POBNEWS24, Dhaka Sep 9, 2022 : Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was not
just Queen Elizabeth II. She was simply The Queen.
For billions of people, she was the one constant in a world of bewildering
change, an omnipresent matriarch linking the past with the present.
While the enormous British Empire she once presided over shrank, her
symbolic influence only seemed to grow, her mystique bolstered by films like
“The Queen” and the Netflix series “The Crown”.
Against the tide of history and logic, she made a medieval anachronism
somehow modern, a stoic old lady in a hat onto whom so much could be projected.
Perhaps only the pope held as much sway, and she saw seven of them come and
go during her record-breaking seven-decade reign.
– Accident of history –
Although Elizabeth Windsor became the very definition of the word, she was
not born to be queen.
An accident of history brought her to the throne.
Until her “Uncle David” — Edward VIII — abdicated to marry the
twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson in 1936, she had only an outside chance
of reigning.
Even as heir apparent, the birth of a baby brother would have sent her back
into relative aristocratic obscurity under succession laws in place at the time
that gave precedence to males.
All changed for “Lilibet” when she was 10 and her reluctant, stammering
father became George VI.
Until the “shock” of the abdication, she had been brought up exactly like
her more outgoing younger sister Margaret. The two were often dressed like
twins.
Her tough-minded mother, also called Elizabeth, was her emotional lodestar.
She made sure the girls had an “insulated and care-free childhood” in contrast
to the suffocating Palace strictures their father suffered.
Nevertheless, she learned duty early.
“Princess Elizabeth was quite a good tap dancer and mimic and could be very
funny when she wanted to be,” said royal biographer Andrew Morton, whose study
of her close but often strained relationship with Margaret appeared in 2021.
And she “could be depended upon to do what was asked, keeping her toys and
clothes in perfect order”.
– ‘Magnificent isolation’ –
An introvert, she adapted easily to the “magnificent isolation” of royal
life spent surrounded by scores of servants and courtiers.
The royal family — George VI, Queen Elizabeth, princess Elizabeth and
princess Margaret — referred to themselves as “we four”, Morton said, and were
close.
Yet as queen, Elizabeth looked more to her steely and stolid grandfather
George V — a reformer who believed in leading by example.
Her biographer, Robert Lacey, told AFP that like him she saw the decline of
the English class system, and wanted to establish a direct relationship with
the people.
George V began the royal broadcasts, which the queen used to hone her own
mix of mystery and intimacy, inviting television viewers into Buckingham Palace
or Windsor Castle for rather stilted fireside chats surrounded by photographs
of her children, dogs and horses.
– Young queen –
Her coronation on June 2, 1953 was the first major event of the television
age.
The news that morning of New Zealander Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest
made the celebrations all the more giddy.
The Union Jack had been planted on the top of world, as Britain financed
the expedition, alongside that of the United Nations and Nepal.
But for all the glamour of the young queen — then just 25 — and talk of a
second Elizabethan age, Imperial Britain was in trouble.
India — the so-called “Jewel in the Crown” — had already gained
independence in 1947.
Hard-won victory in World War II had left the country exhausted and
virtually bankrupt, its cities bomb-scarred and rationing was in its 14th year.
The Suez Crisis in 1956 would deal Britain’s status as a world power a
final shattering blow.
While the Tudor-era Elizabeth I in the 16th century oversaw the birth of
England’s imperial project, Elizabeth II’s fate was to watch the flag come down
on the biggest empire the world has ever seen.
The latest to go was Barbados, which cut ties with the British Crown after
nearly four centuries in 2021.
– Quiet reformer –
Such a retreat would have carried other monarchies with it, but the queen
was the embodiment of British stiff upper lip and its “keep calm and carry on”
spirit.
She had already done her dynastic duty by giving birth to an “heir and a
spare” — a successor and a younger sibling — by the time she was crowned.
With the ageing Winston Churchill — the first of 15 British prime
ministers to serve under her — at her side, she began to slowly reinvent the
institution.
Decades sidestepping diplomatic bear traps on never-ending royal tours and
state visits made her a formidable operator.
