Queen Elizabeth, stable yet innovative
The Queen marked an extraordinary milestone recently when she passed her 65th anniversary as sovereign. As she celebrates her sapphire jubilee, we can also celebrate the fact that she is the longest-serving monarch in British history, having surpassed the record set by her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria.
This is a remarkable achievement of stability, especially considering the tempestuous environment in which she grew up. As young Elizabeth prepared for her future role, Britain faced first the crisis of her uncle’s abdication, and then the threat of a Nazi invasion during the Second World War.
Her father’s untimely death meant Elizabeth became Queen much too early, at age 25.
Part of the Crown’s genius is to balance the need to move with the times, yet still maintaining a connection with the richness of past tradition.
At the moment of Elizabeth’s coronation, she sat in a high-backed oak chair, carved at the end of the 13th century.
Nearly every crowned British and English monarch has sat in that same chair at coronation since King Edward 1 commissioned it.
Yet the Queen has also constantly innovated, and found ways to speak despite remaining politically impartial. Hers was the first coronation to be televised, allowing millions to witness it. She invented the “walkabout,” allowing her to meet ordinary people wherever she goes.
She broke diplomatic ground by visiting Germany in the 1960s, touring Arab states in the Middle East, and most recently by being portrayed as jumping out of a plane in a James Bond stunt film for the London Olympics in 2012.
However, no one in the family was better at innovating the royal image than her late daughter-in-law. Diana, the beautiful, sympathetic mother of William and Harry, died almost 20 years ago in a car crash. A statue has been commissioned by her sons.
As the Queen weathered the collapses of the marriages of three of her four children in the 1990s, Diana must have seemed a major irritant at times. In marked contrast to the stoic Queen, Diana revealed much dirty laundry to the public, from her struggle with eating disorders to her marital problems with Prince Charles.
Yet it was also Diana who made the monarchy an indispensable part of the Commonwealth’s identity. She blew through the stuffy reserve of the Windsors like a spring wind, and the public loved her for it.
She understood better than anyone how she could call for a new approach just by shaking the hand of an AIDS patient, during the height of the stigma for this disease.
They may not have been the best of friends or even allies, but each in her own way, Elizabeth and Diana, understood the profound importance and the weight of the roles they accepted.
They were and are the bedrock of the identity of all of us in the Commonwealth. We thank them.