also defined the monarchy. Unlike her sister and several of her children,
including Charles, she kept her personal life intact and avoided private scandal
and public controversy. The prospect of abdicating — there were calls for such a
move when her great-grandson and third direct heir, Prince George, was born in
2013 — was alien to someone who clung not to power, but to duty.

Dickie Arbiter, a former royal spokesman, said at the time that Elizabeth’s
piety alone would prevent it: “She sees herself of having sworn to serve for
life not only to the people, but to God.”

The paradox — and possibly the greatest feat — of her reign was her ability to
be so visibly dutiful for so long without revealing her inner self. “Of all the
world’s public figures, she is the most private,” veteran British journalist
Bill Deedes wrote on her 80th birthday.



The queen never gave interviews, published her journals or stepped anywhere near
the fray of party politics.

In his book “The Real Elizabeth,” journalist and historian Andrew Marr wrote,
“Her view of her role has been that she is a symbol, and that symbols are better
off keeping mostly quiet. The Queen’s style of monarchy has buried much of a
sense of self, as we understand that today. ... The Queen is still what she
does. There is only a little space (though an interesting space) between Queen
Elizabeth II and the woman who lives her life.”

Toward the end of her life, as she cut back her public duties and confronted a
series of personal crises, that space seemed ever smaller. In 2020, her grandson
Prince Harry essentially defected from the royal family after his marriage to
American actress Meghan Markle. In 2021, Elizabeth lost her near-lifelong soul
mate Prince Philip after 73 years of marriage, and she had to deal with the fall
from grace of her second son, Prince Andrew, accused of sexual misconduct.

And yet for most of her reign, the queen was so deft at subordinating herself to
her role that her subjects “actually know much less about the queen than they
imagine,” said biographer Robert Lacey in a 2015 interview with The Washington
Post. “But it seems to me that’s less important than that people feel they know
her very well.”

Were it not for a divorcée from Baltimore, however, the world would hardly have
registered a woman known to friends by her childhood nickname of Lilibet.

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PUSHED ONTO CENTER STAGE

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born a royal princess on April 21, 1926, at
her maternal grandparents’ house in London’s Mayfair district. Her mother, also
Elizabeth, was from Scottish aristocracy. Her father, Albert, Duke of York, was
the second son of King George V. Princess Elizabeth’s younger sister, Margaret
Rose, was born four years later.

The family eventually moved to a mansion on the Windsor estate upriver from
London that gave their dynasty its name. As a child, Elizabeth looked set for a
genteel life of relative obscurity as a minor royal.

The Duke of York’s older brother, Edward, was in line to succeed their father as
king when he died in early 1936. But by then, Edward (called David by his
family) was in love with the American socialite Wallis Simpson, whose impending
divorce — her second — made her wholly unfit to become his queen in the eyes of
the British establishment, including the Church of England.

Edward abdicated — a shocking decision that H.L. Mencken called “the greatest
story since the Crucifixion” — and Edward’s brother became King George VI.

Suddenly, at the age of 10, Elizabeth lived with a king for a father and the
likelihood that she would be queen one day.



She was tutored in British history, and the lives of the monarchs and their
fraught relationships with Parliament became less an academic lesson than a map
for navigating public life. She was taught to drive a carriage and to ride
sidesaddle, a skill needed later on when she reviewed her troops.

During World War II, which ended when she was 19, she conspicuously did not sail
to the safety of Canada, as some had advised, but stayed in England and joined
the army.

By then, she had found her life’s companion, Prince Philip, also a
great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria and the son of an exiled Greek prince.
Philip was making his mark as a young officer in the British navy under the
patronage of his uncle Louis Mountbatten.

Their wedding on Nov. 20, 1947, amid postwar reconstruction, provided what
Winston Churchill called “a flash of color on the hard road we have to travel.”
Now barely remembered, the storybook nuptials between a radiant princess and a
dashing blond naval officer foreshadowed the royal weddings of Prince Charles
and the former Diana Spencer in 1981 and Prince William and the former Kate
Middleton in 2011.