Those skills have been “capital” in holding the Commonwealth of incredibly
diverse mostly former British colonies together, Lacey insisted.
Despite crises and conflicts, it still counts 54 countries with a combined
population of 2.57 billion people.
– Princess in love –
The queen was 13 when she fell for her 18-year-old third cousin Philip in
1939, then a dashing naval cadet preparing to go to war.
Her nanny noted that “she never took her eyes off him”. Letters were soon
flying back and forth.
Despite the constant threat, the future queen experienced her greatest
freedom during those teenage wartime years.
Relatively safe behind the thick walls of Windsor Castle, west of London,
she became a volunteer driver and mechanic.
When victory was declared in 1945, the 19-year-old princess joined the
crowds celebrating in central London along with her friends and her sister
Margaret.
She later described it as “one of the most memorable nights of my life. I
remember we were terrified of being recognised.”
Two years later, despite her mother’s reservations — the Queen Mother
referred to plain-speaking Philip as “the Hun” because of his German wider
family — she married the impecunious Danish-Greek prince.
She gave birth to Charles 11 months later and Anne followed in 1950. Andrew
— said to be her favourite — arrived in 1960, with Edward born four years
later.
The queen was a one-man woman, who “never looked at anyone else”, her
cousin and confidant Margaret Rhodes said.
Philip’s marital fidelity was reportedly less sure, but his sense of duty
was equally iron cast.
Their 73-year partnership, which lasted until his death in April 2021, was
her “strength and stay”, the queen later confessed.
Both loved horses. The queen’s racing stables turned out some 1,700
winners, with the Racing Post occupying pride of place on her desk alongside
state papers.
She only missed two Epsom Derbies in her entire reign.
Philip played polo into his 50s and raced carriages into his 90s. Fittingly
both were obsessed with breeding.
On her highly sensitive royal visit to Ireland in 2011 — the first by a
British royal since its independence — the queen met almost as many horses as
people after asking to take in two famous stud farms.
– Humanising the royals –
Thoroughbreds can be difficult to handle. And this was also to prove true
with members of the royal family, known as “The Firm”, who would become more
visible than ever under Elizabeth’s reign.
The world got its first glimpse of their private lives in 1969 when BBC
cameras were allowed around the Buckingham Palace breakfast table.
The documentary was part of a bid to “humanise” the monarchy masterminded
by Philip’s uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and the former viceroy of India’s
son-in-law, film producer John Knatchbull, the seventh Baron Brabourne.
Since the beginning of her reign, the Palace had sought to portray the
royals as a family like any other, a more well-born, well-appointed version of
a modern British household.
But “Royal Family” lifted the veil further than ever before, revealing some
surprising quirks — behind her shy and dutiful exterior, the queen was
actually a rather racy driver.
Not for the last time, it was Prince Philip who delivered the biggest
bombshell, telling viewers how the queen’s father King George VI would take out
his rage on the rhododendrons.
“Sometimes I thought he was mad,” he deadpanned.
Critics, including Princess Anne — who called the film “rotten” — blamed
it for opening the door to the tabloid voyeurism that would soon dog the clan.
– Tabloid troubles –
The queen’s rather unruly and resentful sister, Margaret, was first in the
firing line, her colourful private life making her prime paparazzi material.
All the royals, apart from the “untouchable” queen herself and Prince
Philip, would in time feel the swipe of the media’s double-edged sword.
Yet the queen seemed to float above it all, her life a carefully guarded
secret.
Beyond her love of horses and rather snappy Corgi dogs, along with a
fondness for crossword puzzles and a Dubonnet and gin cocktail before lunch,
very little about her private life was known.
In later life she developed a fondness for television soap operas, and
while self-isolating in Windsor during the coronavirus lockdown is said to have
become a fan of the police corruption drama “Line of Duty”.
She even reportedly watched the upper-class period drama “Downton Abbey”.
In 2021, when she was forced to slow down because of ill health, The Times
reported that late-night television had left her “knackered”.
