The Queen has died.
As the daughter and granddaughter of men who were not first in line to the throne, Elizabeth was once destined for a life of relative regal obscurity.
Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, along with his wife, Camilla, and sister, Princess Anne, were with the Queen at Balmoral Castle, her summer residence in Scotland. Other members of the royal family, including Charles' sons, Princes William and Harry, were said to be en route. Thus it was as the child of a country gentleman, rather than as a potential future monarch, that Elizabeth lived at Bruton Street, at White Lodge in Richmond Park, and at 145 Piccadilly, the house taken by her parents, near Hyde Park.Some happy moments were spent in the tall house on Piccadilly, with its top-floor nursery and Elizabeth’s"stable" of three dozen toy horses.
They spent many hours in the 'Little House' , a gift from the people of Wales. This was a miniature of a real dwelling faithful in detail down to boxes of matches and baking powder in the tiny kitchen drawers. The climax in pomp and pageantry came on Coronation Day, June 2, 1953, the same year in which she also formally became Queen of Canada. Six kings and seven queens attended as Elizabeth drove to Westminster Abbey in a gilded coach and dedicated herself to her people in the world’s oldest state ceremonial.
There were conflicting stories about how the two met, but there was no conflict over the contention that this was a love match. One obstacle was the fact that Philip had been baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church. Before the marriage, he was received into the Church of England. Marital stability proved elusive for most of the Queen's children, and the sensational media coverage of the Royal Family's romantic woes proved some of the most trying and best-remembered moments of her reign.The split between Prince Charles and his wife Diana in the 1990s marked a particularly painful time for the Royal Family, with revelations about their ill-fated marriage filling Britain’s notoriously salacious tabloids.
She matched another historical milestone in 2012 by becoming the second monarch to celebrate a diamond jubilee, and made history alone in 2015 when she succeeded her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. On the final day of the event, she joined other senior members of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a flyby by 70 military aircraft and wave to supporters who filled the street below. Later, she took part in a beacon lighting ceremony at Windsor Palace, the culmination of events that spanned the Commonwealth.
The visit had been timed to celebrate the ratification of the Meech Lake accord, which was meant to address many of Quebec’s constitutional concerns. As it turned out, the accord officially died a few days before her visit to the capital. Although pro-sovereigntist sentiment within Quebec was running high, the Queen’s visit continued as planned, without violence.
Later in her reign, the Queen navigated the Royal Family through allegations of racism made by her grandson Prince Harry and his wife Meghan in a television interview in the United States, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live after stepping away from their royal duties. In a publicity-conscious era, one of the Queen’s most ticklish problems was how to strike a balance between reserve and familiarity.
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