Elizabeth had four children, Prince Charles (1948), Princess Anne (1950), Prince
Andrew (1960) and Prince Edward (1964), all of whom survive. She and Philip had
anticipated a long reign for George VI and the chance for a fairly normal life
as a navy family, but in the winter of 1952, the king died of cancer at 56.
Elizabeth accepted her role and fate even if she may have yearned for a wholly
different life out of the spotlight.


A NEW QUEEN GAINS CONFIDENCE

Then-Princess Elizabeth and her husband were in Kenya and on their way to
Australia, taking the place of her ailing father on an official visit, when she
learned that the king had died. She flew home as the 25-year-old queen, to be
greeted at the airport by a somber phalanx of leaders, including Churchill.

Her crowning the following year provided a much-needed dose of glamour and
optimism — about a new Elizabethan Age — in a country suffering from postwar
austerity, sharp political and social divisions, the dismantling of its colonial
empire and declining global influence.

Her coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953 — the day that
word reached London that mountaineer Edmund Hillary of New Zealand had placed a
Union Jack atop Mount Everest in a British-led expedition.

For more than 400 years, the English sovereign has had to navigate the role of
being head of state while ceding political power to Parliament and maintaining
strict partisan neutrality. By dint of her longevity and diligence, however,
Elizabeth had a significant behind-the-scenes advisory role to a succession of
prime ministers who traveled each Tuesday from Downing Street to Buckingham
Palace to see her.

In those sessions, she offered the political leader of the day confidential
advice from her unique perspective of national life and knowledge of foreign
leaders and diplomats. Whether the prime ministers took her counsel may have
been another matter — the sessions were as private as conversations in a
confessional.



At first, her influence was limited by her lack of experience: Churchill was by
1952 an old lion who still spoke fondly of Queen Victoria. But with the passing
years, Elizabeth saw prime ministers come and go, and could offer a long-term
view enriched by a fierce memory for names and events. “The boot is on the other
foot,” Prince Charles said in the 2012 BBC documentary. After so long, “it’s the
queen who has Sir Winston’s span of experience.”

In general, Elizabeth was known to have clicked more with some prime ministers
than others. In the early 1970s, Edward Heath “treated her as a piece of
necessary business,” wrote an Elizabeth biographer, Ben Pimlott. Worse, the
pro-European Heath was openly antagonistic to Commonwealth interests and once
blocked her from attending a conference of leaders in Singapore.

As the monarch of the Commonwealth of 15 realms and more than 50 nations,
Elizabeth kept Britain closely linked to its former territories. In 1999,
Australians rejected a referendum to become a republic in a vote seen as
reflecting a loyalty to Elizabeth rather than the U.K.

Much was made of the supposed chilly relationship between Elizabeth and Margaret
Thatcher, who denied any undue friction. The Iron Lady’s grandiose manner made
for an awkward pairing, Pimlott argued. Thatcher would sit tensely on the edge
of her seat, which in itself unsettled the queen. “Audiences ceased to be
intimate occasions, and became brisk, formal ones,” he wrote.

Two of Thatcher’s predecessors, Anthony Eden and Harold Wilson, found a form of
therapy in the sessions, and drew them out.

“Wilson was most enthused about his royal audiences as he came to feel besieged
by ministers from left- and right-wing factions,” wrote Marr, the journalist and
historian.

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FAMILY STRUGGLES

As a wife and mother, Elizabeth guarded her privacy with ferocity.

There were times when Prince Philip’s will clashed with the wishes of the
prevailing political leaders. Given Philip’s take-charge persona, those episodes
led to some of the queen’s most trying times, according to biographers.

Philip balked at moving to the cavernous and court-dominated Buckingham Palace
but was overruled. When his uncle smugly announced after the king’s death that
the House of Windsor would become the House of Mountbatten, the name change was
swiftly put down by Churchill, to Philip’s humiliation.

“I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba,” he complained. In 1960, to Elizabeth’s
relief, the government agreed to allow her descendants to use the surname
Mountbatten-Windsor.

