Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
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Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary;[1] born 21 April 1926) is the queen regnant of 16 independent states and their overseas territories and dependencies. Though she holds each crown and title separately and equally, she is resident in and most directly involved with the United Kingdom, her oldest realm; part of her lineage traces through the royal houses of England, Wessex, and Scotland for over fifteen hundred years. She ascended the thrones of seven countries in February 1952, on the death of her father King George VI. (See Context below.) In addition to the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, in each of which she is represented by a Governor-General. The 16 countries of which she is Queen are known as Commonwealth realms, and their combined population, including dependencies, is over 129 million. In theory her powers are vast; however, in practice (and in accordance with convention), she rarely intervenes in political matters. Elizabeth II also holds a variety of other positions, among them Head of the Commonwealth, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Duke of Normandy, Lord of Mann, and Paramount Chief of Fiji. Her long reign has seen sweeping changes in her realms and the world at large, perhaps most notably the dissolution of the British Empire (a process that began in the last years of her father's reign) and the consequent evolution of the modern Commonwealth of Nations. Since 1947, Elizabeth has been married to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The couple have four children and eight grandchildren; the eighth (Viscount Severn) was born on 17 December 2007.[3]
Context
Elizabeth became Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) upon the death of her father, George VI, on 6 February 1952. As other colonies of the British Empire attained independence from the UK during her reign, she acceded to the newly created thrones as queen of each respective realm, so that, throughout her 56 years on the throne, she has been the sovereign of 32 individual nations, half of which, after varying periods of time, subsequently became republics. She is currently the only monarch of more than one independent state. Elizabeth II is currently the second longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, ranking behind Victoria, who reigned over the UK for 63 years. She is also one of the longest-reigning monarchs of any of its predecessor states, ranking behind George III (who reigned over Great Britain and subsequently the United Kingdom for 59 years) and James VI (who reigned over Scotland for 57 years). In March 2008, she surpassed Henry III of England. Following tradition, she is additionally titled Duke of Lancaster and Duke of Normandy, and is also Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of many of her realms, Lord Admiral of the United Kingdom, and is styled Defender of the Faith in various realms for differing reasons. Early lifeElizabeth was born at 17 Bruton Street, in Mayfair, London,[2] the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of York, and Elizabeth, Duchess of York, the first granddaughter of King George V and Queen Mary, and the first princess born into the immediate royal family since Princess Mary in 1897. She was baptised by Archbishop of York Cosmo Lang, in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace (which was subsequently destroyed during World War II); her godparents were her paternal grandparents; Princess Mary, Viscountess Lascelles; Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn; her maternal grandfather, Claude Bowes-Lyon, Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne; and Mary Elphinstone, Lady Elphinstone. Elizabeth was named for her mother, while her two middle names are those of her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra, and grandmother, respectively. As a child, however, her close family dubbed her as Lilibet.[4]. 
Elizabeth had a close relationship with her grandfather, and was credited with aiding in his recovery from illness in 1929,[5][6] the same year a young P'incess Lilybet appeared on the cover of an issue of Time magazine that held an article describing Elizabeth's third birthday.[7] Her only sibling was Princess Margaret, born in 1930, around the same time that it was suggested their father be appointed as Governor General of Canada, meaning Elizabeth would have spent approximately five years living in Rideau Hall as part of the vice-regal family. This proposal was put down, however, by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs,[8] meaning the two princesses remained in London, where they were educated at home, under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Mary Crawford, who was casually known as Crawfie.[9] Elizabeth studied history with C.H.K. Marten, then Provost of Eton College, religion with the Archbishop of Canterbury,[10] and also learned modern languages; she still speaks French fluently.[11] A Girl Guides company, the 1st Buckingham Palace Company, was formed specifically so Elizabeth could participate in guiding, wherein she gained the interpreter, swimmer, dancer, horsewoman, cook, child nurse, and needlewoman badges, and eventually became patrol leader of the Swallow Patrol.