Queen Elizabeth II: Looking back on an eventful life

People around the world could hardly have imagined that this day would come. And yet the day has come: Queen Elizabeth is dead. She was born on April 21, 1926 as the king’s niece. Only when her uncle abdicated in the 1930s did she herself become heir to the throne. She was brought up in her family’s castles and never went to school. When her father died in 1952 after surviving the Second War, she herself became monarch, and found out about it at a lodge in Kenya. The coronation followed the following year. For the first time ever, an event of this magnitude was televised live, to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Elizabeth had previously married her childhood heartthrob Philip, a prince of Greece and Denmark with German roots, it is said, against the opposition of the family and parts of the population. After the war, anything German was not very popular in the country. Her four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward, were not always a source of unalloyed joy. Three of them got divorced; one or the other scandal raged around each and every one of them. These reached a temporary peak in the 1990s, first with the divorce of Charles and Lady Diana, and later with the accidental death of the daughter-in-law. Most recently, the quarrels about her grandson Harry and his wife Meghan and the abuse scandal surrounding Prince Andrew are likely to have bothered her. Connoisseurs said the Queen had a great sense of family and a fine sense of humor, which she repeatedly flashed at public events. She was seen by many as an astute, well-informed observer and the epitome of a sense of duty. It was difficult to see through, and people often tried to decode it. The Queen has never made it easy for her observers. According to custom, she did not comment on political events, very rarely on private matters. She always tried to preserve the monarchy as a form of government. Nothing from the talks with their prime ministers was made public either. Over the decades, they have received weekly audiences from more than a dozen heads of government. In the year of her Golden Jubilee 2002, the Queen had to say goodbye twice within a few weeks, first to her sister Margaret, then to her mother, known to the world as the Centenary Queen Mum. The death of her husband Philip almost 20 years later, in June 2021, must have been undisputedly painful for her. The Duke of Edinburgh died at the age of almost 100 after more than seven decades of living together. Now she has followed him. Elizabeth Regina, Elizabeth Windsor, Queen, Head of State, Longest-Serving Monarch Ever, Unshakeable Symbol of Continuity, Wife, Mother, Grand- and Great-Grandmother, Horse Enthusiast and many more. The Queen – she’s taking that title, yes, that royal brand name to her grave, at least for the foreseeable future. Because the next in line to the throne – Charles, William and George – they will all ascend the throne as kings. The Queen is dead. A second Elizabethan age has come to an end.