She even stopped drinking her lunchtime gin and martini in the evening.
– ‘Annus horribilis’ –
For a time, there was much to celebrate in her children’s lives.
The “fairytale” marriage of Charles to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 was a
massive global media event, as was the wedding of Andrew to Sarah Ferguson five
years later.
Yet the couples’ private lives would soon provide endless fodder for the
voracious British tabloids.
Both marriages very publicly fell apart in 1992, as did Anne’s to Captain
Mark Phillips. To top it all, Windsor Castle was badly damaged by fire.
The queen called it her “annus horribilis”.
In an effort to win back public support, she began paying tax and
Buckingham Palace was opened to the public for the first time.
But the rancour between Charles and Diana became poisonous as they settled
scores in rival TV interviews in what became known as the “War of the Waleses”.
And then the unimaginable happened. Diana’s tragic end in a car crash in
Paris in 1997 not only shook confidence in the monarchy, but in the queen
herself.
– Diana –
A series of missteps in the days after her daughter-in-law’s death left the
queen looking cold, uncaring and out of touch.
“Show us you care,” said one newspaper front page after the queen opted to
stay in her Scottish summer retreat of Balmoral rather return to London.
“Speak to us Ma’am,” headlined another, in criticism that would have been
unthinkable only a few years before.
And her decision to strip the so-called “People’s Princess” of her royal
status in the wake of Diana’s bombshell 1995 BBC interview came back to haunt
the monarch.
But through it all, the queen kept her counsel, sticking doggedly to the
royals’ reputed mantra of “never complain, never explain”.
It may have helped maintain the institution’s mystique in past but here it
badly backfired.
A major Palace overhaul followed.
Help in restoring faith in the monarch was to come from an unlikely source
— the self-confessed “old republican left-winger” Stephen Frears.
His Oscar-winning 2008 movie “The Queen”, set against the backdrop of the
Diana crisis, did much to explain her position and rewrite the narrative.
Helen Mirren — another republican — won an Oscar for her moving portrayal
of the queen’s struggle between duty and family, winning her sympathy even from
people who had little time for the monarchy.
– The problem with Charles –
Rehabilitating Charles would be trickier. As early as 1977, during her
Silver Jubilee marking 25 years on the throne, the queen had vowed to rule
until her death.
While this promised stability, it also seemed to undermine the Prince of
Wales, whom some saw as unfit to follow her.
His buttonholing of politicians over his hobby horse causes seemed to
challenge the unwritten rule that the royals stay out of politics.
However, as many of his once “fringe” ideas, such as on the environment,
became mainstream, Charles has shown a more relaxed, self-deprecating side,
particularly after his 2005 marriage to his lifelong lover Camilla.
With his mother in her 90s, he began to take over her duties as the most
senior royal on overseas trips.
– Family –
Despite the consolation of grandchildren and great grandchildren in the
twilight of her reign, her greatest headaches continued to come from within her
own family.
Now the longest serving British monarch ever, the marriages of both of her
grandsons William and Harry to commoners seemed to offer another phase of
modernisation and renewal.
However, within three years of Harry’s mould-breaking marriage to the
mixed-race American actress Meghan Markle in 2018, a rift with the Palace
became horribly public.
A month after allegations of racism within the family were raised in a
television interview with Oprah Winfrey, Philip died aged 99 in April 2021,
leaving her ever more alone.
With Andrew also mired in underage sex allegations over links with
convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, it was another “annus horribilis”.
– Last of her kind? –
Yet the monarch herself remained hugely popular and admired, an embodiment
of traditional values and all that seemed eternal about England.
In his book on her and her sister, Morton recounts how Margaret burst in on
the queen’s weekly audience with the prime minister early in her reign.
“If you weren’t queen, nobody would talk to you,” Margaret fumed, angry at
being left out.
Time and again since, Elizabeth proved the contrary, that she was
infinitely worthy — the first and perhaps the “last global monarch”, as the
New York Times put it in 2021.
The unknowable mystique she cultivated in a world ever more demanding of
transparency may well die with her.