[12] As a granddaughter of the monarch of the United Kingdom in the male line, Elizabeth held the title of a British princess, with the style Her Royal Highness, her full style being Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth of York. This was her only title, as she was born before the Statute of Westminster severed the UK's ability to legislate for the other Dominions of the Commonwealth, and following 1931, these countries did not adopt any legislation granting titles to anyone other than the monarch; there, Elizabeth was addressed with the title she held in the UK, as a courtesy title. At the time of her birth, she was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father. Although her birth did generate public interest, there was no reason to believe then that she would ever become queen, as it was widely assumed that the Prince of Wales would marry and produce children of his own. However, Edward did not have any children between Elizabeth's birth and his abdication, and Elizabeth's parents did not have any sons, who would have taken precedence over the Duke and Duchess' daughters. Therefore, Elizabeth would have become queen, whether Edward had abdicated or not. Heiress presumptiveWhen, after the abdication of her uncle, King Edward VIII, Elizabeth became heiress presumptive, and was thenceforth known as Her Royal Highness The Princess Elizabeth. There was some demand in Wales that she be created Princess of Wales, but the King was advised that this was the title of the wife of a Prince of Wales, not a title in its own right. Some feel that George VI missed the opportunity to make an innovation in royal practice by re-adopting Henry VIII's idea of proclaiming his daughter, Lady Mary, as Princess of Wales in her own right, in 1525.[13] The possibility, however remote, remained, though, that Elizabeth's father could have a son, who would have supplanted Elizabeth in the line of succession to the throne as heir apparent. In 1939, the Canadian government desired that Elizabeth accompany her parents on their upcoming tour of Canada; however, the King decided against taking that advice, stating that his daughter was still too young to undertake such a strenuous tour, which ended up being over a month long.[8] World War IIElizabeth was 13 years old when World War II broke out, and she and her younger sister were evacuated to Windsor Castle. There was some suggestion that the two princesses be evacuated to Canada, where they, along with their parents, would have lived at Hatly Castle in British Columbia. This plan never came to fruition; to the proposal, Elizabeth's mother made the famous reply: "The children won't go without me. I won't leave without the King. And the King will never leave."[14] Thus, the children remained at Windsor, where they staged pantomimes at Christmas, to which family and friends were invited, along with the children of Royal Household staff. It was from Windsor that Elizabeth, in 1940, made her first radio broadcast during the BBC's Children's Hour, addressing other children who had been evacuated from the cities. Soon after this, when she was 13 years old, Elizabeth first met her future husband, Philip Mountbatten,[15] a Greek royal and member of the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, the Danish royal house and a line of the House of Oldenburg. Elizabeth thereafter fell in love with Philip and beginning to write to him when he was in the Royal Navy. During Elizabeth's years at Windsor, plans were drawn up by then constitutional expert Edward Iwi to have a member of the Royal Family present in Wales, in order to quell the growing nationalist influence of Plaid Cymru.[16] In a report he gave to then Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, Iwi proposed having Princess Elizabeth serve as Constable of Caernarfon Castle (the post then held by Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor) and patron of Urdd Gobaith Cymru, to tour Wales as such.[16] The ideas, none-the-less, were rejected by the Home Secretary, on the grounds that it might cause conflict between north and south Wales; by the King, who refused to subject his young daughter to the pressures of conducting official tours;[16] and by the government, as two leading members of Urdd Gobaith Cymru were discovered to be conscientious objectors.[16] 
At the end of the war in Europe, on VE Day, Elizabeth and her sister stole away from Buckingham Palace and mingled with the celebratory crowds after midnight.[20][21] Two years later, the Princess made her first official overseas tour, when she accompanied her parents to South Africa. It was there that she marked her 21st birthday, when she made a broadcast to the British Commonwealth, pledging "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."[22] MarriageElizabeth married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, on 20 November 1947. The couple are second cousins once removed – both being descended from King Christian IX of Denmark; Elizabeth is a great-great-granddaughter through her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra, while the Philip is a great-grandson through his paternal grandfather, King George I of Greece – as well as third cousins, sharing Queen Victoria as a great-great-grandmother; Elizabeth's great-grandfather was King Edward VII, and his sister was Princess Alice, Philip's great-grandmother. Before Elizabeth's marriage to him, Philip had renounced his claim to the Greek throne, and was then simply referred to as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, an anglicisation of his mother's titular designation, Battenberg; it was just before the wedding that he was created Duke of Edinburgh and granted the style of His Royal Highness. 
