Updates: Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s Bastion of Stability, Dies
Buckingham Palace said the queen, who was 96, died peacefully at Balmoral Castle, her estate in the Scottish Highlands. Her son became Britain’s new monarch, King Charles III.
LONDON — The death of Queen Elizabeth II, which Buckingham Palace announced on Thursday, is a watershed moment for Britain, at once incomparable and incalculable.
It marks both the loss of a revered monarch — the only one most Britons have ever known — and the end of a figure who served as a living link to the glories of World War II Britain, presided over its fitful adjustment to a post-colonial, post-imperial era and saw it through its bitter divorce from the European Union.
There is no analogous public figure who will have been mourned as deeply in Britain — Winston Churchill might come closest — or whose death could provoke a greater reckoning with the identity and future of the country. Elizabeth’s extraordinary longevity lent her an air of permanence that makes her death, even at an advanced age, somehow shocking.
The ups and downs of the queen’s seven-decade reign were many, a tapestry of events that traces the history of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Britain and 15 other Commonwealth realms over which she presided are a shadow of the empire-in-decline she inherited in 1952. How many of those countries will continue to recognize the British monarch as their head of state is an open question.
The foibles of her family were endless and endlessly dissected — from the abdication of her uncle, Edward, to marry a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson, which set in motion the events that put her on the throne, to the painful rupture between her grandson, Prince Harry, and the rest of the family after his marriage to Meghan Markle, an American actress.
One well-documented misstep came in 1997, after Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris, when the queen declined for days to leave her summer residence at Balmoral Castle in Scotland to join in the nation’s grieving.
The royal family’s future under a new king, Charles, is uncertain. He remarried — his second wife is Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall — and his accession to the throne is no longer in doubt as it was during his personal struggles.
But Charles has long expressed a desire to streamline the family to make it less of a drain on the public purse. And the internal strife continues as the royals adapt to the departure of Harry and Meghan, who have made a new life in California.
Oxford Street in London decked out in May for Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.Credit…Carl Court/Getty Images
Numerous small changes to British daily life are expected in the coming weeks to welcome the new monarch — King Charles III, who ascended to the throne after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday.
For instance, the queen’s portrait appears on British money and postage stamps, and those will need new designs.
But one change will be less obvious: the words to the national anthem.
For the first time since 1952, English sports fans, for example, will need to change an important word in the tune they sing before matches — instead of “God save the queen,” they now have a king to pay their respects to. (Scottish and Welsh fans sing other songs.)
The British national anthem — “God Save the Queen” or “God Save the King,” depending on who is reigning, which is also used by many Commonwealth countries as the royal anthem — is not written into law, so its words could change immediately, making the first verse, the one traditionally sung:
God save our gracious king! Long live our noble king! God save the king! Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God save the king.
One immediate question is whether fans embrace those tiny changes or continue singing “queen” — at least for now — in tribute to the much-loved Elizabeth. The answer will soon be apparent: England’s men’s soccer team plays Italy in Milan on Sept. 23.
Whatever happens at that match, the first time sports fans do sing the new words will be a highly symbolic moment, but also a discombobulating one for the English public.
Queen Elizabeth II rallied Britons in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic. Her remarks were recorded from Windsor Castle, where she was sequestering herself.CreditCredit…Paul Ellis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
As a constitutional monarch, Queen Elizabeth II played a role in British public life that was both strictly circumscribed and profoundly embedded.
She met weekly with more than a dozen prime ministers during her reign — a list that began with Winston Churchill — though her counsel was given in strictest confidence.
Yet while she studiously avoided politics, the queen occasionally dropped a hint of her views. She tangled with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986 over Britain’s refusal to join in sanctions against apartheid South Africa and, plainly relieved, called for reconciliation after Scotland voted against leaving the United Kingdom in 2014. She acted, with varying degrees of success, to bind together Britain during times of crisis, such as the Suez crisis of 1956, the Falklands War of 1982 and the Brexit referendum of 2016.
If anything, the queen seemed to loom even larger in the sunset of her reign. She acted as a reassuring symbol of Britain’s history at a time when the country was debating its place in the world after the rancorous split from the European Union. And she bore up stoically after the death of her husband, Prince Philip, in 2021, mourning in pandemic-imposed isolation at his funeral at Windsor Castle.
In April 2020, when the coronavirus was pummeling Britain, Elizabeth urged her subjects to commit themselves to a national cause similar to that of World War II. She likened the enforced separation of Britain’s lockdown to the sacrifices families made during the war, when parents sent away their children for their own safety.
“We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return,” the queen said. “We will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.”
That last line referred to “We’ll Meet Again,” a 1939 song that became a wartime favorite in Britain. It served as a poignant reminder that as a young princess, Elizabeth had served in that war, working in the auxiliary service as a driver and mechanic. Seven decades later, at her death, she was still serving.
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