Obituary: HM The Queen

The Queen, who had lived with the man she described as her rock and her stay for over 70 years,  admitted: “The price of love is grief.” It was impossible not to be touched by that profound and intimate sadness on the face of the woman who, on ascending the throne in her youth, took an oath to remain there until her death.  She kept her promise throughout those long years.

But there was another face she showed the nation one year later. The smile we saw on her Platinum Jubilee, in June, 2022 during a weekend of national pageantry, puppetry and parties, culminating in a concert featuring a host of  leading artistes. The smile itself was jubilant, but there were already intimations of mortality.  Her mobility issues, as Buckingham Palace described them, prevented her from attending all the celebrations, including  a special service in her honour at St Paul’s. Her absence, amid a swathe of colourfully dressed royals and political and civic dignitaries, emphasised her growing fragility.  She said she was humbled by the masses assembled outside the Palace who waved and cheered her.

During that time her humour was amply demonstrated when Paddington Bear came to tea at the  Palace and they both flourished their marmalade sandwiches, Her Majesty’s concealed in her expensive black handbag. It was an echo of her apparent jump from a helicopter with James Bond for the 2012 Olympics at the same time as her Golden Jubilee.

Despite powerful waves of inter-family controversy, the second longest serving monarch in history, (Louis XIV of France reigned for 72 years).retained the unswerving dignity of her office. As a constitutional monarch she took no part in politics apart from officially appointing and regularly meeting the 15 Prime Ministers who spanned her reign. She was discreet enough never to reveal her personal, political views.  She had faced many storms during her 70 year reign none of which had seriously dented the affection in which she was held. As coronavirus threatened, she probably never felt closer to the public than when she broadcast to the nation from Windsor during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Queen presided over the demise of the British Empire and saw 54 countries achieve independence, to become part of the Commonwealth, which she heads. She remained close to the Commonwealth, and travelled extensively during the 1970s to the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa, Canada, and in 1976 to the United States for the 200th anniversary celebration of America’s independence, followed by her opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal. In 1979, she visited Arab states including Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. In 2011 she became the first British monarch to visit the Republic of Ireland in a century. 

Despite being one of the most travelled monarchs, visiting over 100 countries during her 271 foreign trips, she never visited Israel. The fact was remarked on by Haaretz, and was said to be due to the “never-ending tensions” in the area. The historian Andrew Roberts said in May, 2009 that the British government had a de facto ban in place on state visits by the Queen to Israel, condemning  it as "an act of delegitimisation of Israel” and calling it an effective boycott which he blamed on the “Foreign Office Arabists.”

Two years earlier Elizabeth received representatives from the Three Faiths Forum and was presented with the Sternberg Interfaith Gold Medallion, awarded to those who had helped promote peace and tolerance between people of different faiths

The second Elizabethan age has witnessed the greatest medical, scientific and technological advances in history, from the smallpox vaccine  (now used to treat monkeypox), to the covid vaccine, to the discovery of DNA, to test tube babies, and space exploration.

Evoking wartime memories of loss and separation from loved ones, during an emergency coronavirus broadcast in 2020, she recalled her own childhood during the Second World War when she and her late sister Margaret – ”spoke from here at Windsor to children who had been evacuated from their homes.” Echoing Vera Lynn’s war-time anthem that “we will meet again”, she hoped that “in years to come people would look back and say that this generation of Britons were as strong as any.”

It was only the fifth time she had given such a speech in her 69-year reign. Apart from her annual Christmas Day message, this type of address is only made during times of crisis and grief. Her reassurance, coming as Boris Johnson told the UK it faced the ''worst public health crisis for a generation” had a nurturing quality about it. 

The Queen has been loved and respected throughout her reign by a largely monarchist population. The aura of majesty, of pomp and circumstance which hovers over British royalty is distinctive to this country and quite unlike that of other crowned heads of Europe.

The Queen’s way of life was protected and unreachable, giving her an air of mystique. Her public rarely saw her except in these moments of public address, in royal garden parties, during the Queen’s Birthday Honours, and in the solemnity of state funerals or Remembrance Sunday. Those who have met her universally describe her personal warmth and ability to put them at their ease. The texture of her speech, even in private, can seem sharp but frequently softened by a warm, sudden smile.

The recent TV series The Crown attempted to show the royal family in so-called real life and time. It was met with the royal silence of stiff-upper lip disapproval. For many it was this series which made the family seem real. It portrayed the Queen’s struggles with Princess Margaret’s unhappy love affairs, the early difficulties of her own marriage to the flamboyant Prince Philip, the politicians she admired, such as Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson, her despair at not being able to express true grief and remorse to the people of Aberfan who had lost a generation of children in the tragic coal slag disaster of October, 1966.  And early in the series she expressed her sense of personal inadequacy in terms of her own education. We do not know the provenance of all of these revelations; though some are clearly on record.

Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was the elder of the two daughters of Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Nicknamed Lilibet, she and Margaret were educated at home by tutors in French, mathematics and history, along with dancing, singing and art lessons, dividing their time between London and Windsor Castle. 

Just as divorce and controversy would come to haunt the lives of the Queen’s children, her own childhood was tinged with bitter disputes, namely the abdication of her uncle King Edward VIII, in favour of marriage to the divorced Wallis Simpson. Instead it was her father – the younger brother – who was crowned King George VI in 1937, which changed the family’s lives forever.

The outbreak of war in 1939 projected the young princess into the unexpected limelight. She and Margaret were relocated to Windsor Castle, from where, on October 14, 1940 at the age of 14, she launched the weekly BBC radio broadcast aimed at the thousands of child evacuees. She told them: “My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those we love most of all.”

With surprising maturity, she said: “We are all trying to do what we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying to bear our own share of the danger and sadness of war. “

This early entry into public life brought other royal duties her way. Appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Grenadier Guards by her father, Elizabeth made her first public appearance inspecting the troops in 1942, and began to accompany her parents on official visits within Britain. In 1945, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service; training as a mechanic and military truck driver. She was the first female member of the British royal family to become an active duty member of the British armed forces and the last surviving head of state to have served during the Second World War.

On VE Day she and Margaret slipped out to join crowds as Britons joyfully celebrated the end of the war. 

Elizabeth, beautiful in her youth and well into old age, has been portrayed by artists and photographers. Although none, according to the Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak truly captured her essence.  He praised the line of her neck, featured in the coinage of her youth, her perfect complexion and blue eyes.

She met the handsome Philip Mountbatten, a distant cousin linked to both the Danish and Greek royal families, when she was only 13. She was already smitten. It was a true coup de foudre with all the romantic trappings of parental disapproval. Her father was hesitant because Philip lacked wealth and some saw in him a certain roughness, in contrast to Elizabeth’s refinement, but nevertheless the couple married on November 20, 1947, at London's Westminster Abbey. In that time of post-war austerity, Elizabeth showed her unity with the people by collecting clothing coupons to exchange for fabric for her wedding dress.

At Elizabeth’s coronation, following the death of George VI, Jewish leaders presented her with an address of sympathy on his loss, and congratulations on her accession. At this time post-war Britain still had a substantial empire, dominions and dependencies, though most achieved independence by the 1950s and 1960s, and evolved into the Commonwealth of Nations. It is said that her coronation brought the newly invented TV into the national home. Looking at that black and white footage today, the slender young girl clad in white flanked by representatives of church and state, suggests a sacrificial figure, backed by her white-clad ladies in waiting, secretly anointed from a 12th-century golden receptacle and tenderly bearing on her fragile head the 5lb weight of the crown of Edward V11. Some may indeed regard it as a sacrifice, for her loyalty, expressed then and maintained into her old age, was one which she has pledged never to give up.

During the years of her marriage, royal gaffes by the Duke of Edinburgh continued to fuel media interest as did rumours of his extra-marital affairs, but the Queen maintained the dignified silence for which she was widely respected. A year after their wedding their son Charles was born, followed by Anne in 1950. Andrew and Edward followed in 1960 and 1964.

Charles was officially appointed her successor at his investiture as Prince of Wales, in July, 1969, a ceremony watched by millions on TV. But the issue of divorce which had haunted the royal family since the abdication of Edward VIII was revived with Charles’ involvement with Camilla Parker-Bowles, another divorcée. He had married the 19-year-old Diana Spencer in 1981, when he was 32, but press speculation about his relationship with Camilla never died away. It also brought up another ghost;  Princess Margaret’s grief at having to renounce marriage to the divorced Captain Peter Townsend, which aroused much sympathy from the public, as she was never likely to ascend to the throne.

With the sumptuous wedding of Charles and Diana, the monarchy seemed suddenly renewed.  The shy young beauty caught the imagination of the public wherever she went.

Yet divorce and, of course, tragedy loomed. After Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris in 1997, an outpouring of grief for the much-loved princess became so intense that the public turned on Elizabeth, demanding a response she seemed unable to give. This was the one time during her reign when her popularity faltered. As tearful crowds brought flowers to Kensington Palace in their thousands, Buckingham Palace was silent. Prime Minister Tony Blair, caught the mood and urged the Queen to return from Balmoral and address the thousands gathered outside Buckingham Palace.

She did so from the palace balcony. She had rarely sounded so personal. She acknowledged the grief of the crowds and said she was speaking "from the heart" as "your Queen and as a grandmother". She praised the dead princess, from whom she had become alienated after her divorce from Charles, as an "exceptional and gifted human being" whom she "admired and respected for her energy and commitment to others and especially for her devotion to her two boys".

The reason given for her late arrival was that Elizabeth had been quietly supporting her young grandsons, William and Harry in Balmoral. This sense of the Queen comforting and trying to heal the raw grief of children gave her a human perspective that was initially lost on the crowds mourning someone they had never even met.  Her speech turned the public mood from anger to reconciliation. But it had seemed a dangerous moment for the monarchy.   