The marriage was not without controversy: Philip was Greek Orthodox, had no financial standing, and had sisters who had married Nazi supporters. Elizabeth's mother was reported, in later biographies, to have strongly opposed the union, even dubbing Philip as The Hun.[23] Still, the Commonwealth had not yet completely rebounded from the devastation of the second World War – though Elizabeth and Philip received over 2,500 wedding gifts from around the world, rationing still required that the Princess save up her rationing coupons to buy the material for her gown[24] – and the wedding was seen as the first glimmer of a hope of rebirth. At the ceremony, Elizabeth's bridesmaids were her sister; her cousin, Princess Alexandra of Kent; Lady Caroline Montagu-Douglas-Scott, a cadet relative through their mutual aunt; Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester; her second cousin, Lady Mary Cambridge; Lady Elizabeth Mary Lambart (now Longman), daughter of Frederick Lambart, Earl of Cavan; The Honourable Pamela Mountbatten (now Hicks), Philip's cousin; and two maternal cousins, The Honourable Margaret Elphinstone (now Rhodes) and The Honourable Diana Bowes-Lyon (now Somervell),[25] while her page boys were her young paternal first cousins, Princes William of Gloucester and Michael of Kent.[26] Following the wedding, the couple leased their first home, Windlesham Moor, until 4 July 1949,[27] when they took up residence at Clarence House. However, at various times between 1946 and 1953, the Duke of Edinburgh was stationed in Malta (at that time a British Protectorate) as a serving Royal Navy officer. Both he and Elizabeth lived for two years, between 1949 and 1951, in the Maltese hamlet of Gwardamangia, at the Villa Gwardamangia (or Villa G'Mangia), which Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma had purchased in about 1929. Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles, on 14 November 1948, several weeks after letters patent were issued by her father allowing her children to enjoy a royal and princely status to which they otherwise would not have been entitled, instead being titled as merely children of a duke.[28] Further, though the Royal House is named Windsor, it was decreed through a British Order-in-Council in 1960, that those male-line descendants of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip who were not princes and princesses of the United Kingdom should have the personal surname Mountbatten-Windsor.[29] In practice, however, all of their children have used Mountbatten-Windsor as their surname (or, in Anne's case, her maiden surname), to honour their father; both Charles and Anne used the surname as their own in the published banns for their first marriages.[30] Life as queenSuccessionGeorge VI's health declined during 1951, and Elizabeth was soon frequently standing in for him at public events, visiting Greece, Italy and Malta. In October of that year, she toured Canada, and visited the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, in Washington, D.C.; on that trip, the Princess carried with her a draft Accession Declaration for use if the King died while she was out of the United Kingdom.[8] By January of 1952, Elizabeth and Philip set out for a tour of Australia and New Zealand; however, when they reached Kenya, word arrived of the death of Elizabeth's father, from lung cancer, on 6 February. The royal party was staying at Sagana Lodge at the time, and Philip broke the news to the new queen.[31] Martin Charteris, then Assistant Private Secretary to Elizabeth, asked her what she intended to be called as monarch, to which she replied: "Oh, my own name; what else?"[32] Thereafter, the royal party hastily returned to the United Kingdom, while Elizabeth was proclaimed queen first in Canada, by the Queen's Privy Council for Canada, on 6 February,[33] followed by her British proclamation, read at St. James's Palace the following day. 
In 1953, the Queen's grandmother Queen Mary died of lung cancer, on 24 March. Reportedly, her dying wish was that the coronation not be postponed because of her passing. The ceremony thus took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, amid much talk of a "new Elizabethan age." At the Queen's request, the entire procession was, save for the anointing and communion, televised throughout the Commonwealth, and watched by an estimated twenty million people,[34] who saw Elizabeth in a gown commissioned from Norman Hartnell, which consisted of embroidered floral emblems of the countries of the Commonwealth: the Tudor rose of England, the Scots thistle, the Welsh leek, shamrocks for Ireland, the wattle of Australia, the maple leaf of Canada, the New Zealand fern, South Africa's protea, two lotus flowers for India and Ceylon, and Pakistan's wheat, cotton, and jute.[35] Following the ceremony, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh moved into Buckingham Palace. It has been reported, though, that, as with many of her predecessors, Elizabeth dislikes the palace as a residence, and considers Windsor Castle to be her home.[36] Continuing evolution of the Commonwealth