Despite Philip’s subordination — against type — the marriage was solid and
happy, and the prince sometimes referred endearingly to his wife as “Sausage.”
The queen’s opening of her speeches with “My husband and I ... ” became a
catchphrase. Courtiers who saw them at close quarters observed “a reserved, yet
visible, fondness,” Pimlott wrote.

As if to compensate for her official preeminence, Elizabeth deferred to Philip
in the upbringing of their children, a strategy that wrought its own effects,
especially with the heir.

Philip decided to send Charles to his alma mater, Gordonstoun, a boarding school
on the frigid coast of Scotland renowned for its commitment to building
character through rigor and privation.



Charles, in middle age, complained of a childhood made unhappy by his mother’s
remoteness and father’s authority. His mother remained silent, in public at
least, bolstering her image as a hands-off parent and a person who heartily
disliked confrontation.

The queen spent the autumn of her life coming to terms with family scandals but
also with a media hunger for them unknown when she was a young queen.

Although the queen was said to have adored her younger sister, Margaret, it is
hard to imagine two more different siblings, or the state of the monarchy had
Margaret been born first. Well before her marriage ended in divorce, Margaret
was known as a princess who liked the high life, and who disdained official duty
but insisted on royal treatment. Margaret died in 2002.

Margaret’s scandals presaged those of the queen’s children, and the fairy-tale
marriage of Charles and Diana turned into the soap opera of the century. Amid
public recriminations and revelations of infidelity, the Prince and Princess of
Wales formally split in 1992 and, at the queen’s insistence, divorced in 1996.



Elizabeth faced other trials in 1992: the divorce of Princess Anne; the
separation of Prince Andrew from his wife, Sarah; the release of embarrassing
taped phone conversations involving Charles and Diana; and a devastating fire at
the queen’s beloved Windsor Castle.

“It has turned out,” she said at a formal luncheon, “to be an annus horribilis.”

Lacey, in his biography of the queen, noted that “she had to use Latin to do it,
but for the first time in 40 years, Elizabeth II had given public voice to some
genuine pain and vulnerability.”

Not quite five years later, she faced the most severe test of her monarchy.
After Diana and her boyfriend died in Paris as their car raced away from the
paparazzi, Britons were overcome with a collective grief and rage that turned
toward Charles and his family. Elizabeth remained at Balmoral Castle, feeling
that her first duty was to isolate her young grandsons from the mounting
hysteria.

The anger became focused on the flagpole above Buckingham Palace. The crowd
outside wanted to see a flag at half-staff. For the queen, that would have been
a breach of protocol and tradition — the palace flagpole was there to fly the
royal standard only when the monarch was in residence.

“In the strange symbiosis between ruler and ruled, the people were insisting
that the Queen acknowledge that she ruled by their consent, and bend to their
insistence,” Tony Blair, prime minister at the time, wrote in his memoir.
“Public anger was turning towards the royal family.”

Her initial intransigence, however, melted after entreaties from her advisers.
The flag flew, she returned early from Balmoral, in time to appear with the
crowd in front of Buckingham Palace, then broke her silence in a televised
address. She refused to lionize Diana, but she grieved for her: “No one who knew
Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they
knew her, will remember her.”



The episode was a rare reminder that for all its history and presence in the
fabric and psyche of British life, the monarchy is a fragile institution.

Wallis Simpson, the woman whose fate altered Elizabeth’s destiny, wrote of being
unprepared for Edward’s abrupt rejection by an establishment that had put him on
a pedestal. “Nothing that I had seen had made me appreciate how vulnerable the
King really was, how little power he could actually command,” she wrote.

While Edward put his personal interests ahead of the monarchy, his niece
Elizabeth dedicated her life to putting the monarchy first.

Pimlott wrote that “in her reserve there was a vein of sadness: some claimed to
see beneath the surface a hint of passion, though for who or what it was
impossible to tell. Yet she remained self-sufficient, and did not lose her
grip.”



