A switch was flicked in the afternoon of the eighth of September 2022 in the United Kingdom, and indeed around the Commonwealth and the majority of the world, when the seemingly unstoppable monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, drew her last breath. As a light of sorts went off, the second Elizabethan age (some seventy years) came to a dramatic and irrevocable halt.
For a woman who was not born as first in line to the throne, Elizabeth’s birth in 1926 in London was the life-defining precursor to an upbringing of unfathomable privilege and riches, as the eldest daughter of the then Duke and Duchess of York (later to become King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother). Elizabeth also had a younger sister, Princess Margaret.
When the constitutionally unthinkable happened (in 1936 when Elizabeth was ten) and her uncle King Edward VIII abdicated, Elizabeth’s future as Queen of the United Kingdom and it’s Commonwealth realms was engraved in stone forever.
King Edward VIII had refused to ‘call it off’ with his American divorcee girlfriend, Wallis Simpson, insisting on marrying her. The ‘rules’ of the day did not allow for an American and a divorced woman to marry the King. Thus, the necessity of Edward’s abdication.
Elizabeth’s father, Albert, became King George VI through his brother’s abdication, and Elizabeth spent the remainder of her upbringing ‘studying’ to be the future Queen Elizabeth II.
Elizabeth married her great love, Philip, who was to become known as Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in 1947, a year in which the United Kingdom and the world were still ‘recovering’ from the seismic shocks and losses of the Second World War. The couple went on to have and lovingly raise Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
Elizabeth’s father passed away in 1952, when Elizabeth was 26, catapulting her irrevocably to her reign as Queen. It was a role she was to perform with great sombreness and gusto, and at times with a little fun, for the following seventy years.
During her seventy years on the throne, Elizabeth oversaw fifteen UK Prime Ministers; the first being Winston Churchill, the last being Liz Truss (who the Queen swore in just two days before she passed away). Elizabeth oversaw sixteen Australian Prime Ministers, the first being Robert Menzies and the last being Anthony Albanese.
From an Australian perspective, it is noteworthy that the Queen visited Australia sixteen times throughout her reign, the first visit being in 1954, when Australia only had a population of ten million, seventy percent of whom came out to ‘see’ her. Her last visit here was in 2011.
The Queen was always ‘well across’ the issues pertaining to Australia and Australians, and had a keen interest in Australia and the Australian people right until her death. To put it succinctly, she loved us.
Elizabeth’s long-time press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, has said that he “never saw her get rattled”. Elizabeth and her family exemplified and resolutely lived their family mottos of “Keep calm and carry on” and “Never complain. Never Explain”.
Living a life in which she put duty and service to ‘her people’ above all else (certainly her own self-interests), she was also, at the end of the day, a much-loved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and wife.
Elizabeth knew great happiness in her life and reign, punctuated by times of enormous sadness. One such gut-wrenching time was the devastating death in 1997 of her former daughter-in-law, Diana, Princess of Wales – the mother to Elizabeth’s adored grandsons, William and Harry. It was the Queen, along with Prince Philip and Prince Charles, who gave William and Harry comfort, counsel and strength at Balmoral Castle in Scotland immediately after Diana’s death. It was at her beloved Balmoral estate that the Queen ‘sheltered’ William and Harry in the frenzied aftermath of Diana’s death.
A light has certainly gone out for the Queen’s family, and to different degrees the people of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth and the world. We will never see Queen Elizabeth’s like again; such stoicism, endurance, compassion and courage.
After a time of mourning for the Queen, I (as a Republican) think it would be good to have a reignition of the Republican debate for Australia, our long-loyal country to the Crown. Still, such rigours of thought and speech are for another day, when the dust has settled softly in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s passing.
I still remember my mother taking my sisters and I (we were eight, ten and twelve) to see the Queen in Brisbane during her Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977. We were all positively giddy with excitement, waving to the Queen enthusiastically as she drove past. She waved to the crowd with love, calm, poise and grace. I will always associate those fine qualities with her.
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