The metamorphasis of the British Empire began following the Balfour Declaration at the Imperial Conference of 1926, followed by its formalisation in the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Thus, by the time of Elizabeth's accession in 1952, one of her main roles as Queen was already established as a president over a United Kingdom in the process of sharing, more and more, world economic and military power with a growing host of independent nations and principalities. Thus, as countries developed economically and culturally, Elizabeth witnessed, over her reign, the ongoing transformation of the old empire into the new British Commonwealth, and its modern successor, the Commonwealth of Nations. In these circumstances, she focused much of her attention on maintaining links with former British possessions, and, in some cases, such as South Africa, she played an important role in retaining or restoring good relations. Government papers dating from 1956 were declassified in 2007, and revealed that then French Prime Minister Guy Mollet and British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden had discussed the possibility of France joining in a union with the United Kingdom; among the ideas put forward was one in which Elizabeth was to be the French head of state. A document from 28 September 1956 stated that Mollet "had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of Her Majesty." This proposal, however, was never accepted, and the following year France signed the Treaty of Rome.[37] Duties and milestonesNot long after, the Queen and her husband, from 1953 to 1954, made a six month, around the world tour, making Elizabeth the first monarch to circumnavigate the globe. She also became the first reigning monarch of Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji to visit those nations. By 1957, she made a state visit to the United States as Queen of Canada,[38][39][40] where she addressed the United Nations General Assembly, and, upon returning to Canada, opened the 23rd session of parliament, becoming the first Canadian monarch to do so. Two years later, she was back in the United States, again as sovereign of Canada, to meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and, in February of 1961, she visited Ankara with Cemal Gursel, and toured India, Iran, Pakistan, and Nepal for the first time. Throughout her reign Elizabeth has undertaken a large number of state visits to foreign countries, as well as numerous tours of every Commonwealth country, including attending all Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) since the practice was established by Canada in 1973; the Queen had wished to attend the inaugural CHOGM in Singapore in 1971, but was advised not to do so by British Prime Minister Edward Heath.[41] Altogether, Elizabeth II is the most widely-travelled head of state in history.[42][43] With the birth of Andrew in 1960, Elizabeth became the first queen regnant to give birth since Victoria bore her daughter, Princess Victoria in 1840. Elizabeth's pregnancies with both Andrew and Edward, in 1959 and 1963, respectively, also marked the only two times Elizabeth did not perform the State Opening of the British parliament during her reign, delegating the task to the Lord Chancellor instead. Elizabeth also sent, in 1969, one of 73 Apollo 11 Goodwill Messages to NASA for the historic first lunar landing, the crew of which the Queen would later meet with during their world tour; the message is etched on a tiny silicon disc that still rests on the moon's surface.[44] In 1991, she became the first British monarch to address a joint session of the United States Congress; in 2005, the first Canadian monarch to address the Legislative Assembly of Alberta; and, in 2007, the first British monarch to address the Virginia General Assembly. On 20 March 2008, The Queen broke with tradition, and, for the first time ever, held a Maundy Service outside of England and Wales; accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, Elizabeth attended the Maundy Thursday service in Northern Ireland, at the Church of Ireland St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, during a three day visit to coincide with Easter.[45] Jubilees and anniversaries
Having reigned for over five decades as queen, Elizabeth marked a number of significant anniversaries during her time on the throne, the first being the 1977 Silver Jubilee of her accession.[46] The events – which took place in many countries throughout the Queen's associated Commonwealth tour, and included a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral attended by dignitaries and other heads of state – were watched on television by millions, and parties were held throughout the Commonwealth realms, culminating in several Jubilee Days in the UK, in June. In Britain, commemorative stamps were also issued; the Jubilee Line of the London Underground (though opened in 1979) was named for the anniversary; and several other public locations and spaces were similarly named, including the Jubilee Gardens in London's South Bank, while, in Canada, the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal was issued and an equestrian statue of the Queen was unveiled on Parliament Hill. A quarter century later, in 2002, Elizabeth marked her Golden Jubilee as queen,[47] again undertaking an extensive tour of her realms. Though public celebrations in the UK were more muted than those that had taken place 25 years earlier, due, in part, to the death of both the Queen's mother and sister earlier that year, street parties and commemorative events were still planned in many locales. Also, as in 1977, monuments were named and gifts offered to honour the occasion, including, in Canada, the Golden Jubilee Journalism New Media Centre at Sheridan College, and the Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in five years following the Golden Jubilee, with a special service at Westminster Abbey and private dinner hosted by Prince Charles at Clarence House on 19 November, and, the following day (their actual anniversary) a dinner party with other members of the Royal Family, former Prime Ministers Sir John Major and Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, sitting Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition David Cameron, and the surviving bridesmaids and pages from the original wedding party. On 21 November, Elizabeth and Philip travelled to Malta, where a Royal Navy ship that was docked in the vicinity arranged its crew members on deck in the form of the number 60. LongevityBy 27 August 1985, Elizabeth became the longest serving <a href="/wiki/List_of_Canadian_monarchs" title="List of | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
