‘A moment of great sadness’
Charles now king as UK mourns death of nation’s longest-serving monarch
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century, died Thursday. She was 96.
Buckingham Palace said she died at Balmoral Castle, her
summer residence in Scotland, where members of the royal family had rushed to her side after her health took a turn for the worse.
A link to the almost-vanished generation that fought World War II, she was the only monarch most Britons have ever known.
Her son Prince Charles, 73, automatically became king and will be known as King Charles III, his office announced. Charles’ second wife, Camilla, will be known as the Queen Consort.
The BBC played the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” over a portrait of her in full regalia as her death
was announced, and the flag over Buckingham Palace was lowered to half-staff as the second Elizabethan age came
to a close.
In a statement, Charles called the death of his mother “a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family,” adding: “I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the Realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”
British Prime Minister Liz Truss, appointed by the queen 48 hours earlier, pronounced the country “devastated” and called Elizabeth “the rock on which modern Britain was built.”
Crowds gathered outside Buckingham Palace in the rain and some people wept when officials carried a notice confirming the queen’s death to the gates of her London home. In Canada, where the British monarch is the country’s head of state, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saluted her “wisdom, compassion and warmth.”
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: “She provided inspiring leadership to her nation and people. She personified dignity and decency in public life. Pained by her
demise.”
President Joe Biden called her a “stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy who deepened the bedrock alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States.”
The queen enjoyed robust health into her 90s, although she used a cane after the death of Philip, her husband of 73 years, in 2021. In October of that year, she was hospitalized for a night for tests, and thereafter her public appearances grew scarcer.
Elizabeth reigned over a country that rebuilt from war and lost its empire; joined the European Union and then left it; transformed from industrial powerhouse to uncertain 21st-century society. She endured through 15 prime ministers, from Winston Churchill to Truss, becoming a fixed point and a reassuring presence even for those who ignored or loathed the monarchy.
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born in London on April 21, 1926, the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York. She was not born to be queen — her father’s elder brother, Prince Edward, was destined to take the crown, to be followed by any children he had.
But in 1936, when she was 10, Edward VIII abdicated to marry twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, and Elizabeth’s father became King George VI.
Elizabeth was barely in her teens when Britain went to war with Germany in 1939.
Princess Margaret and Elizabeth lived mostly at Windsor Castle, spending many nights in an underground shelter as bombs fell. Eager to do something for the war effort, the heir to the throne joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945, learning to drive and service heavy vehicles.
On the night the war ended in Europe, May 8, 1945, she and Margaret mingled, unrecognized, with celebrating crowds in London. She later called it “one of the most memorable nights of my life.”
At Westminster Abbey in 1947 she married Royal Navy officer Philip Mountbatten, a prince of Greece and Denmark whom she had first met in 1939 when she was 13 and he 18.
Their first child, Prince Charles, was born on Nov. 14, 1948. He was followed by Princess Anne in 1950, Prince Andrew in 1960, and Prince Edward in 1964. She is also survived by eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
In February 1952, George
VI died after years of ill health at age 56. Elizabeth, visiting Kenya, was told that she was now queen.
“In a way I didn’t have an apprenticeship,” Elizabeth reflected in a BBC documentary in 1992. “My father died much too young, and so
it was all a very sudden kind of taking on, and making the best job you can.”
Her coronation came more than a year later at Westminster Abbey, a spectacle viewed by millions through the still-new medium of television.
In Elizabeth’s first years on the throne, Princess Margaret provoked a national controversy through her romance with a divorced man.
In what the queen called the “annus horribilis” of 1992, Princess Anne was divorced, Prince Charles and Princess Diana separated, and so did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah. That was also the year Windsor Castle was damaged by fire.
The public split of Charles and Diana was followed by the shock of her death in a Paris car crash in 1997. For
once, the queen appeared out of step amid unprecedented public mourning. After several days, she made a televised address to the nation.
The dent in her popularity was brief.
She was by now a sort of national grandmother, with a stern gaze and a kind smile. She was arguably the most famous person in the world. But the public saw only glimpses of her personality — her joy watching horse races, or her pleasure in the companionship of her beloved Welsh corgi dogs.
In 2015, she overtook her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria’s reign of 63 years, seven months and two days to become the longest serving monarch in British history. The loss of Philip at age 99 in 2021 was a heavy blow.
And the family troubles kept coming. Her son, Prince Andrew, was entangled in the sordid tale of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a U.S. businessman who had been a friend. The queen’s grandson Prince Harry walked away from Britain and royal duties after marrying American actress Meghan Markle in 2018.
As the queen entered her mid-90s, she had what the palace called “mobility issues” and she appeared infrequently in public this year as she marked her Platinum Jubilee. But she remained in control of the monarchy.
On Tuesday, she presided at a ceremony at Balmoral Castle to accept the resignation of Boris Johnson as prime minister and appoint Truss as his successor.
She remained at the center of public life to the end. As Britons endured loss, isolation and uncertainty during the coronavirus pandemic, she made a rare video address in 2020 that urged people to stick together.
She summoned the spirit of World War II, that vital time in her life, and the nation’s, and echoed Vera Lynn’s wartime anthem, “We’ll Meet Again.”