Queen Elizabeth II quietly marks longest reign
People actually know much less about the Queen than they imagine. But . . . that’s less important than that people feel they know her very well.
History is festooned with dozens of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish royals – they are the stuff of Shakespearean dramas, Hollywood movies and Broadway plays.
But the incumbent sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, has beaten them all with a reign that will surpass in length the record of 63 years, seven months and two days set by her great-greatgrandmother, Queen Victoria.
The Queen is one of the rare human beings who have been on the world stage for as long as most of us can remember. Only one in five Britons alive were around when she became queen in 1952.
During her reign, technological, political and social systems have changed beyond recognition, and the world’s population has grown from 2.6 billion to 7.3 billion.
Over 63 years and counting, she has advised a dozen prime ministers (the first was Winston Churchill) and observed 12 United States presidents and seven popes. She is still going strong, slowing a little, but it is not in her DNA to abdicate in favour of Prince Charles. Her mother lived to be 101. The Queen has aged through the decades from glamorous princess to a somewhat dour, behindthe-times figure and loving granny, but she has always been there – seemingly immortal and increasingly beloved.
At first, the Queen did not want to mark the day (to be seen lording it over Victoria, whom she admires greatly) but she decided to take a train journey with Scottish officials on a stretch of railway line reopened after many years.
This seemingly bland gesture actually gets to the heart of the Queen’s significance, argues Elizabeth biographer Robert Lacey.
‘‘It’s invested with all sorts of meaning and it’s the most extraordinary example of the apparently passive but, in fact, very active role that Elizabeth plays in the psychology of her country,’’ he said. The success of the Queen’s reign has not been in its length so much as in its nature – in how she has subsumed herself into the role.
She has avoided personal scandal, has never confused fame with celebrity, has declined interviews, and has shrouded both her private life and her political views.
In sum, she has heeded the advice of a Victorian political essayist named Walter Bagehot, who said the monarchy must wrap itself in Oz-like mystery to remain precious. ‘‘We must not let in daylight upon the magic,’’ he wrote in The English Constitution.
The Queen, in the public eye for most of her 89 years, has kept us in the dark, magnificently.
‘‘People actually know much less about the Queen than they imagine,’’ Lacey said.
‘‘But it seems to me that’s less important than that people feel they know her very well.’’
There are self-evident truths about the Queen. We know she loves dogs – labradors as well as corgis – and horses. One of her passions has been breeding and racing thoroughbreds. If you want to see her unguarded, joyful side, look up the video of her watching as her horse Estimate wins the Ascot Gold Cup in 2013.
What is less known: She has a prodigious memory for people and events, is a mischievous mimic, has enjoyed photography and jigsaw puzzles in her time, is a big fan of Scottish country dancing (think square dancing in kilts) and will clean up your dishes if you attend one of the royal family’s summer barbecues at Balmoral Castle. She is also a deeply religious Christian, and observers say that she views her monarchy as a divine call, affirmed by her coronation oath in 1953. Her sense of duty was undoubtedly also shaped by the missteps of her uncle – she was 10 when Edward VIII abdicated to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1936, suddenly putting Elizabeth in direct line to the throne. Edward’s brother and Elizabeth’s father, George VI, was portrayed as the stammering good egg by Colin Firth in the 2010 film The King’s Speech.
Philip Murphy, director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. ‘‘We have been lulled into this sense, because of Elizabeth, that constitutional monarchy in Britain is immutable, and yet Britain is a country that cut off the head of one of its kings [Charles I] and got rid of another one [Edward VIII] less than a century ago. Like anything, it’s fragile.’’
This seems hard to accept looking back at the Queen’s life.
When the peachy Princess Elizabeth married the dashing Prince Philip in 1947, the wedding was as sensational in its day as Charles and Diana’s in 1981 or William and Kate’s in 2011. Churchill called it a morale-lifting ‘‘flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel’’ after World War II.
The queen in her golden years is enjoying the sort of adoration not seen since she was a young woman.
‘‘Everyone has grown up with the idea that Queen Victoria was the great 19th-century queen and, hey, presto, we have produced a modern Elizabeth Age,’’ Lacey said.
‘‘Here’s a woman whose achievements we can celebrate, and if you compare her to Queen Victoria, perhaps she’s done a lot better.’’
The two queens share uncanny similarities: Neither was destined to become the monarch, they both married German princes, they became creatures of routine and protocol, they loved horses and dogs, they survived gun-wielding youths, and they were women operating in a man’s world.
From an early age, both decided to subordinate their lives to their country and steeled themselves mentally for this when barely into womanhood.
In Elizabeth’s well-known address from Cape Town, South Africa, on her 21st birthday, she said, ‘‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.’’
On the day Victoria became queen at 18 in 1837, she wrote just as earnestly in her diary, ‘‘I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country.’’
Reflecting on Victoria’s 1901 death at 81, Lytton Strachey wrote, ‘‘The girl, the wife, the aged woman, were the same: vitality, conscientiousness, pride and simplicity were hers to the latest hour.’’
The public, he said, had ‘‘felt instinctively Victoria’s irresistible sincerity.’’ The parallels are eerie.
Elizabeth will carry on as she has for more than six decades: spending late summer in Victoria and Albert’s Scottish castle, returning to London for a working routine little altered since she was 25 – presenting honours to local worthies, offering private counsel to the prime minister, cutting the ribbon on the latest charitable asset, opening Parliament in full regalia, leading the nation’s war remembrance on a Sunday in November at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.
If the ghost of Charles I haunts these precincts – he was executed in Whitehall in 1649 amid the English Civil War, leaving the country kingless for several years – he will discern that the English (and British) monarchy is well and truly restored.
‘‘As long as Queen Elizabeth is still around,’’ Murphy said, ‘‘the monarchy is safe.’’