September 08, (THEWILL) – Britain’s longest-serving monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, has passed away at the age of 96, after 70 years on the throne.
Buckingham Palace has said the Queen ‘died peacefully’ this afternoon at Balmoral. The King and Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral and return to London tomorrow.
“The queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon. The king and the queen consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow”, the royal family said in a statement
THEWILL reported earlier that Her Majesty, the Queen had been under medical supervision at Balmoral, after her doctors had become “concerned” about her health.
Elizabeth was not born to be queen, her father was the second son of King George V. As the oldest child of Prince Albert, the Duke of York, and the Scottish aristocrat Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Duchess of York, she was destined for extreme privilege enjoyed in relative obscurity. All this changed in 1936 when her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated so he could marry the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson.
Her father, a shy man who suffered from a bad stutter, was then thrust onto the throne to become King George VI. With that, carefree “Lilibet,” as she was known to some of those closest to her, became heir to the throne.
At the age of 13, she met Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark (later Philip Mountbatten), a dashing Naval officer and her third cousin. They began exchanging letters and years later were engaged, the union caused some controversy in royal circles at the time because of his relative poverty and status as an outsider.
At the outbreak of World War II, her parents stayed in London, a hugely symbolic gesture at the time that was taken despite the German “Blitz” bombing campaign hitting Buckinham Palace. Then a teenager, Elizabeth and her younger sister, Princess Margaret, were among the 3 million people evacuated from cities to the countryside.
Queen Elizabeth II is survived by her four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Her eldest son, Prince Charles, will now become King, while his eldest son, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, assumes the position of heir to the throne.
The death of a monarch whose life spanned era-defining events, from the discovery of penicillin to the ubiquity of the internet, casts the United Kingdom into the unknown.
The queen’s official title spoke to the world she was born into in 1926: Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, 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. Back then, her country was near the peak of the British Empire, spanning India, swaths of the Caribbean and Africa, Canada and Australia — a territory about equal to the Moon’s surface.
A speech on the day of her coronation June 2, 1953, spelled out the 27-year-old’s understanding of her outsize role as a constitutional monarch.
“I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and in aim”, she said.
Shorn of that empire in the previous and over the following decades, the U.K. increasingly came to rely on the queen’s emblematic status for its international relevance. Throughout, Elizabeth was courted by world leaders who vied for her time and to be photographed alongside her practiced smile.
Elizabeth’s financial and property holdings made her one of the world’s richest women. While she also owned a spectacular and priceless jewelry collection, it was her bright, color-coordinated outfits, upper-class, countryside style accessorized by trademark hats, handbags and her companion Corgi dogs that are widely emulated, as well as caricatured.
But while world famous, the queen was also scrupulously careful about what she shared with the public. In fact, it was this silence that made her a potent figurehead who appeared to transcend partisan politics and became a kind of avatar onto whom millions could project their own expectations.
During her reign, 15 British prime ministers served in office and she met 13 American presidents — every United States leader during her time on the throne, apart from Lyndon B. Johnson.
“She is an astonishing person and a real jewel to the world and not just to the United Kingdom”,then-President Barack Obama said when visiting the U.K. in April 2016.
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