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BEHIND THE SCENES

Biographers who probed Elizabeth’s life found that in private, and in unguarded
surroundings, she was an excellent mimic, saw thrift as a virtue and enjoyed
rather tame and old-fashioned amusements, such as square dancing, jigsaw
puzzles, photography and watching television.

She owned a horse racing stable and stud farms, engaged a racing manager to work
with trainers, and was actively involved in buying thoroughbreds. In 2013, six
decades after her coronation, she watched as her horse Estimate won the Gold Cup
at Ascot and reacted with unalloyed joy, beaming and clapping her hands with
childlike glee.

On the occasions when her safety was threatened, she showed her mettle. As she
rode to Trooping the Colour, the annual ceremonial review of troops, in June
1981, a youth fired six blanks her way. Elizabeth calmed her startled horse and
continued on as a Scots guard tackled the youth.

The next year brought an even more chilling threat. In July 1982, a stalker
named Michael Fagan found his way into the queen’s bedroom. Her efforts to
summon help failed, at least initially. Elizabeth later recalled, according to
Lacey, that “I got out of bed, put on my dressing gown and slippers, drew myself
up to my full regal height, pointed to the door and said, ‘Get out’ — and he
didn’t.”

Elizabeth was 5 feet 4 inches tall. (Victoria was shorter, at 4-foot-11.)

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She was a creature of habit and seemed inherently fastidious. She followed a
calendar that changed little over the years. She resided, variously, at
Buckingham Palace or her preferred Windsor Castle, where she spent April and
most weekends. She decamped to Windsor permanently at the start of the covid-19
pandemic.

She spent most of August and September at Balmoral, where guests were treated to
a barbecue run by Philip. “The royals cook, and serve the guests,” recounted
Tony Blair. “The Queen asks if you’ve finished, she stacks the plates up and
goes off to the sink” to wash them.

For Christmas and the New Year, she reigned over her family at Sandringham, her
estate in East Anglia. Perhaps her favorite getaway, a blue-hulled ship named
the Royal Yacht Britannia, was retired in 1997 at an event where the queen was
seen to shed a rare public tear.

At Balmoral and Sandringham, the public got glimpses of how Elizabeth might have
lived had she not become queen: as a well-heeled English countrywoman in green
wellies leading a gaggle of muddy Welsh corgis.

She had a small and discreet circle of friends and relatives with whom she could
decompress from so public a life, but even they would curtsy in greeting to her,
and she maintained a certain distance, according to her biographer Sally Bedell
Smith.

Smith, in an interview, said she came to understand Elizabeth by delving into
her Sunday morning routines. Elizabeth would worship at the Royal Chapel at
Windsor and then drive herself to see her cousin and lifelong friend, Margaret
Rhodes, who lived in a cozy cottage on the Windsor estate that the monarch had
given her.

Elizabeth would sit on a comfortable but faded sofa, sip her favorite cocktail
of gin and Dubonnet, and chat with her cousin about the week’s events amid
framed photos of family.

In a rare reflective mood during an address to the Commonwealth leaders in 2011
in Perth, Australia, Elizabeth summoned an Aboriginal proverb to express her
feelings.

“We are all visitors to this time, this place. Our purpose here is to observe,
to learn, to grow, to love ... and then we return home.”




THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH II

The final resting place: Queen Elizabeth II has been buried in her final resting
place next to Prince Philip, her husband of more than 70 years, capping an
elaborate state funeral, which was invested with all the pomp, circumstance and
showmanship that the monarchy, military and state could put on display for a
global broadcast audience of millions.

The state funeral: The funeral was full of pageantry and pathos, including a new
national anthem, funeral ensembles with affectionate touches in honor of the
queen, a personal note from King Charles III, appearances by the young heirs,
Prince George and Princess Charlotte and the royal corgis. Here are some of the
most memorable moments in photos and videos.

A new monarch: Queen Elizabeth II’s son, Charles, became King Charles III the
moment his mother died. He may bring a markedly different personal vision of
religion and spirituality to the role. Here’s what to know about him.

We’re following changes in the British monarchy post-Elizabeth. Get the Post
Elizabeth newsletter for the latest updates.

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