Charles and Camilla maintained a discreet separation and finally married on April 9, 2005.
Earlier, in November 1992, in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of her accession, she referred to ongoing royal scandals, plus the devastating fire at Windsor Castle as her annus horribilis.

Possibly another was 2019, when Prince Andrew was forced to step down from royal duties in the wake of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He also faced allegations of a sexual relationship with an underage girl. 

And in early January 2020, Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, gave up their roles as senior royals, citing media intrusion and racism. Their move to California and their TV interview with Oprah Winfrey, alleging racism in the “firm” as they put it, and lack of concern for Meghan’s mental health issues, must have caused the Queen considerable distress, coming in the wake of her husband’s illness and death earlier this year. It contributed to the estrangement between William and Harry.

 The Queen responded in a statement: “The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately," she said. “Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much-loved family members."

As Queen Elizabeth sat alone in the chapel at her husband’s funeral, the estranged brothers sat opposite, distant from each other. They were separated by something far deeper than the Atlantic. And this dislocation hinted at a new age which may eventually threaten that monarchy so tightly woven into the very fabric of Elizabeth’s reign. The death of this popular monarch at the age of 96 will cause a seismic shift in society whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  Her successor, the Prince of Wales, may be seen as a figure lacking in her particular quiet magnetism, although his environmental concerns will probably chime with the current emphasis on climate change.

His remarks on “the appalling atrocity of slavery “ that “forever stains our history”, when Barbados became a republic at the end of 2021, were noted as words his mother could never have spoken, as a constitutional monarch. More recently, in the summer of 2022 when controversy raged over the government’s decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, Charles described it as appalling.

At the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, which she could not attend due to ill health, she paid tribute to the foresight of the Duke of Edinburgh, who told an academic gathering in 1969 that: 'if the world pollution situation is not critical at the moment, it is as certain as anything can be, that the situation will become increasingly intolerable within a very short time... If we fail to cope with this challenge, all the other problems will pale into insignificance'. Addressing the  Cop 26 conference, she said: “It is a source of great pride to me that the leading role my husband played in encouraging people to protect our fragile planet, lives on through the work of our eldest son Charles and his eldest son, William. I could not be more proud of them."

Queen Elizabeth’s long reign has been largely peaceful, apart from the brief Falklands war in April 1982, in which her son Prince Andrew safely returned from duty as a helicopter pilot, but over 250  British servicemen died. Then came the Gulf War and the Iraq War.  But she presided over a country moving from its imperial days to a more modern era of multiculturalism, more secular, and closely involving her beloved Commonwealth.

On that point, there has been recent rumbling from some Caribbean countries visited by royals seeking to become republics.  Some have even urged her to apologize for Britain’s colonial role in slavery. She did not comment. As sovereign, she was all things to all ethnic groups and to none. Her views, for example, on the Jewish community, remain unknown.  

Her reign has also seen financial readjustments, such as the abolition of the Civil List in 2012, which funded the monarchy for the past 250 years. It meant spending cuts, although the royal family does receive some government support. She has faced political controversy, too. In August 2019, during the intensity of the Brexit debates, she was persuaded by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to prorogue Parliament until October 14 to enable the Conservative party to ensure a smooth transition from the EU. This was later thrown out by the Supreme Court, but some felt she should not have agreed to Johnson’s unlawful suspension of parliament. It is a moot point whether overturning a political decision is ever really in the gift of a constitutional monarch.

Yet Elizabeth entered her 96th year still steadfastly dedicated to her faith, her royal obligations and support for hundreds of charitable programmes. She never stopped working. A horse and dog lover, she owned more than 30 descendants of the first corgi she was given as a teenager, until the death of the last one, Willow, in 2018.

She bred thoroughbred horses and was a regular presence at racing events. Her hobbies included reading mystery novels, crossword puzzles and, reportedly, even watching wrestling on television. She sustained her monarchy as a surprisingly shy and reticent person, a woman loved by the people yet who understood the need to keep a discreet distance from them.

Perhaps her growing fragility was evident during her platinum Jubilee when her mobility issues prevented her from attending all the celebrations at St Pauls and the concert outside Buckingham Palace. The flypast evoked a smile when the planes flew in formation to form the number 70 in the skies. Watching her nation celebrate from Windsor Castle, she nonetheless managed another surprise balcony appearance with her family on Sunday as the events drew to a close.

The Queen is survived by her children, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward; her grandchildren Prince William, Prince Harry,Peter Phillips, Princess Beatrice of York; Princess Eugenie of York; Zara Tindall; Lady Louise Windsor; and James, Viscount Severn. Of her 11 great-grandchildren —the youngest are Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi's newborn baby girl, Sienna, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's daughter Lilibet and Zara Tindall's son Lucas.

Queen Elizabeth II, born April 21, 1926. died September 8, 2022.